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Comment by otterpro | Hacker News Reader

I've heard other cases like this in Asia, where some people ate raw snake meat (ie sushi style), which was considered delicacies, and one man ended up with parasite in his lungs and was on TV news. Another case was in US where a boy ate pork that was not fully cooked and ended up with parasite in his brain. Since then, I'm very careful to make sure all pork are fully cooked (especially at barbeque).

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The main parasite from raw pork was trichinosis, but that's not really a thing anymore in the US. Not since the FDA mandated that you can't feed as much literal raw meat garbage to pigs in the 70s. [edit: Swine Health Protection Act, 1980]

You can still get hepatitis E, among other things, from raw pork though so you know, be careful.

Some high-end restaurants are serving raw pork now though [1], but personally, I wouldn't - and I'm an adventurous eater.

[1] https://www.seriouseats.com/case-for-raw-rare-pink-pork-food...

There's a risk of e.coli from undercooked pork too from what I understand.

Or at least, that's most likely how I got e.coli back in 2016 or so. Undercooked pork from a pork roast at a wedding.

Yeah, salmonella too.

> Based on analysis of U.S. foodborne disease outbreaks, pork may be responsible for between 8 and 13 percent of roughly 1 million foodborne human salmonellosis cases each year. [1]

[1] https://www.fsis.usda.gov/news-events/publications/pork-salm...

I wouldn't say it's VERY popular but it's a quite popular "sausage type" in Germany and Poland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mett

Ah, yes, metka is quite delicious.

Perhaps the curing and smoking might somewhat reduce whatever risk remains today?

We eat unsmoked Mett conpletely raw herr in germany. But here is strict monitoring of the pork used.

Yeeeeah there's plenty of stories about raw meat like that unfortunately.

We had (have?) a scare too; at christmas our company did a fancy gala dinner party, and the starter was a fish tartare of sorts. A few days later my GF had diarrhea, turns out there's a parasite in that type of fish that causes it days later.

> We had (have?) a scare too; at christmas our company did a fancy gala dinner party, and the starter was a fish tartare of sorts. A few days later my GF had diarrhea, turns out there's a parasite in that type of fish that causes it days later.

It's safe to assume all fish are a parasite risk (for instance due to nematode worms or cod worms) - with the notable exception of tuna, and most farmed salmon. However! In the US, all non-tuna fish is required to be frozen to -4F for at least 7 days or -31F for 15 hours to kill parasites. [1]

You can make sushi - or tartare - out of any US frozen fish.

If you caught parasites it would have either been fresh fish, which (except for tuna) is never ok to use according to the FDA - or the cold chain was improperly maintained. In either case it could even be worth a report to local health authorities. However tartare or ceviche or any other kind of raw fish preparation in the US is safe if it's made from tuna or (properly) frozen fish.

[1] https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/Fish-and-Fishery-Pr...

Is there a reason why tuna is specifically called out as an exception?

I would imagine that tuna, being near the top of the food chain, would accumulate an awful lot of things in their bodies, not just mercury as commonly feared.

Weird eh? My understanding is tuna don't get parasites as often. I read about it here. [1]

> Exempted from the FDA's freezing requirements are, as Herron mentions, large species of tuna—deemed safe based on the frequency with which they are eaten in raw form and the infrequency of related, documented parasitic infection—as well as aquacultured fish, like salmon, given verification that the feed it's raised on is parasite-free.

> To meet FDA guidelines, every other type of fish must be frozen to those temperatures, even if the table does not indicate that it carries a parasite risk, because it "may have a parasite hazard that has not been identified if these fish are not customarily consumed raw or undercooked."

[1] https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-prepare-raw-fish-at-home-...

Based on this, it sounds more like tuna is the only fish we know is mostly parasite-free, not the only fish that is mostly parasite-free. Perhaps most fish is actually parasite-free, but since we don't have enough evidence of that, the FDA is not going to allow selling it unfrozen.

> in US where a boy ate pork that was not fully cooked and ended up with parasite in his brain

Do you have a source? It is my understanding that pork in the US is very safe since the late 2000's (or maybe even earlier).

Here is one from the UK in 2019

https://news.sky.com/story/man-18-dies-from-tapeworm-larvae-...

Nope, Faridabad, India

It is very safe, but that doesn’t mean the risk is zero. The fact that stories like that have become major news stories kind of illustrates how unusual it is these days.

Agree and this is why I would like a source because I would expect it to have been national news.

As a vegetarian, I also ensure to wash my food. Much less to worry about than meat, though.

There's a lot more to worry about with the cleanliness of vegetables than whole pieces of meat (ground beef is a different story.) Of course, the worry with vegetables comes indirectly from animals (as feces) and because they tend to be prepared at lower temperatures than meat and eaten raw more often.

This is why I prefer my meat well done.

Wtf

https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/taeniasis/index.html

It's from raw/undercooked pork and beef.

Wow. I just turned into a well-done steak lover.

I'm down with the Bible on this one. No pork for me.

I cooked a pork chop when I was very young and came back to find many worms trying to escape as it cooked. This is the default for pork and is considered mitigated by certain drugs that must be given to the pigs.

And yes, large worms have been pulled from people's brains in the US--resulting from pork. They appeared to have displaced or feasted on brain matter.

I don't need pork.

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