Not sure if this is appropriate categorized, but looking for some help in determining whether my meat might have been responsible for some sick folks.
Family gathering over two days, and on Day 1 two adult members of my wife's family are complaining of stomach problems and are making trips to the bathroom. Everyone else is happy.
Day 2, I smoke a standing rib roast that is served at about 4 pm. I think I follow safe food handling rules, but the roast does rest for a long time. Everyone eats some except the two family members who were feeling sick the day before and one who is a vegetarian.
By 8 pm that night, as people are leaving to head home, I crawl into bed with a horrible case of the runs and a general feverish feeling. I start throwing up and can't really move for the next 24-36 hours and have zero strength. I later find out that two of my BIL's (traveling home separately) each have to stop on their way home from our house to get out of the car to throw up - one doesn't even make it out of my neighborhood before being sick in my neighbor's front yard. Later that night, my wife and a couple others get similar symptoms.
Ultimately 4 people don't get sick on the night of Day 2 or the next day: the two people who had already been sick on Day 1, the vegetarian who didn't eat any of the rib roast and my MIL, who ate a normal slice of the roast.
Although I've never been to medical school, I imagine this fact pattern as an essay question on a medical school exam - there are some facts that seem to say it was the meat and others that seem to say it was something else that was already going around in the family.
Whaddya all think?
