Personal Injury Law

French travelers once again contract trichinosis from eating bear in Canada; were they in a canoe?

By Dr. Doug Powell

Canada was settled by French and other European explorers by canoe – hence the Canadianism, as stated by Pierre Berton, a Canadian journalist and novelist,

"A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe without tipping it."

The National Post reports this morning that for the second time in four years, health authorities in France have identified an outbreak of the parasitical illness trichinosis from bear meat devoured by French travelers in northern Canada.

The grizzly that ended up as steaks, stew and even "grizzly-bear Bolognese" had been threatening an Inuit camp on the Nunavut shore when it was shot by rangers, with the carcass later divided up among locals and visitors.

In 2005, 19 French travelers got sick after eating black bear in Labrador, while two others caught trichinosis from a polar bear in Greenland a few years earlier.

A Paris-based expert who investigated the outbreaks attributes the spate of bear-meat illness among his compatriots to the French culinary penchant for trying unconventional meats, and either eating them raw or cooking them very little.

One of the French adventurers -- on a sailing trip across the Arctic -- ended up hospitalized for 11 days after digesting the tainted food in September, though she avoided the most serious heart and brain complications of the infection.

Dr. Jean Dupouy-Camet, head of a trichinosis-tracking program, said in an interview from Paris,

"It's quite fascinating to see that French people seem quite fond of bear meat. French people travelling abroad like to consume exotic meats ... [And] they are usually fond of raw meat: steak tartare."

But the latest episode was not confined to the French sailors. Members of another North-West Passage sailing expedition, headed by a Canadian, ate some of the same meat and two of them also became ill.

Other people have had witty things to say about Canada. British novelist Douglas Adams said each country was like a particular type of person, and "Canada is like an intelligent 35 year old woman." America, on the other hand, is a "belligerent adolescent boy" and Australia is "Jack Nicholson." I may prefer Australia. 

Full post as published by BarfBlog on December 14, 2009 (boomark / email).