Meat Allergy May be Caused by Tick Bites

The media is reporting that tick bites may be causing beef and pork allergies that are severe enough to be life-threatening. While this is a lesser known risk of tick bites it has been reported in the literature as far back as 2009.  The allergy relates to a sugar ("Alpha-gal") found not only in these commonly consumed meats but the flesh of most mammals.  However the sensitivity of patients seems to vary greatly between meat types.

You do not need to show a severe or systemic reaction to the tick bite in order to develop a meat allergy--in fact it may occur more often when there is only a moderate, localized response.  Overall this phenomenon is still not widely recognized although it has been demonstrated now in multiple countries including the United States, Sweden and Australia.

People with a sudden allergic reaction after eating meat, especially beef, may need to prompt their doctors to consider tick bite as the cause.  It is a likely contender if you have a sudden onset meat allergy, live in an area with ticks, and may have been exposed to multiple bites that did not seem serious at the time.

Tick-Bite-related Meat Allergy References:

• An association between tick bite reactions and red meat allergy in humans (2009)
• The relevance of tick bites to the production of IgE antibodies to the mammalian oligosaccharide galactose-α-1,3-galactose (2011)
• Red meat allergy in Sweden: Association with tick sensitization and B-negative blood groups (2013)
•  Tick bites and red meat allergy (2013)

Dog Eating as a Rabies Risk

The processing of stray dogs into meat seems to be a growing industry in Nigeria, and it is known that some of the dogs slaughtered for this purpose are infected with rabies.

Research has shown that some people infected with rabies seem to have been exposed via dog meat consumptions, and also that people involved in this trade often do not know how to recognize rabies or the risk it poses to human consumers.  

Once contracted rabies has the highest fatality rate of any known disease. So a strong emphasis must be placed on presentation via education and inspection of meat production facilities whenever possible.

Ekanem, E., Eyong, K., Philip-Ephraim, E., Eyong, M., Adams, E., & Asindi, A. (2014). Stray dog trade fuelled by dog meat consumption as a risk factor for rabies infection in Calabar, southern Nigeria African Health Sciences, 13 (4) DOI: 10.4314/ahs.v13i4.44  

Odeh, L., Umoh, J., & Dzikwi, A. (2013). Assessment of Risk of Possible Exposure to Rabies among Processors and Consumers of Dog Meat in Zaria and Kafanchan, Kaduna State, Nigeria Global Journal of Health Science, 6 (1) DOI: 10.5539/gjhs.v6n1p142

Celebrity Salami Hoax

So BiteLabs website says: "Bitelabs grows meat from celebrity tissue samples and uses it to make artisanal salami."

Is this true? No. It is yet another yuppie idea for a "thought provoking" fake product.

The main thought it provokes in me that that these people are not half as smart as they think they are.

Oh look, see how we are making a comment on celebrity and maybe fooling some proles into thinking its real. LOLs cannibalism is so taboo. In vitro people meat etc.

Yawn.

Men, Woman, and Quiche

It is common knowledge that vegetarianism is more common with women.  Hank Rothgerber reveals some of the underlying factors in these gender differences.

Rothberger studued undergraduates and found that assertive defenses of meat eating were more common in males and associated with feelings of masculinity. Specifically more masculine indivduals were were likely to use justifications such as that eating meat is healthy, justified by religion and allowed by animals' lower status. More feminine individuals tends to have strategies of avoidance such as not thinking to much about where meat comes from.

It is interesting to see that  part of the masculine strategy that seems out of character is the denial of animal suffering in meat production.  This strikes me as more a strategy pf avoidance--assuming lack of suffering rather than really trying to assess the degree of suffering that may or may not occur.  This both masculine and feminine strategies can be said to embrace a degree of denial and dissociation for the animal. Overall masculine individuals are more unapologetic meat eaters but also apparently less interested in the welfare aspects of how meat is produced, or as Rothberger phrased it "hostile to animal welfare".

The author goes on to present various pro-vegetarian arguments phrased in a more masculine way (e.g. rational, non-conformist) but they do not look at how being in denial about animal welfare issues--whether one eats meet or not--is not a macho orientation but a weak 'head in the sand' position in contrast to either fixing the problems or changing which food products to support (within or beyond the meat category).

Rothgerber, H. (2013). Real men don’t eat (vegetable) quiche: Masculinity and the justification of meat consumption. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 14 (4), 363-375 DOI: 10.1037/a0030379

What is Ethical Meating Eating?

If a person believes that killing an animal to consume its flesh is fundamental unjustifiable, for them there is not such thing as ethical meat eating.  However when meat is avoided for reasons of animal welfare or environmental impacts, a case can be made.

George Schedler (2005)  makes the interesting argument that the animals that exist for meat production, and their enjoyment of their lives, should be counted in favor of a meat eating community.  He also argues that vegetable production causes suffering to 'field animals' whose dens and sometimes lives are destroyed during cultivation. He argues that fewer animals are in fact killed under a grazing system than a cropping system.  This in addition to the human pleasure derived from meat eating can be used to argue in favor of 'ethical meat eating'.

People are swayed in their meat purchasing behavior by ethical considerations such as the perceived welfare of animals raised to produce meat (Tonsor et al, 2011).  However other factors such as perceived food safety typically have a higher magnitude of effect.

References:

• Schedler, G. (2005). Does ethical meat eating maximise utility? Social Theory and Practice, 31, 499.
• Tonsor, GT; Olynk NJ (2011). Impacts of animal well-being and welfare media on meat demand. Journal of Agricultural Economics, 62, 59-72.

