New CSIRO data confirms the Maleny–Kenilworth–Blackall Range hinterland is Queensland’s leading area of high burden for mammalian meat allergy, a delayed, potentially life-threatening food allergy triggered solely by tick bites. A teenager has already died. Here is what every Range resident needs to know.
When a healthy sixteen-year-old from the NSW Central Coast sat down to eat beef sausages on a camping trip in 2021, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Jeremy Webb had no known food allergies and no reason to be alarmed. Within hours, he was dead.
In February 2026, NSW Deputy State Coroner Dr Carmel Forbes confirmed what Australian allergists had long feared: Jeremy’s death was Australia’s first confirmed fatality from mammalian meat allergy (MMA), also known as alpha-gal syndrome. His is one of only a handful of confirmed MMA deaths recorded anywhere in the world. He was killed not by the food on his plate, but by a tick bite, or, more precisely, by many tick bites accumulated over years of outdoor life.
For families across the Blackall Range, from Maleny and Kenilworth to Mapleton, Montville, Flaxton, and the communities down the hill toward Nambour, Jeremy Webb’s story is not a distant cautionary tale. According to new research from CSIRO, our hinterland communities sit at the centre of Queensland’s highest burden area for tick-related mammalian meat allergy.
“Tick-related anaphylaxis is now more common in emergency departments than severe reactions to bees or wasps in tick-endemic areas.” Australian Senate Inquiry into Tick-borne Diseases, 2025
What the CSIRO research found
Dr Alexander Gofton, Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO Health and Biosecurity, has spent the better part of a decade tracking mammalian meat allergy across Australia. His team’s most recent work drew on anonymised testing data from the four largest commercial pathology networks in eastern Australia, covering every MMA test performed nationally over eleven years, from 2014 to the end of 2024.
Nationally, roughly 300 people per year were being diagnosed with MMA in the early years of testing. From 2020 onwards, that figure began rising sharply, with a 22 per cent annual increase recorded through to the end of 2024. Dr Gofton is careful about attributing all of that rise to genuine disease incidence, he notes that increased public awareness has also driven more people to seek testing. “The increase in testing could account for somewhere between 40 and 80 per cent of that rise,” he says. “But there is a substantial proportion, perhaps 20 to 60 per cent, that we cannot attribute to testing alone. That may well represent genuinely more people being bitten by ticks and developing MMA.”
Geographically, the story is equally pointed: despite the paralysis tick ranging all along the eastern seaboard, cases cluster tightly in a small number of places.
“Within all cases in Queensland, we saw a quarter come from the Maleny–Kenilworth–Beerwah area alone.” Dr Alexander Gofton, CSIRO Health and Biosecurity
To put that in a national context: just nine regions around Australia account for half of all cases nationwide. The Maleny–Kenilworth–Blackall Range hinterland is one of those nine. Others include the Gold Coast hinterland, the Lismore–Byron area, and the Pittwater–Warringah region of northern Sydney, the latter alone accounting for around ten per cent of cases nationally.
These are not random concentrations. They reflect areas where two conditions coincide: ideal habitat for Ixodes holocyclus (the Australian paralysis tick), and a peri-urban population living on larger blocks, gardening, walking, and generally spending time in vegetated land. The Blackall Range exemplifies both conditions to a degree that is, according to the data, unmatched anywhere else in Queensland.
What is mammalian meat allergy?
Alpha-gal syndrome is caused by a molecule called galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose, alpha-gal, a sugar found in the flesh and products of most mammals. Humans and other primates do not produce alpha-gal naturally, which means our immune systems are capable of treating it as a foreign invader.
The trigger for that sensitisation is always a tick bite. When a paralysis tick feeds on a person, it injects alpha-gal into the bloodstream along with a cocktail of other compounds in its saliva, anticoagulants, antihistamines, and other substances designed to suppress the body’s awareness of the bite so the tick can feed undisturbed. In some people, the immune struggle that results from this intrusion flips a switch. The body changes the type of immune response it mounts, producing IgE antibodies, the same class of antibodies responsible for classic allergic reactions.
“We don’t know why that happens in some people and not others,” Dr Gofton says. “But once those IgE antibodies are present, eating red meat, certain dairy products, gelatin, or even some medications containing mammalian-derived ingredients can trigger a reaction.”
Crucially, that reaction is delayed, typically three to six hours after eating. This is what sets MMA apart from almost every other food allergy and what led to years of widespread misdiagnosis. A person who eats a lamb roast at seven in the evening and wakes at two in the morning covered in hives, struggling to breathe, or in anaphylactic collapse may have no idea their meal is involved, let alone a tick bite that occurred weeks or months earlier.
