ABSTRACT
a parasitic disease considered as a zoonosis, caused by the presence of intermediate larvae from Taenia saginata Goeze, 1782 (= Cysticercus bovis) and Taenia soliumLineu, 1758 (= Cysticercus cellulosae) on bovine, swine and human tissues. The World Health Organization has evaluated that around 50,000,000 people are carriers and 50,000 die, worldwide, every year. Human being has been the single definitive host of the adult phase for both T. saginata and T. solium, by the consumption of uncooked bovine and swine meat, water and contaminated food. Bovine and swine have been the intermediate hosts of these parasites, ingesting the eggs from infected human faeces contaminating pastures, vegetables, legumes and mainly fresh water. The occurrence of this disease has directly been related to the poor sanitary conditions and the low social-economic and cultural level of the human population. Under the point of view of Public Health the meat sanitary inspection service has been a fundamental condition for protecting people in regard to the teniasis-cysticercosis complex and our important monitoring source of the disease incidence on animals. The impact of cysticercosis occurrence has been linked to economic losses associated to food production, meaning losses of US$ 420,000,000 per year in South America (OPAS, 1994). In Brazil, despite the background of many states with high incidence of the disease, a detailed study of this zoonosis all over the country has not occurred until the present. In bovine cattle, cisticercosis has been the most diagnosed parasitic zoonosis in slaughter houses-cold stores and the main reason for meat condemnations and conditional carcass utilizations. The present study was aimed to determine the prevalence of cysticercosis in animal carcasses from slaughter houses under federal surveillance in Rio de Janeiro State, from 1999 to 2003.
KEY WORDS
Bovine cisticercosis; Rio de Janeiro; slaughter houses-cold stores