Meat and Evolution

Many commentators try to appeal to an idea of what is natural or healthy, what humans are 'designed' to eat.  For example Gary Smith of the "Center for Red Meat Safety" claims that "Evolutionsist tell us humanity ... should now consider returning to a diet more like that of out Paleolithic ancestors--high-protein and low fat". 

A more dispassionate reading of the evolutionary data suggests that our more distant ancestors were herbivores.  Humans developed into omnivores during the late Miocene era, to provide energy for their relatively large bodies and energetic lifestyles.  As such, humans are naturally omnivores (Deneen, 2002; Milton, 1999; Smil, 2002).

As omnivores humans have some characteristics typical of of our distant herbivore ancestors such as:

• Needing to get our vitamin C from our diet
• Having a intestine that is long in comparison to our body size

However out bodies have been retrofitted in the more immediate evolutionary past to digest meat as is apparent from features such as:

• Production of hydrochloric acid by the stomach

Did Meat Make Us What We Are Today?
It is sometimes argued that switching to an omnivorous diet led directing to an increase in brain size and the evolution of humans as we are today. Others argue that the increased brain and decreased tooth size of hominids developed primarily before the shift to meat-eating and later adaption might related to the handling and cooking of tubers as much as meat (Pasquet and Hladick, 2005).

Conclusion
While consumption of meat is clearly part of our current biological design, it cannot be assumed that because something is natural that it is necessary or good.  People with access to diverse food sources can get all of their nutritional needs from non-animal sources (Smith, 2005).

See also:

•  Why Do People Eat Meat?

References:

• Deneen, S. (2002). Body of evidence: were humans meant to eat meat? E, 13, 33-34.
• Milton K. (1999). A hypothesis to explain the role of meat-eating in human evolution. Evolutionary Anthropology, 11-21.
• Pasquet P, Hladick C-M. (2005). Theories of human evolutionary trends in meat eating and studies of primate intestinal tracts. Estudios Del Hombre, 21-31.
• Smil, V. (2002). Eating meat: evolution, patterns and consequences. Population and Development Review, 28, 599-639.
• Smith GC. (2005). Why people eat beef. National Cattlemen's Beef Association Annual Convention in San Antonio, TX. February 2, 2005.

Xenotransplantation

Public Acceptance
There are very few uses of animals, other than food, that involve taking part of a non-human animal into our body.  Thus it is not surprising that Michael and Brown, 2004) found strong connections between how people understand eating meat, and their attitudes to xenotransplantation (the use of an animal body part to replace a fail human body part).

The authors argue that any new phenomenon is initially understood with reference to something familiar.  Because animals are used and understood in such diverse ways, and meat represents the closest equivalent for a situation such as the use of pig as donors of cells, valves, and potentially organs. However meat itself is frequently seen as a source of concern based on intensive farming, disease issues and animal transportation methods.  So this comparison is not entirely unproblematic.

Michael and Brown carried out focus groups and extracted three main types of argument: whether people involved in the process are trustworthy, whether ones opinion carries an weight, and how needing a life-saving procedure would change one's willingness to use a xenotransplanted organ. The focus groups exchanges around meat eating show how it provides a familiar model for understanding the option of using animal parts for human purposes--in situations where the literal need may be much greater than eating meat, which is rarely absolutely necessary for continued health and life.

Conversely, it has been suggested that if swine are more widely accepted as organ donors people may feel more 'closely related' to pigs and become less willing to eat them (Glein, 2002).

Risks
The immediate problem with transplantion from a non-human donor is rejection.  Research is underway to try and develop donor animals and anti-immune regimes that will allow a wider array of organs and tissues to be donated by non-human animals. 

This is also a longer term risk of the transfer of infection agents and the development of dangerous zoonotic diseases (Glein, 2002).

References:

• Glein, H. (2002). Custom made piggeries in Norway? View of the meat producing industry. Acta. Vet. Scand., Suppl 99, 51-52.
• Michael, M., Brown, N. (2004). The meat of the matter:grasping and judging xenotransplantation. Public Understanding of Science, 13, 379-397.

Eating Emu in America

Emu meat is marketed as a healthy red meat with relatively low fat (2.5% versus over 5% for beef, Shao et al, 1999) and cholesterol.  Emus are farmed predominantly in the United States and Australia (Dingle, 1997). However a large scale market for this products has not developed.

Adams et al (2000) argue that emu meat is best marketed as a 'game animal' meat similar to duck and quail.  that is to say, most people would not buy it at the supermarket, but might be willing to try it in a restaurant setting. 

Their survey results suggest that the willingness of people to eat a new meat product, even in a fine dining context, is strongly affected by wider 'social acceptability'.  And at the time of the study the social acceptability of eating emu was consider somewhat low.  Based on its absence from restaurant menus (as far as I have observed) this still seems to be the case.

References:

• Adams, C.R., Hoover, L.C., Arnett. D.B. and Thomspon, L.D. (2000). Social acceptability's role in an expanded rational expectation model of intention to consume an innovative meat product in a restaurant setting. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, 24, 252-262.
• Dingle, J.G. (1997). Emu and Ostrich production and its consequences for human nutrition. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society of Australia, 21, 37-43.
• Shao, C.H., Avens, J.S., Schmidt, G.R., Maga, J.A. (1999). Functional, sensory, and microbiological properties of restructured beef and emu steaks. Journal of Food Science, 64, 1052-1054.