Raw lamb liver, my farmer says his lambs get parisites

Question
Hi:
I get my lamb livers from a farmer who organically raises lambs on grass (no grain), but one time he told me that if parisitic worms get to be a problem, he uses a chemical de-wormer, but it is months before slaughter, so he says that the chemicals are no longer in the meat at the time of slaughter.  He claims that since lambs eat grass very close to the ground that they are more suceptable than are cattle to getting parisitic worms, and so he does, from time to time, notice worm infections.  (I assume this means that if he doesn't notice the worms being a problem, he doesn't de-worm the animals.  I don't think that de-worming is required by law, here in Wisconsin.)  I asked him if he thought it would be okay to eat their livers raw, and he said he wouldn't do it simply because of the liver's function in the body of filtering out stuff.  He recomended that I eat them rare.  I am ignoring his suggestion, but I am wondering if you think it is okay for me to eat these lambs hearts and livers raw even though, for all I know, the animal may have been parasite infested at the time of slaughter.  As a side note, I am hoping to still be able to eat them because he gave me a couple big boxes of livers, hearts, and kidneys for free along with a lot of lamb suet!  But if the parasites are going to be an issue, well, I don't know.  That's why I'm asking you.  Any thoughts?  Thanks. --Bob

Answer
Look, I have searched endless posts from raw-animal-food-diet-related forums in the past and mentions of parasite-infestations are very, very rare, and most of those are dubious(ie no sign of parasites in stools, just Hulda-Clarke-like anti-parasite hysteria).The only genuine reports I've come across involve 1 or 2 people in tropical countries - in such cases, though, those rawists got only at most 2 weeks worth of mild discomfort and that's about it, before the parasites leave via the stools at the other end.(It should be noted that parasites are generally species-specific so don't generally thrive in species they're not adapted to).

Another point is that in western countries, deworming is such a routine, legally-expected practice that it's difficult to find evidence of parasite-infestations except in 3rd-world countries.
If you're truly terrified of parasites, incidentally, you would have to freeze the meats for 14 days in the freezer, before eating them, that's supposed to work, but it's totally unnecessary.Cooking rare wouldn't work against some parasites, you'd have to cook them well-done, which rather defeats the purpose of going rawpalaeo.

There are 2 possibilities, really, given the sheer lack of cases of parasitic infestation among rawists. Either, parasites are very, very rarely found in the food of raw-dieters, or rawists are infected with parasites but virtually never get any negative symptoms from them. The latter theory would be in line with the Hygiene Hypothesis and Aajonus' own ideas that parasites are mostly beneficial in Nature and only become a problem for people eating unhealthy cooked diets(ie it's not the so-called "pathogen" but the environment that is to blame).Certainly, many rawists, myself included, have eaten huge amounts of raw wild game meats and organs over the years, and not come down with any parasite-related symptoms whatsoever(myself included), and raw wild game is supposed, in theory, to be absolutely infested with parasites.

In short, don't worry about it. It's a non-issue.

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