Deer and Elk Hunters Beware of Chronic Wasting Disease
Chronic Wasting Disease is a member of group of transmittable brain diseases that affect elk and deer. What causes this horrible disease? Even scientists in the field really do not know fully. Some say it is a little protein called a prion which causes the brain to manufacture toxic chemicals horribly toxic to your brain. The brain becomes riddled with holes looking almost like a sponge. Hence Chronic Wasting Disease is referred to as being in the spongiform group of wasting diseases.
You may have heard of other similar brain diseases such as “”Scrapie”” which affects sheep. Scrapie disease has been around for a long time – 200 years at least. Next is “”Mad Cow Disease”” which kills domestic cattle and has been known to be transmittable to humans. Lastly is a disease, which is the model for “”Mad Cow Disease”” called “”Ceeutzfeldt-Jacob Disease””, referred to simply as “”CJD””. The point is the exercise is that CJD serves as the model; “”Mad Cow Disease”” has been known to be somehow transmittable to human beings after eating infected or tainted meat. So far it appears that the Chronic Wasting Disease found in America and Canada does not infect or transfer to people who have eaten this infected meat. It is true that any effects take up to decades to appear. Still Chronic Wasting Disease does not appear to be able to spread by eating infected meat – obtained by hunting big game in North America.
To give you an idea of the time frame scientists first discovered this Chronic Wasting Disease in a captive mule deer near Fort Collins in Colorado in 1977. Shortly thereafter it appeared in mule deer at a sister research station nearby. Whether it existed previously in captivity in the wild is not known and will probably never be known. In the area known as the heart of the disease problem – in certain areas of Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska- rates of infection are as high as 15 % of the mule deer population and 1 to 2 % of the sparse population of elk that reside there. That should give you some idea of the incidence and history of reports of Chronic Wasting Disease in big game animals.
CWD is definitely spreading. There are reports as far away geographically, across national borders, as to the north in Canada. However this seems to be the result of game farms, not the spread in wild animals.
In terms of reassurance to people who have eaten wild game, or plan to do so in the future no cases of Chronic Wasting Disease or even Mad Cow Disease have been produced or reported among people who have eaten deer meat or elk meats. People who did get Mad Cow Disease acquired it by eating infected beef from infected cattle. I seem that no people acquired this horrible disease by eating infected game products. In a similar vein sheep scrapie has been around a very long time and does not appear to produce any disease or diseases in human beings. People have been eating sheep and sheep products for eons and no case of human scrapie diseases have ever been reported.
Be reassured that this horrible disease is not transmittable through hunting and eating wild game.