A teenager who died after eating beef sausages while camping has been confirmed as the first person in Australia, and the second worldwide, to die of a rare tick-induced meat allergy.
Jeremy Webb, 16, from the NSW Central Coast, collapsed after consuming the sausages at MacMasters Beach in June 2022, and later died in hospital, with his death attributed to asthma at the time.
But NSW Deputy State Coroner Carmel Forbes has now ruled that the asthma attack was triggered by an anaphylactic reaction to mammalian meat, after he was posthumously diagnosed with alpha-gal syndrome – a potentially fatal allergy to red meats such as beef, pork and lamb named after a sugar molecule.
The allergy can also be triggered by gelatine and animal fats, and reactions can be delayed by two to 10 hours, making it harder to identify that other food allergies.
Jeremy’s mother Myfanwy Webb said he had been repeatedly bitten by ticks while camping as a two-year-old, and a coronial inquest heard Jeremy had experienced symptoms from age 10, and also had a history of asthma.
Clinical immunologist and allergist Dr Sheryl van Nunen, who diagnosed Jeremy with the mammalian meat allergy and was the first doctor to discover the connection between the reaction and tick bites, told the inquest it could be developed from as few as two tick bites.
According to the CSIRO, reported cases have been climbing by 40% a year since 2020, and in the tick-prone area of Pittwater on Sydney’s Northern Beaches cases are as high as 744 per 100,000 people. Southeast Queensland, northern NSW and the NSW South Coast also have large clusters of cases
The first death from the allergy occurred in New Jersey in 2024, when a previously healthy pilot died hours after eating a hamburger, and 14 other deaths have been linked to medicines containing the sugar molecule alpha-gal.
Ms Webb said outside court on Thursday she was thankful for the inquest for providing answers, and hoped her son’s legacy would live on by raising awareness, ABC News reported.
“During his life, Jeremy made a positive impact on the lives of his friends, family and also strangers,” Ms Webb said.
“Jeremy continues to make a positive impact [by] saving lives into the future. He made a difference when he was alive and now he’s still continuing to make a difference when he’s passed, which is really incredible.”
Alpha-gal syndrome has previously been the subject of false claims that it was connected to a project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation involving biotechnology firm Oxitec and genetically modified ticks.
But Oxitec, which last year was also part of a now-paused CSIRO project to introduce genetically modified mosquitos into Australia, told AP in 2023 its GM cattle ticks did not bite humans and therefore could not be linked to alpha-gal syndrome.
The claims were also fuelled by a series of talks at science forums given by prominent Taiwanese bioethicist S Matthew Liao, who in 2016 said climate change could be tackled via human engineering, and used the example of tick-borne allergies that could be used to make people intolerant to meat.
During the same talk the New York University professor said genetically engineering the average human to be 15cm shorter could reduce environmental footprint by 25%.
Header image: Left, right, Jeremy Webb (supplied).
The post Aussie teen dies from rare tick-induced meat allergy after eating sausages first appeared on The Noticer.
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