Foods most commonly involved include beef, lamb, pork, venison, and rabbit. Dairy and gelatin can also cause reactions in some people. Poultry and fish do not contain alpha-gal and are generally safe.
| Could it be MMA? Consider seeing your GP if you have a history of tick bites AND experience any of the following 3–6 hours after eating red meat: |
| Hives, itching, or swelling – particularly if it wakes you during the night |
| Nausea, vomiting, or abdominal cramps with no other obvious cause |
| Breathing difficulty, wheezing, or chest tightness |
| Unexplained collapse or loss of consciousness, particularly during sleep |
| Note: the tick bite that caused sensitisation may have occurred months or years earlier – you do not need to recall a recent bite to ask your GP about alpha-gal testing |
Who is most at risk?
The demographic picture of MMA in Australia has some surprising features. Unlike most food allergies, which typically manifest in childhood, MMA is predominantly an adult-onset condition. CSIRO data shows it is most common in people aged 45 to 75, a profile that fits many residents of the Blackall Range.
Women account for 60 per cent of all diagnosed cases, a striking skew. Dr Gofton offers two possible explanations. One relates to where tick exposure tends to happen in Australia: more in residential settings, gardens and acreages, than on bushwalking trails, which may skew exposure patterns in more peri-urban areas such as the outer suburbs of Sydney or Brisbane. On the Blackall Range, acreage living means both men and women are routinely out on the tractor, clearing paddocks, and working through the scrub, so that particular dynamic may look quite different locally. The more likely explanation for any local gender gap, Dr Gofton suggests, is healthcare-seeking behaviour. “We know men access diagnostic services less frequently, especially for milder symptoms. There could be a large number of men simply suffering with a tummy ache after a steak rather than seeing their doctor.” A telling detail from the data supports this: among the men who did present for testing, the positive rate was significantly higher than among women, suggesting many more go undiagnosed.
Professor Sheryl van Nunen, the Sydney allergist who first described the link between tick bites and red-meat allergy, has noted that sensitisation to alpha-gal can occur in approximately 50 per cent of individuals after just two tick bites. For anyone living on acreage or spending regular time in the garden or bush on the Range, multiple tick bites over a lifetime are not unusual, they are virtually inevitable.
Maleny through the eyes of the vet
If you want to understand the tick burden in the Maleny area, you could do worse than ask the people who treat affected animals. Dr Lauren McGrath BVSc (Hons) practises veterinary medicine at Maleny Vet Services, and their practices caseload offers a window onto the scale of tick activity in this community.
“Ticks are present year-round in the Maleny region – there is no defined ‘tick season’.” Dr Lauren McGrath, Maleny Vet Services
Many pet owners, and many people, assume ticks are a spring-and-summer concern and ease off vigilance in cooler months. Maleny Vet Services caseload says otherwise: they treat tick paralysis cases every month of the year, with a seasonal surge from August to November. During peak periods the practice handles around ten animals per week, with more than 50 requiring hospitalisation across a season. The patients extend well beyond dogs and cats, “We have treated geese, alpacas, goats, and calves,” Dr McGrath notes.
The introduction of isoxazoline-class preventatives, products such as Simparica, NexGard, and Revolution Plus, produced a meaningful reduction in paralysis cases in dogs and cats, a development Dr McGrath welcomes. “These medications are very effective and reliable at killing ticks and preventing tick paralysis when given correctly,” she says. The challenge is consistency. The most common mistakes she sees among pet owners include assuming ticks are only active in certain seasons, believing indoor pets are safe (ticks can be carried inside on clothing or shoes), and simply falling behind on treatment schedules. “Life gets busy,” she says. “Setting a reminder on your phone or marking it on your calendar can help ensure your pet stays protected.”
Maleny Vet Services has also become an informal frontline for MMA awareness. Over the years, several clients have mentioned developing mammalian meat allergy, typically raised in the course of a conversation about ticks and their pets. “Many people joke that they wish there was a tick preventative for humans that worked as well as Simparica does for their dog,” Dr McGrath says.
The Matt Jacobs warning, and what nearly went wrong
Jeremy Webb’s death is not the only recent case to spotlight the danger. In 2026, the story of Matt Jacobs, a Queensland man who suffered multiple near-fatal anaphylactic episodes before his MMA was finally diagnosed, drew national attention, illustrating a pattern allergy specialists say is distressingly common: tick-bite history, unexplained collapses after meals, repeated emergency visits, and years of missed diagnosis. Maria Said, health manager at Allergy and Anaphylaxis Australia, was direct: “Jeremy’s death and the death of others from food allergies is almost always preventable,” she said, calling for immediate improvements in awareness and diagnosis pathways. The NSW Coroner’s findings agree, and make plain that a single GP asking the right question could have saved Jeremy Webb’s life.
