BY: TJ MOREY
Many of us love to devour the charred flesh of animal carcasses, so much so that the animal kingdom presumably hates our existence by now. While feasting on our four-legged and feathered comrades is considered to be a normalcy, there are quite a few people in the world—375 million actually—who are against the killing of fellow living creatures. And they’re not the only species taking a strong moral stance—one mighty little bloodsucker goes by the name of “Lone Star Tick” and is hell bent on turning the world into vegetarians.
The Lone Star Tick is usually found habituating on the white-tail deer, and has been spreading amongst the southeast United States, including Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. When bitten, a victim inadvertently becomes allergic to red meat. The tick carries a particular sugar, “alpha-gal”, which is commonly found in red meat and a few dairy products. The human stomach is used to digesting this sugar, but the tick introduces it into the bloodstream, where the body’s immune system considers it to be a threat and creates antibodies to fight against it. This results in the human body recognizing every form of ingested “alpha-gal” as a threat, including red meat, and undergoing an allergic reaction on ingestion.
The reactions to eating meats like beef, pork, lamb, and venison are severe and occur after a span of six to eight hours—unlike normal allergic reactions, most of which happen immediately—making it all the more difficult to understand its origins. The allergy can cause hives, breathing problems, rashes, lowering of the blood pressure and even anaphylactic shock in the form of diarrhoea, vomiting, and the like.
The allergy has repercussions wider than just not being able to eat red meat. Various pill casings are made of gelatine, which is derived from cows and pigs and hence cannot be consumed. Certain dairy products may cause a reaction, and vegetables cooked in beef fat can be problematic as well. In its most severe cases, even the smoke from a grill can trigger the allergy.
Although the initial reports of the allergy broke out in the southeast region of the United States, it seems to gradually be moving north, as the white-tailed deer travel to other parts of the country. As of August 2014, at least 1,500 people in the United States have been afflicted with an alpha-gal allergy because of the tick.
The Lone Star Tick is basically a vegetarian vampire, spreading terror and disorder to meat-lovers everywhere.
Sources: vanderbilt.edu, edgecastcdn.net
