Diseased Pork In Auckland

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30737, 29 April 1965, Page 3

Diseased Pork In Auckland

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, April 28. Trichinosis—a pig disease which can be transmitted to humans—h as been found in pig meat, produced in the Auckland province.

Commenting on the discovery, the Director-General of Health (Dr. D. P. Kennedy) said: “This is a completely new public health and veterinary problem as far as New Zealand is concerned.” Humans could be infected by eating pork which contained live larvae—a round parasitic worm known as trichinella spiralis, he said.

Dr. Kennedy warned that the best precaution against trichinosis was to cook all pig meats thoroughly. The Minister of Agriculture (Mr Taiboys) said the Animal Health Division of the Department of Agriculture had so far established that the source of infection was one of 14 piggeries in the Auckland province. “All 14 have been quarantined until the affected farm can be pin-pointed by taboratory tests. When that has been done all pigs on the property will have to be destroyed.” A meeting of representatives of producers and processors of pigs was being organised to discuss the problem, and the whole question was being closely examined

by the department’s veterinary staff. Mr Taiboys said this was the first known case of trichinosis in pigs in New Zealand, but he added the disease occurred in most countries of the world where pigs were kept. Dr. Kennedy said the pigs were infected through the invasion of the body by larvae of a parasite round worm which lived in the intestines of pigs. The worms were about one and a half to two inches long. “Humans can be affected by eating pork that contains live larvae, but there is no danger of the disease spreading from man to man,” he said. As well as sausages, bacon and ham, various Continental-1 style sausages and “wurst” contained pork, and wild pork I

[should not be overlooked as a possible source of the I disease, said Dr. Kennedy.