Rivera Bladestrike wrote:Um... I just had some before reading this, care to explain why? heh
Taenia saginata
Also known as the "beef tapeworm", this monstrous helminthe can grow upwards of 25 feet long in the intestines of your typical bovine, with most infected cattle having a high worm burden of several worms. Estimated at least one out of every ten livestock cattle in the US (and the rest of the world, for that matter) are infected - mostly due to cramped and crowded conditions at factory farms.
Gravid segments of
T. saginata pump out eggs at a surpising rate - to the tune of thousands per day. These eggs pass in the feces and out onto the grass that other cattle eat. Unlike eggs of most other worms, insects or what have you, parasites such as
Taenia are usually a little more hardy. These eggs consist of a fully formed tapeworm scolex encased in a tough cyst to prevent dessication.
Now, you would think that ingestion of these eggs leads directly to a new worm in the stomach of another animal - not so.
Taenia has a two stage life cycle. Upon ingestion, these eggs pass through the stomach and hatch in the small intestine, where the larvae penetrate the intestinal wall and enter the circulatory system. Eventually, these larvae settle in the tight capillary beds around skeletal muscle tissues (particulary loins, ribs, shoulders) and encapsulate into cysts known as cysticerci. A few worms will remain in the small intestine, to maintain the reservoir host and continue infection in the cattle.
The function of these cysts is for the worm larvae to lie dormant until the tissue of the animal is consumed because you see, cattle are not the terminal host - predators are. A single infected cow can have literaly thousands upon thousands of cysticerci embedded in its muscle tissues. Each of these cysts is about the size of a BB, and contains a mature tapeworm scolex.
When cattle are butchered, it becomes immediately apparent that they have a
Taenia infection. You can see the cysts in the tissue - dozens of the things per cut of meat. Such a cut can obviously never be sold as steak or stew meat, because who would buy it with all of these BB-sized cysts of fluid?
So guess what...its sold to companies who pre-cook the meat and can it. The cooking that these companies do ensures the death of the cyst, and denaturing of pretty much all the tapeworm's genetic proteins, so it's totally safe for consumption. Most of the time, the meat is ground up to the point where you'd never even see a cyst.
However, get a can of that sirloin burger soup or some spaghettios with meatballs or the like. Have you ever been eating one of those meatballs and come across a little spherical thing about the size of a BB?
I'd like to learn more about the products I buy, so please share!
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