“Alpha-gal syndrome is triggered when a tick bite causes a person’s immune system to develop an allergic reaction to meat, including beef, pork or lamb.”

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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      12 hours ago

      it’s been very well known anywhere within a few states of texas for like a decade, and it’s definitely spreading. The US government needs to get it’s shit together and then wipe that tick off the face of the map the same way they were handling the screw worm flys and the mosquitoes that carry west nile and the other ones that carry dengu fever.

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        Imo I think these ticks are cooking and we should breed them and release them into high beef consumption districts.

  • chellewalker@lemmy.ca
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    20 hours ago

    My step-dad got bit by one of these. He can only eat chicken now and it sucks.

    • BeUnique@lemmy.zip
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      14 hours ago

      It’s so scary that a bite from something the size of a pea can drastically change your life… Does he remember when being bitten and how long it took him to start having side effects?

    • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      huh. i know a dude who got bitten by one and he’s had to swear off all meat products, even poultry and fish. he was in cooking school learning vegan cookery when i met him.

      • GalacticRobot@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        Yeah, it’s becoming more common as the carrier ticks are able to expand due to climate change and more people are outdoors. There isn’t a good solution/treatment yet either, and it effects people differently. For some it’s a 3 month allergy, for many, it’s permanent.

    • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      They wouldnt be too smart if they were, because it’s not a meat allergy, it’s an alpha -galactose allergy, which is a sugar present in most mammals that people eat, but also many other foods, like carageenan, which is in many vegan products and medicine.

      • Nalivai@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Nothing our little genetic engineering lab can’t fix, crispr is so cheap this days. Ugh, their lab I mean, their hypothetical lab.

  • BeUnique@lemmy.zip
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    14 hours ago

    Yeah, a lot of people are learning about this the hard way and it appears to only be getting worse! The tick population has seen a huge “uptick” in recent years!

  • Tim_Bisley@piefed.social
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    19 hours ago

    Do people on the east coast just not care about the diseases ticks carry? I feel like nobody is doing anything about ticks or the diseases. Back in the 80s they used to fly planes a few hundred feet over my house and open the back bay where a cloud of deet would come come pouring out. We’d stand out on the porch and watch and run inside before the cloud hit the ground. They did all that for mosquitoes.

    • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      so i googled alpha gal tick and this is the first map i found. it is not authoritative it came off social media. but i remember when the map didn’t include the west coast and lone star ticks were way further south.

      so that might be why they don’t care, because they don’t know they need to care.

    • Madison420@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      Turns out that horrific for the environment and it’s easier to just tell people to stop killing opossums.

      • village604@adultswim.fan
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        17 hours ago

        Opossoms don’t really eat many ticks. The methodology of that study was flawed because they only fed them ticks.

        • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago


          so it turns out Statesians eat nothing but donuts. in this proposal to the IRB i would like to investigate…

        • Madison420@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          They are predators of mosquitoes and ticks, they aren’t supersoldiers of pest control like the study implies they are however a limiter in the ecosystem along with other animals people tend to kill and not think much about. It’s cheaper and easier to educate about not killing x than to eradicate a species and eat the consequences.

      • Tim_Bisley@piefed.social
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        17 hours ago

        Well I used that as an example of the effort expensed not that it was a good solution. Similar to how opossums aren’t a solution. It’s been mentioned a number of times now they don’t help as much as first thought. Sounds like chickens or guinea fowl are better

    • GalacticRobot@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      They care, but there isn’t a ‘lot’ that can be done. These ticks range is expanding due to climate change, and even with proper precautions (sprays, clothing, monitoring) it still can happen. Lyme disease is a big thing in on the east coast, so they do know about ticks.

    • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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      19 hours ago

      Would be a shame if this ended up in the water supply

      It certainly would. It’s not a meat allergy, it’s an alpha-galactose allergy. Alpha-gal is present in all foods and ingredients made from beef, pork, lamb, venison, rabbit, and other mammal sources, including gelatin and milk. Certain seaweeds also contain alpha-gal, along with most Vegan product alternatives. Alpha-gal is found worldwide among the inactive ingredients and materials of medications and healthcare products, and it is generally not required to be labelled.

      Based on the snarky tone, I have to assume you’re one of the vocal vegans that people hate because of the superiority complex that exudes from even simple comments like this. You should probably do a basic amount of research before commenting and proving you haven’t done any.

      • naught@sh.itjust.works
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        17 hours ago

        You read the parent comment as completely serious and used it to rail against an assumed or imagined vegan boogeyman. Sounds tongue in cheek to me. I’m still waiting to see this “obnoxious vegan” everyone’s talking about. I know they exist, but all I see are angry meat eaters complaining about them

        • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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          7 hours ago

          Go ahead and take a look at the vegan communities around the fediverse, don’t even need to go to the Reddit cesspool, they come along with everyone else… and let me know if they look like they’re not serious about that type of thing.

        • partofthevoice@lemmy.zip
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          16 hours ago

          Holy hell, another one? I just found one of these creatures yesterday. My comments still reek of the responses to them.

      • abbadon420@sh.itjust.works
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        19 hours ago

        That’s some pretty terrible assumption skills you got there, mate. I’ve seen stormtroopers with better precision than you.