Kelly Wadding, Quality Pork Processors president and CEO, speaks to reporters Monday after the Minnesota Department of Health announced it would be investigating a cluster of illnesses in QPP workers.

State health officials are investigating a mysterious illness that has affected 11 Quality Pork Processors employees over the last year, but say there is no risk to the general public or the food supply.

Speaking in Austin Monday, state epidemiologist Dr. Ruth Lynfield said they don’t know yet what sparked an inflammatory immune system response that sent two of the 11 employees to the hospital. Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, or CIDP, normally affects fewer than two in 100,000 people, but 11 of the 80 to 100 employees who work in one specific part of the QPP plant have showing symptoms since December 2006. “The 11 workers do not appear to have any commonalities outside of work. They are different ages, different genders, different ethnic groups,” Lynfield said. “The illness appears to be an immune response, an inflammatory response to some kind of trigger. That’s what we know at the moment. It is possible that it is an infectious trigger. It is possible that it is some other kind of trigger. We are also evaluating for potential environmental chemical exposures as well.”

The state health and agriculture departments say there is no danger to consumers of meat that comes out of the QPP plant, and the general public is not at risk of developing this type of illness.

“Every indication is that anyone else in the plant outside of this location is not affected, so for that reason it’s very much felt that the common denominator is something that’s going on in this particular room or in this area where this process is in fact occurring,” Gene Hugoson, the state commissioner of agriculture, said.

The workers work in a part of the plant where the heads of hogs are processed, according to QPP president and CEO Kelly Wadding. Between 80 and 100 of the company’s 1,300 employees work on that process over two shifts. The affected employees worked on both shifts.

On Monday, QPP gave employees in that part of the plant more precautionary gear, including face shields and protective sleeves in addition to the gloves they already wear. The company also suspended an operation that involves using an air compressor to remove tissue from the hog heads and began offering those workers showers and towels after their shifts.

“We have no idea of the cause but we do want to take every precautionary step that the department of health recommends and that we see could possibly contribute to this,” Wadding said.

According to state Commissioner of Health Dr. Sanne Magnan, occupational health staff from QPP and Austin Medical Center alerted the department of health after noticing a pattern of illnesses in the employees. The workers described symptoms such as tingling, numbness, a feeling of heaviness in the lower limbs and extreme fatigue and weakness. The employees are in varying stages of recovery, but none are still hospitalized. In all, two employees required hospitalization, several went on disability pay, and some still say they have some residual weakness. According to the department of health, there have been no fatalities among workers as a result of CIDP.

Ten of the cases appeared between December and July. According to health officials, they were set to release findings of the investigation into those cases in mid-December, but were derailed when an 11th case was hospitalized in November.

According to Lynfield, the cause of CIDP is often never identified, though it can be related in some cases to pre-existing conditions such as diabetes or lymphoma. None of the employees had any of these pre-existing conditions.

“Often times the specific trigger is not identified in incident cases. Sometimes a particular infection might have been associated, might have preceded the development of this inflammatory response,” Lynfield said. “There are five workers who have symptoms consistent with (CIDP). There are others that we are still getting the rest of the evaluation on.”

Health officials say they are also looking into similar processes in other swine production facilities to see if any of their employees have been affected, and working with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.