October 20, 2022

It wasn't until 2019 that we had a customer ask about allergy cards for red meat.  In all of our years of providing food allergy cards to travelers we had never had a customer mention this food allergy.  Just when you think you've heard it all - all languages, all destinations, all foods - along comes a new one:  the official name is Galactose-alpha or Alpha Gal, for short.  We had no idea what it was so as usual - we searched wikipedia.   Long story short, it's a food allergy/reaction to eating meat (from mammals) and the initial cause of the condition is from a tick bite.  So a specific kind of tick bites you, you suddenly develop a food allergy to meat and meat byproducts and when you eat some, the hives and/or anaphylactic reaction is delayed by several hours.   What an unusual combination of events, food and timing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-gal_allergy

http://alpha-gal.org/

 

Tags: Allergies · Food Allergies · Medical Conditions