Please note: question about animal butchery, please don’t read if you find unpleasant

[Hoodoo]

Hmmm, methinks there's some "interesting" info here.

Well, firstly, tapeworms don't produce spores (perhaps you meant cyst?) and the blood has nothing to do with tapeworms unless you ingest the fertilized egg, in which case you will become an intermediate host and a larvae will hatch, bore into your intestine, jump into the bloodstream and be delivered to your muscles where it will burrow in and form a cyst. This usually comes from drinking tainted water or chewing on grass contaminated with feces. So, don't eat the grass. But you won't get the cyst from eating tapeworm cysts. Tapeworms hang out in the gut--small intestine.

Nor will bleeding do anything to keep you from getting trichinosis which can be a very serious disease depending on the dose. This is a nematode infection and you get it from eating uncooked pork. This time eating the cysts are bad news. I would check with your government and see what the incidence of infection is before I start eating rare pork. In North America people still can get if from eating uncooked pork but also from eating uncooked bear meat and this is well documented among Indians in Canada who eat a lot of bear meat.

 

[logstacker]

Not that I am contributing to this thread, I am reading it with interest. But, according to my butcher at Tesco’s, that advice about over cooking pork is out of date and now it is safe enough to eat rare!

I can’t imagine Tesco’s would risk the kind of law suite that would follow if this was incorrect, however he could have been some rouge butcher terrorist!

My butcher at TESCO!!!!!As a 25 year time served butcher let me tell you that the majority of "butchers" there are folks dressed in straw hats and stripey aprons.No skill,just corporate quotes.They don`t pay enough to attract skill.My boss pays 10 pounds an hour to get skilled guys,and still struggles.
Pork MUST be cooked properly.FULL STOP.I have customer who contracted an eye parasite from undercooked pork.She is now 50% sighted.

Sorry to sound off,but many folk think cos it`s Tesco it must be right.You wanna try their "fishmongers "too.They`re crap as well.
We had a guy come to us for a job from Morrisons.He was in his 50`s,and was a butchery manager.I was about 30 and just stood in on the interview.My boss asked me if I had any questions.We had just had a delivery of pigs,and they were there ,on the hook.I offered him a knife and asked him to break one down.He declined.He had only ever "seen one done".
`Nuff said!

 

[logstacker]

Also listen to spacemonkey.He`s right.

 

[Spacemonkey]

Blimey, I don't hear that often!!

 

[Buckshot]

 

[Butternut]

Thanks everyone so far for a great thread. The books and TV do certainly gloss over the blobby bits! As a semi-armchair BCer I was ashamed when I found an injured pheasant in the garden and didn't know how to get it on the table for dinner!
Regarding rotten delicacies, I ate some of that raw shark they burry in shingle/sand for a year or two in Iceland. Imagine an intense fishy amonia blast through your sinuses! Sort of revolting and fantastic at the same time

 

[lardbloke]

When I left school at 15, I was put on a YTS course with the local COOP as a butcher. Luckily for me this was a course so I had to attend the local college at night to pass the old Institute of meat certificate (which I did with flying colours). It was belief that all butchers should have this peice of paper and you should ask to see if your butcher has passed the relevant courses (if not, why not). The course was about a very small porttion of the Environmental health officers course, which the clever people could have gone onto to do (no one does). Luckily I left a after finishing my YTS to join the RAF and onto better things.
As for the eating of pork raw, well I remember a few of the butchers in the various stores swore that you could eat pork raw (sausages) but I think this was from the old days when they were more organic, but would not reccomend it by a long stretch.
I still can rememer how to cut all the joints of every beast or foul via memory and would suggest people visiting a local slaughter house to over come their meat fears.

 

[BlueTrain]

When I was still living in West Virginia, I once witnessed a bull killed for slaughter with a shotgun to the forehead. I'm not sure that was common but it worked.

Concerning vegetarians, I am certain many are put off by the thought of the killing and butchering, yet I am also certain that most of them would be slight repulsed by everything that goes into getting those vegetables on the table as well.

All that dirt, you know.

 

[bushwacker bob]

The reason your butcher said that rare pork is now safe is because the ministry of agriculture(MAFF,DEFRA or this years name) believe that the pork tapeworm has been eliminated from the British farmed pig stock.
They cant vouch for imported pork tho'

 

[Scally]

a little tip on skinning not seen it on here yet if its been posted already sorry but here goes
if you are skining and doing the full job straight away and you dont need the skin
the easist way i have found bearing in mind i was a game keeper for many years is to place the first cut down the spine thus pressing onto a ahrd surface and no chance of cutting the organs then pealing the skin of as normal from the back to the front, 1 less messy 2 less smell 3 easy to pull on ie. no loose bits of skin to fight with . once skin then extremities removed then to gut which is cleaner has the skin isnt flopping inside the cavity. i hope this isnt old ground?.