Mystery in Minnesota..

11 slaughterhouse employees in St. Paul have become sick, developing numbness, tingling, and / or other neurological symptoms..

All the workers shared one common bond: The practice of working at the "head table"... the table in which pigs heads were cut off and compressed air forced the brains out.

Health officials say that the employees may have inhaled the brain particles causing their own neurological problems.

Quality Pork, the AP tells us, has not stopped using the compressed air method for release of the pig brains. Some workers, at least one there as long as 15 years, told the AP that they were told there is a possibility they can never work again.

The AP reports that Quality Pork has 1300 employees, and it's unclear how many worked at the head table.

The AP describes the process in graphic detail:
"In a rapid-fire process that is noisy, smelly and bloody, severed pigs' heads are cut up at the head table at a rate of more than 1,100 an hour. Workers slice off the cheek and snout meat, then insert a nozzle in the head and blast air inside until the light pink mush that is the brain tissue squirts out from the base of the skull.."

And finally, one last frightening sentence from the AP report: "Quality Pork has not said what it does with the pork brains."

Mind over matter.. mind over matter.. Mind in the matter?

Labels: Breaking news, Offbeat, Random rakings