Trichinosis case first in 30 years

Thursday, October 10, 2013

A single case of trichinosis in a child who ate meat from a pig raised on his parents' Bruce County farm has highlighted just how rare this disease is.

The Owen Sound Sun Times reports that the child contracted the disease in January on a non-commercial Mennonite farm where the pig was raised and slaughtered. No meat was sold into the food chain and the incident was mentioned in passing at the monthly public health board meeting. The child recovered without treatment.

The newspaper quoted public health officer Hazel Lynn as reporting that the pig was free of trichinosis when it was purchased and likely contracted the disease from rats eating the food, which included table scraps.   

According to the article, trichinosis last broke out in pigs in Ontario in 1977, and the last human case from domestic pork in Canada was in 1980. The same story said that some people got sick after eating smoked wild boar meat in 1993.

The article says the Canadian Food Inspection Agency tests about 18,000 market hogs annually and every three to five years another 16,000 sows are tested as part of a surveillance program. BP