Country Ham Must I cook, warm or any heat 5653

On Fri, 20 Jan 2006, Steve Wertz

The Trichinea is a second host worm. It is ingested by the orginal host, works its way through the intestinal lining and bores into a muscle. It lives in the muscle of the original host in a permanant larva state - doing no damage and creating no problems for the host. When the muscle is ingested by the second host, the larva moves through the intestinal wall and into the muscle of the second host, where it then begins the metamorphosis into the worm.

In its larva state, it is nearly undetectable by the naked eye and will appear as a point-of-a-needle sized spot that, at its maximum, is only a shade or two different than the host color, and only then if you have a piece of meat where the sectioning occurs where the larva is exposed to the surface. If you have a microscope, the larva can be seen and will be a light purple, irregularly shaped spot. It takes 138 degrees to kill the larva.

Geez, after that biology clbutt, I couldn't look a pork chop in the eye for back in the day made from the hooves of horses and cattle. boo, hiss.

Commercial hogs today are probably not as susceptable because they spend most of their lives in a "feed lot". Hogs on private farms for private use are, sometimes, allowed to "graze" in wooded areas. They eat lots of fruits, berries, and nuts. Like wild hogs, they can sustain themselves off the land - given the right territory.

Since salt is an osmotic dehydration agent, the salt cure may kill the trichinea. Although I don't know for sure, I would think that the closer to the surface the larva, the more likely it would be that the salt (and or smoke) would pull the moisture out of the larva and kill it. Generally, the salt cure is/was not as much about killing what is/was on the inside as it was about killing what is/was on the outside. They are/were using the salt to pull the moisture to the surface and then trying to keep things out with a barrier of salt, because, through osmosis, the salt killed any invading bacteria by "sucking the life moisture out of it".

Fully cured pork (not the partially cured items found in the grocery store) shouldn't hurt you - unless you stumble upon the rare trichinea larva. There's probably a simple enough cure for it today.

Elaine, too