A FAMILY has been hit with a rare parasitic disease that sent six of them to hospital after they ate bear meat kebabs at a reunion. The worrying outbreak caused the South Dakota family to quickly develop a high fever , severe muscle pain and swelling around the eyes after they were accidentally served dangerously under cooked meat. The raw bear is thought to have carried the nasty parasitic disease inside it that is typically caused by a specific roundworm larvae.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report revealed the outbreak stemmed from a nine-person family reunion back in July 2022. Six people ended up testing positive with antibodies to Trichinella - a type of roundworm hardly ever seen in the past 30 years - weeks after the kebabs were eaten. The antibodies would've only turned up in the families body if they had developed trichinellosis from ingesting Trichinella larvae.
After a CDC investigation into the illness, they found that one person had decided to bring along some frozen black bear meat to the dinner. The bear had been hunted in northern Canada 45 days earlier and stored in a freezer until it was thawed out for the feast. After struggling to tell if the bear was fully cooked due to it being a dark meat the family gambled and tucked into their raw kebabs completely unaware of the consequences.
A week later, a 29-year-old man developed a number of symptoms synonymous with trichinellosis. He was hospitalised twice in the span of a few days complain.
