New info on Chronic Wasting Disease
- Thread starter Old Rooster
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People with agendas have certainly grabbed hold of it, but CWD is real, is increasing in prevalence, and has begun to substantially reduce deer populations in areas that have been infected for a long time.
The European beef industry said mad cow couldn't infect a human for years. Then it did. CWD is not a way that I want to die. I get my deer tested and wait for results before I eat them. I've only been charged once, even in areas that say they charge. No testing is perfect, but I've only hunted in fairly low prevalence areas. If the prevalence is 5%, and the test is 99%, if I get a negative result, there's only a .05% chance the animal actual had CWD.
One thought that keeps me getting mine tested even when it's a little inconvenient is that with mad cow, most people would not consume all the meat from a single cow. Their family might consume 250lbs of beef over a year, but that beef most likely came from many many cows. If they lived in Europe when mad cow was raging, they probably had a few meals off of infected cattle. How many pounds? I don't know, but probably not 250lbs. On the other hand, if I shoot an infected elk, my family would eat the entire 250lbs of infected meat. I'll keep getting mine tested. It's less hassle than any of the part of the hunt, and even when I had to pay, it was cheaper than any other part of the hunt.
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Stevenstl86
Well-Known Member
If it was a real harm to humans I don't think all the butcher shops would be allowed to process cattle and deer with the same equipment.
I process my own meat. The question is how accurate are the monitory testing results?
I process my own meat. The question is how accurate are the monitory testing results?
I had an uncle they loved squirrel brains and scrambled eggs. I would not touch it. It smelled bad to my ten year old nose. I'm A eggs over easy guy from that point. Never know what's in those scrambled eggs.I just saw that a few hours ago…..getting a bit scary! It's pretty much everywhere in Wyoming……and in several different species of game!
Though as previously mentioned, we bone out all of our meat…..and don't eat the brain!
I understand that it causes seizures and twitches……now I have an excuse for misses!memtb
Cwd is not new it has been here since the beginning of time. They are only finding it because they are testing for it. Cwd has never made a decline in any populations. You will have to look a long time to even find deer that have died from cwd. Even finding proof that deer die from cwd is near impossible they have died with it not from it.
Ckleeves
Well-Known Member
Where I live it's not hard to find a deer that died from CWD. We can take a 30 minute walk In some of the real hotspots and I bet I can find one. I don't get the CWD deniers, it's very real. Transmission to humans is an entirely different matter but to say that CWD isn't affecting and killing deer is laughable.
xsn10s
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I can agree with this. Transmission is an entirely different matter. However when you get two people contracting a rare disease that interact together eating the same food I take notice.
It is amazing that out of a population of 350,000,000 people 2 guys tipped out of the canoe and the daily mail covers the story on cause of death, it's Bad Venison!! Driving thru Nebraska and there's a steer standing on a manure pack 3 foot thick that ain't seen a blade of grass in last couple months, that beef is good to go.
CWD specifically absolutely is "new". It is almost certainly the result of scrapie crossing from sheep to mule deer in a poorly handled animal pen where scrapie had been studied extensively.
Prion diseases in general have been here since essentially from the beginning. They sporadically appear in roughly 1/1,000,000 individuals in mammals know to have them, and I believe they are assumed to exist in just about all mammals. Generally they are not transmissible from animal to animal except through rather unusual circumstances such as, blood transfusions, contaminated medical instruments, and cannibalism. Scrapie and CWD are the only two I'm aware of that can be transmitted via casual contact. In those research pens they could take a new stainless steel rubbing post, put it in a pen with infected sheep, then clean it and leave it in the sun for an extended period, move it to a pen with healthy sheep, and all the healthy sheep would come down with scrapie. That transmissibility is what has caused some deer populations to have over 20% prevalence rates instead of the 1/100,000,000 that other species exhibit. Deer probably had a prion disease with a 1/100,000,000 prevalence since deer came into being.
CWD itself is new. It popped up in the 1960's IIRC. Its prevalence has been increasing slowly, but as an exponential rate. It has probably only been the last 10-20 years that really substantial numbers of people have been eating infected deer. I'm gonna get my deer and elk tested before I feed them to my family.
I wavered on where to apply in UT for general deer this year, but went ahead and applied for a unit with a very high prevalence rate. I'll definitely have it tested. I may have it tested twice. But I'm still going hunting, and as long as it's negative, I'm still gonna eat it.
Ya it's real. But so is brain worm EHD and many other viruses and diseases that critters die from. I can guarantee way more deer die from EHD than have ever died from CWD. Most deer die from EHD and deer can die with CWD(not always from). What has been done to curve that? Are you finding all these dead deer on winter ranges
. The reason CWD is being found more lately is it is being tested for exponentially more than previous years.
Buckskinner
Well-Known Member
Interesting. Wonder how many people who get their deer tested for CWD take their animals to a meat processor? That is one reason I do not think it's transmissible to humans. If it were those meat plants would be a distribution center for the prion to the entire population who would buy meat products from there or get their animals processed there. In hot spot areas such as around Madison, Wisconsin where it is a hotbed of CWD since 2002 there certainly would be a connection by now and evidence of an increase of CJD in the human population surrounding the area. Combine that with no increase anywhere is pretty good evidence to me that it's a species selective disease.
Saying this, it's starting to creep east towards where I hunt and there have been a couple positives within a few miles of me. I am going to start getting our deer tested, transmissible or not, I'm not interested in eating sick animals.
I do have my wonderings about how accurate the testing is, it is run by the government after all and I'm guessing not the tightest lab protocols...
Saying this, it's starting to creep east towards where I hunt and there have been a couple positives within a few miles of me. I am going to start getting our deer tested, transmissible or not, I'm not interested in eating sick animals.
I do have my wonderings about how accurate the testing is, it is run by the government after all and I'm guessing not the tightest lab protocols...
I agree. CJD is somewhere around a 1/100,000,000 disease. Two hunting buddies popping up with it unusual. The odds are 1/1,000,000,000,000,000. That's a number I don't know how to say. It's the one after one in a trillion.
There are likely about 360 people in the USA with CJD. It should at least make you think when two of them are hunting buddies.
I process my own.
All prion diseases are more difficult to transmit to a different species than the one they originated in. It's a statistics game. If one in a zillion zillion CWD prions will end up infecting a human then it comes down to how many people are eating how many pounds of infected deer, and how were those deer processed(splitting the spine with a saw will result in far more prions being consumed that processing the animal with only a knife and eating only the meat). Millions of infected cattle were eaten in Europe before a few hundred people died horrible deaths.
On a side note, the monkey studies suggest an estimated human incubation period of about 12 years. Twelve years ago the prevalence was much lower than it is today. It may be a long time before we find any more hunters dying of CJD even if it is slightly transmissible to humans.
