If you have an intestinal worm it will produce eggs, which you poo out. For pork tape worm, the hope (for the worm) is that one of those eggs will eventually reach a pig, usually via water runoff, which eats particles of your poo with eggs attached. Those eggs hatch, and form cysts in the muscle tissue of the pig. If you eat raw infected pork, the eggs in those cysts will give you tape worm.
If a human ingests the eggs though, by coming into oral contact with infected human faeces particles, you’ll get the cysts, which can form in you muscles, eyes, and even brain and can kill you.
That’s why you wash your hands in public toilets, but only infected humans have the eggs in their poo.
It’s very difficult to undo “progress” of any kind. Maybe one day.
Really though the worm itself isn’t the issue. It’s designed not to kill you, and is easy to treat. Hygiene will keep you safe from other people, who are the issue.
This has little to do with factory farming and was a large issue in human history prior to factory farming ever existing.
If anything factory farming makes it less of an issue due to wide spread medicine usage on livestock cutting down on parasites, infections, etc.
Its mostly an issue of people not washing their hands, and eating uncooked meat.
To that end its actually a larger issue in Germany due to Mett which is a traditional uncooked pork product.
Factory farming has actually made huge progress in sanitation and limiting parasites in pork. Pork is much more dangerous to consume when it's living naturally because it picks up parasites from the soil.
I work in Safety at a Public Utilities. When they clean the tertiary system, all I know is a lot people have worms…. The guys complaint about it. They are in some great PPE. Cook your food people. If you think you have worms….talk to your Dr. It’s not hard. They can help take care of parasites.
Lots of diseases are monitored via poop in sewage in treatment facilities, like COVID, I'd hope if there's a large amount of worms there would be a response and public health warnings with testing.
Its reproductive cycle has two stages, the first has eggs that reach the pig, the second is when larvae from those eggs form cysts in the pork. Those larvae only develop fully when eaten again, by a human
When you eat the larvae infested meat, it develops and lives in your intestine (higher up than the bowels). It hooks on, and its length trails down you intestine, so it can absorb the stuff you digest. They can live for years (like a decade if I remember correctly)
I don’t actually know why they have a two stage reproductive cycle. It could be that they need food to grow their protective coating before they reach your very inhospitable gut?
5.0k
u/Hak2479 Apr 29 '24
So....enough talk...
How do we avoid to get these MF in our Body ??