No beef, dairy, or pork: How a tick bite is wreaking havoc on local lives

TABERNACLE — Vegan blueberry ice cream is calling to Samuel Moore from his freezer, deep in the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

Food has become an enemy for the seventh-generation cranberry and blueberry farmer, though, the grocery store a gauntlet. He rarely dines out and tries to avoid dinner invitations. He knows the vegan ice cream should be safe, but he’s been burned before.

“With everything I’ve been through, I’m just hesitant to take a chance,” Moore, 49, said recently on his farm. “It’s been a nightmare.”

Moore has alpha-gal syndrome, which is caused by a tick bite and can result in a severe allergic reaction to red meat, pork, or dairy. Some sufferers will only react to beef, or just the pork. Moore has all three, breaking into hives and suffering severe cramps if he ingests even minute traces of any of them.

Moore doesn’t recall a specific tick bite but remembers when he first learned he had alpha-gal. It was a Fourth of July, a few years ago, and he had a few all-beef hot dogs after a day in the blueberry fields.

“I woke up and I was covered head-to-toe in hives,” he said.

A subsequent blood test revealed the syndrome. In the years that followed, Moore’s gone into shock after reactions and had to be rushed to the hospital a handful of times. He stashes epinephrine injection pens all over his farm, in every vehicle, even his small airplane.

“Right now, medically, this is the worst thing I’ve ever dealt with,” he said. “Until you get it, you have no idea. It’s forever changed my life, and it doesn’t just affect you, it affects your entire family.”

There’s no cure or treatment for alpha-gal aside from avoiding the foods. Moore said that’s not so simple. He’s had reactions to certain beers, even an Impossible Burger he suspects shared a grill with a beef burger.

“Red meat and pork, you know, that’s pretty easy,” he said. “It’s the dairy, things like whey that will get you. It’s in so much more than you know.”

In July, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said approximately 450,000 Americans may be living with the syndrome and cases have skyrocketed in recent years. A tiny, spotted tick — the lone star tick — is to blame. While lone star ticks are native to the eastern United States, a Rutgers study found they’d been mostly limited to southern states because of deforestation in early America. Forest regrowth and climate change have helped the ticks reclaim their territory and expand. Another research project looked at whether the modern suppression of wildfires actually enhanced tick habitats in the eastern United States and whether more prescribed burning could help keep numbers low.

Lone star ticks have been found in Pennsylvania since 2011, including in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Philadelphia Counties. A 2008 Rutgers study found them in every South Jersey county.

On the ground, other self-professed “Pineys” said the woods and underbrush have been inundated with ticks in recent years.

“I spent my whole life in the woods, hunting. Every spring, we’d go hunting for orchids, too. And all my life, until recently, I only saw one kind of tick, even when you got a deer, it was just one kind of tick. It wasn’t a lone star,” said Albertus “Chippy” Pepper, a cranberry farmer in Chatsworth. “Now there’s all different ticks, at least five kinds, out there and we don’t get ice in the winters to kill them off. If you don’t see we’ve had real climate change here, you’re crazy.”

Pepper, 78, said he used to drink a gallon of milk a day and had a special love for moose tracks ice cream. He had allergic reactions long before he was diagnosed with alpha-gal six months ago.

“I eat chicken, chicken, chicken, and more chicken,” he said.

Chicken is a staple for Moore, too, along with turkey. He doesn’t like fish but said he’s going to make an attempt at flounder.

“Being a Piney, I wasn’t too big on seafood,” he said.

Prevention is the best way to combat tick bites — anyone heading into forests and fields, even trails, should consider wearing long sleeves and pants. Moore, who lives off a dirt road named after his family, sprays whatever clothes he’ll wear in the fields and woods with powerful repellents. He also duct tapes his pant legs into his socks and tries to keep the grass and brush low around his cranberry bogs.

“Honestly, I try to stay indoors at this point,” said Penny Moore, Sam’s wife.

Alpha-gal, in most cases, is a lifelong condition, but for some patients, the allergies go away after a few years. Moore’s got his fingers crossed but he knows the ticks are out there and knows plenty of people who have alpha-gal.

“They say the hourglass starts the moment you get bit,” he said. “But if you get bit again, the whole process starts over, the whole nightmare starts over.”