Six family members contracted a rare parasitic disease caused by roundworm larvae after eating kebabs made from bear meat.
A report published this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed new details of the outbreak, which occurred in July 2022 at a family gathering of nine people in South Dakota.
A family member brought meat from a black bear hunted in northern Canada to the meeting. The meat was frozen in a domestic freezer for 45 days. Hunting black bears is legal in Canada and many US states.
The family made skewers with the defrosted meat, accompanied by grilled vegetables. According to the CDC, the family had difficulty determining whether the kebabs were fully cooked because the meat was dark in color. Therefore, it was unintentionally served and eaten rare.
A week later, a family member — a 29-year-old man from Minnesota — developed a fever, severe muscle pain and swelling around his eyes. He was hospitalized twice because of his symptoms.
The man tested positive for antibodies against Trichinella, a type of roundworm. Five other family members also developed symptoms such as fever, headache, stomach pain, diarrhea, muscle pain and swelling around the eyes.
Two other people who were exposed did not develop symptoms, and the CDC was unable to confirm whether the ninth person was exposed to Trichinella..
The CDC tested the remaining frozen meat and detected larvae of the same species of roundworm.
The agency assumed that all six members of the family had trichinellosis, a disease caused by eating undercooked meat contaminated with Trichinella larvae.
These infections are rare. From January 2016 to December 2022, the CDC identified seven outbreaks of trichinellosis in the US involving 35 probable or confirmed cases. Most were linked to bear meat.
Trichinellosis is not the same parasitic infection that presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently revealed he has already suffered. Kennedy said that brain infection he got comes from pork tapeworm larvae.
Two of the infected people at the family gathering ate vegetables without meat, the CDC said. Trichinella-infected meat can result in cross-contamination, so meat and its juices must be separated from other foods during cooking.
Three family members were hospitalized, each consuming bear meat. They received a treatment called albendazole, which kills parasitic worms and their larvae.
All six people have recovered from the illness.
The CDC report warns that freezing meat will not kill all Trichinella species. The bear meat at the family reunion, for example, was contaminated with a species found in Arctic bears that is resistant to freezing.
“People who consume bushmeat should be aware that cooking properly is the only reliable way to kill Trichinella parasites,” the report authors wrote.
The CDC recommends cooking wild game meat to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit, which should be checked with a meat thermometer — not by looking at the color of the meat.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
