Eat raw fish ... Get a 9-foot tapeworm
Amy didn’t feel too good last night. She thought maybe it was the damn-near raw tuna on her salad the other afternoon when we ventured to our nearest patio for some Sunday relaxation.
Probably not. But raw is not without its risks.
One summer day in August 2006, Anthony Franz went to a Chicago area hospital carrying a 9-foot worm.
He did not find it in his garden.
Franz is one of the few, but growing number of tapeworm victims in cities across the world who are discovering (or rediscovering) that some of the most popular fish can host parasites.
Although still rare, a study this June showed salmon tapeworm infestations tripled from an average of 0.32 cases per 100,000 people each year in Kyoto, Japan, to at least to 1 case in 100,000 people in 2008. As more people adopt sushi and undercooked fish diets around the world so too, has the worm spread. …
"Parasites are really a non-issue, it's not as big of a problem as time and temperature holding," said Pamela Tom, Seafood Network Information Center Director at the University of California, Davis. "People focus on methyl mercury, but in reality it's not as important as the bacteria."
Lawsuit alleges man gets 9-foot tapeworm from seafood restaurant
The first salmon Amy cooked for me – she caught me a delicious salmon – was damn near raw. Now, we cook it to about 125 F, checked using a tip-sensitive digital thermometer, and it warms up to 130-140 F in the minutes from grill to gullet.
Apparently that didn’t happen for Anthony Franz, who is suing the parent company of Shaw’s Crab House for causing him to become “violently ill” after eating undercooked salmon at the trendy River North restaurant.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the suit, filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court, claims Franz ate periodically at Shaw’s between May and August 2006 as part of a healthier diet.
For several days, Franz became violently ill and eventually passed a nine-foot long tapeworm, the suit said.
A suburban doctor he visited in late August said he got the tapeworm from eating undercooked fish. …
He claims in the two-count suit that the restaurant failed to supervise employees in safe food handling and allowed customers to eat food that was not safe to consume.
Raw and undercooked seafood continues to present risks. The N.Y. Times covered the issue of tapeworms in seafood in a 1981 article.
Stick it in.
