Last month, as part of “National Invasive Species Awareness Week” (February 24-28), the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service recommended eating wild pigs and other introduced species as a way to reduce their numbers.
Besides the obvious point that controlling “invasive species one bite at a time” is a ridiculous idea– Americans could never eat enough pigs to impact population numbers– an important warning was left out of the story. The “potential health risks” of eating pig flesh was mentioned only as a footnote.
Wild pigs are in no way a health risk to the general public, but for people who come into contact with the blood, fluids or muscle tissues of dead pigs there is a risk of being exposed to diseases such as trichinosis or brucellosis. There have been cases of hunters becoming seriously ill after handling or eating flesh from infected pigs. The risk of disease transmission is why most food banks do not accept meat from wild pigs.
If you want to avoid internal parasites and bacterial diseases, you may want to leave wild pig meat off your dinner plate!
(photo credit: CDC, “Trichinellosis is an infection caused by the larvae of a parasitic worm.”)