The wider health picture
MMA has gone largely undiagnosed for so long for reasons that are, in retrospect, understandable. The delayed reaction pattern is genuinely unusual, almost every other food allergy acts within minutes. The condition was only formally described in Australia in the 2009. And GP education on tick-borne illness has historically been limited.
The Australian Senate’s 2025 inquiry into tick-borne diseases found that tick-related anaphylaxis has become more common in emergency-department presentations than severe reactions to bees or wasps in many tick-endemic areas. Approximately 60 per cent of Australians live in regions where tick exposure is prevalent. The inquiry recommended improvements in GP education, clearer referral pathways, and better integration of tick-bite history into emergency-department intake processes.
There is also an emerging and sobering line of research linking alpha-gal IgE antibodies to cardiovascular disease. Research from the University of Sydney found that among patients who had suffered heart attacks, those with more severe cardiac events and those under 65 were around 12 times more likely to carry elevated alpha-gal antibodies than healthy controls. This association, still in early stages of investigation, raises the possibility that tick-induced sensitisation may carry long-term consequences beyond food allergy. It is a finding that has warranted significant further research.
Dr Gofton’s team is currently working with the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood to screen blood donors from high-burden regions, including the Sunshine Coast hinterland, to estimate how many people may carry these antibodies silently, sensitised but not yet clinically symptomatic. That number, once known, may substantially change the picture of this condition’s true prevalence.
Protecting yourself and your family
There is currently no treatment that reverses alpha-gal sensitisation. For those already affected, management means strict avoidance of trigger foods and, critically, all further tick bites, because additional bites can worsen sensitisation. The good news from the CSIRO data is that, for people who avoid reexposure, antibody levels do predictably decline over time, allowing for gradual reintroduction of meat foods under GP guidance.
Preventing tick bites therefore serves a dual purpose: it protects against the full range of tick-associated hazards familiar to Range residents, paralysis toxin, Queensland tick typhus, and other rickettsial illnesses, and it may prevent MMA from developing in the first place.
| Tick prevention on the Blackall Range |
| Wear long-sleeved shirts, long trousers tucked into socks, and enclosed shoes in the bush, garden, or long grass |
| Apply DEET or picaridin-based repellent to exposed skin; consider permethrin-treated clothing for frequent outdoor activity |
| Mow lawns regularly and clear leaf litter to reduce tick habitat near the home |
| Conduct a full-body tick check after any time outdoors — check the scalp, behind the ears, neck, armpits, groin, and behind the knees |
| Shower within two hours of coming inside; tumble-dry clothes on high heat for 10–20 minutes |
| If a tick is found embedded, do not squeeze or crush it — use fine-tipped tweezers or seek medical advice; do not use methylated spirits, freezing sprays, or other home remedies |
| Keep pets on a vet-recommended paralysis-tick preventative year-round and conduct daily checks during spring |
Diagnosis, once MMA is suspected, is straightforward: a blood test measuring IgE antibodies specific to alpha-gal can confirm sensitisation. Anyone in the Blackall Range who experiences the warning signs described above, particularly following a history of tick bites, should probably ask their GP specifically for alpha-gal testing.
A community that needs to know
What is new, and what the research now demands, is awareness of the risk to people, and specifically of the insidious, delayed nature of mammalian meat allergy. MMA awareness is already filtering into this community, but largely through informal conversation at the vet rather than formal health pathways. That gap is what the national conversation now needs to close.
Dr Gofton is clear-eyed about the long-term picture. “My opinion is that this is not going to go anywhere,” he says. “It will remain a persistent public health issue in Queensland. The real key is increasing public awareness so people can recognise the symptoms themselves, and increasing clinical awareness so GPs are more skilled to recognise it.”
Jeremy Webb did not know he had mammalian meat allergy. His doctors did not know to look for it. The hope expressed by his family, his allergists, and the coroner who examined his death is that his case will ensure others do not share his fate. On the Blackall Range, where the data now shows this condition is more prevalent than anywhere else in Queensland, that hope starts with knowing what to watch for.
Further information
TIARA (Tick-Induced Allergy Research and Awareness)
Allergy and Anaphylaxis Australia
ASCIA: Mammalian Meat Allergy patient information
CSIRO: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
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