Prion Disease in Deer is Worsening; Penned Hunting Operations are a Factor

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is the deer and elk version of Mad Cow disease. CWD is epidemic in Wisconsin. At least. Authorities say it's safe to eat meat from prion-infected deer, but that reassurance is best described as a blatant lie.

Prion Disease in Deer is Worsening; Penned Hunting Operations are a Factor
By Martha Rosenberg | May 7, 2014

It has been over ten years since Wisconsin endured a kind of deer holocaust. The terminal deer and elk disease, chronic wasting disease (CWD), descended upon its deer population with such vengeance officials declared “CWD eradication” zones in which fauns and does would be killed before bucks. Thousands of deer carcasses were stored in refrigerated trucks in La Crosse while their severed heads were tested for CWD. If the carcasses were disease-free they were safe to eat (any takers?); if not, they were too dangerous to even put in a landfill. Why? Because “prions” (which also cause mad cow disease, scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans) are not inactivated by cooking, heat, autoclaves, ammonia, bleach, hydrogen peroxide, alcohol, phenol, lye, formaldehyde, or radiation. They remain in the soil indefinitely.

....Department of Natural Resources (DNR) officials in Wisconsin and other states assured the public that deer meat was safe, even if it harbored CWD, as long as they avoided eating a deer’s brain, eyeballs, spinal cord, spleen and lymph nodes–the parts also implicated in mad cow disease. But scientific articles suggested most of the animal contained prions including its kidneys, pancreas, liver, muscle, blood, fat and saliva, antler velvet and birthing material.

Another reason to doubt DNR officials’ reassurances, calculated to keep their funding from hunting licenses flowing, is a 2002 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the CDC titled Fatal Degenerative Neurologic Illnesses in Men Who Participated in Wild Game Feasts —Wisconsin, 2002.

.....Recently a four-part expose in the Indiana Star explores how “the pursuit of deer bred for enormous antlers and shot in hunting pens” on trophy farms is spreading CWD at an alarming rate. Deer breeding and “trophy farms” are a $4 billion a year industry and hotbeds of CWD thanks to their concentration of animals, “communicability window” (from trophy stock trading and escaped animals) and its unknown feed sources.

Like mad cow disease, widely believed to stem from the cost-cutting practice of feeding cows to cows, chronic wasting disease may also have man-made origins. In the mid-1960s, the Department of Wildlife ran a series of nutritional studies on wild deer and elk at the Foothills Wildlife Research Facility in Fort Collins, Colorado and soon after the studies began, however, Foothills deer and elk began dying from a mysterious disease reports Brian McCombie. The CWD in the deer may have been caused by sheep held at the same facility which had scrapie, say researchers.

....Since 2002, Wisconsin’s CWD eradication efforts have failed abysmally. The penned herd of 76 deer at Stan Hall farm has gone from one animal with CWD to 60 in five years writes outdoor reporter Patrick Durkin and in some areas, half of all deer now have the disease.

This may be the death knell to meat eating by humans over the next few decades....imagine chickens and other species get cross pollinated with the disease.....

Loved the venison I ate growing up. Couldn't pull the trigger, due to religious beliefs, but quit eating it about 10 years ago when the prion disease was found. Good heads up.

a reply to: stirling

It's waayyy past that, my friend.

Prions Found in Plants

...My focus is on prions as part of our epigenetic "early rapid response" to environmental change - they clearly play a critical role in evolution and are shared not just by all our planet's organisms, but also are sequestered in non-living systems. My take is partly a Pollyanna "look on the bright side" perspective, but more importantly, is supported by the science.

Oh God, I am Sophi, just at a loss for words, we have tried to spread this information over the years but people will do what they have always done even if it means a horrible sentence in the future. People live more for today now than ever with everything being a syndrome of some kind or another. The more truth surfaces, comes out the more people chose to bury their heads from information over load.

a reply to: soficrow

As food seems to becoming more dangerous and more expensive to eat I find it odd that the government seems to be going out of it's way to come down on organic farmer of plants and animals but yet they support whole heartedly big money industries that rely on feeding animals garbage and pumping them full of anti biotics!

Let's not forget Monsanto and it's Frankenstein produce!

As I see it people are getting more and more deadly illnesses and yet Big Pharm is making a killing selling their miracle drugs that have a mile long list of side effects and yet most of the drugs that are "pushed" do nothing more than treat a symptom??

The scientific community needs to start following the money and do some studies that are not funded by big money if they ever expect me to take their studies seriously!

Something is very wrong with this picture and all I see are excuses and nothing at all being done to find out WHY these problems are getting worse......

a reply to: soficrow

Here in PA our native elk herd was hunted to extinction years ago.
They repopulated our area with some from out west.
In the early 70's some started dying from 'supposed' brain worm.
Then all of a sudden, we didn't hear of anymore problems.

Some deer were supposedly found
in the southern part of the state with possible CWD.
If ever SHTF, nothing wild will be safe to eat!
Maybe that's all part of the plan!

That & the ridiculous new hunting laws
that are decimating the deer herd.
We used to see herds of 20 or more deer in the fall
on every farm that had apple trees.
Now you are lucky if you see a couple a year!

In hunting season you were only allowed one deer.
Only allowed to hunt doe 1 or 2 days, buck for a week.
Now you are allowed a doe & a buck,
& doe season is the same as buck in some places.
Now they give out so many doe licenses,
that it's a wonder there are any deer left at all!
I heard someone say they got three deer last year!
Must be allowed 1 in archery or muzzleloader season too!

I saw something on TV about moose dying off in Minnesota.
Found some info:
www.nytimes.com...

24 of the 50 calves that they collared, died!
www.startribune.com...

50 newborn calves were collared.
Despite taking all the precautions they could think of,
one frustrating and unexpected result of the calf collaring is that 11 died.
Nine of them were abandoned by their mothers.
One died when a mother stepped on it during the attempt to collar it,
and one died for unknown reasons.

In addition to those 11 deaths,
four calves slipped their collars,
leaving a total of 34 for the researchers to follow.
By the end of the summer, 24 of them had died.
Four were eaten by bears and another 16 most likely were killed by wolves,
though researchers aren’t positive about four of those. One drowned,
two were abandoned by their mothers well after being collared and one died for unknown reasons.
If the 10 that are left survive the winter, their chances are good, DelGiudice said.

I don't call their chances good!
Those big collars on newborn calves???
They have to be loose enough so they don't strangle when they grow,
but tight enough so they don't get hung up on brush or anything.
Not to mention trying to run & stay balanced when you're a calf
wearing an awkward collar that makes you off balance & top heavy!

Don't they have a microchip or something they could use instead?
As usual, interference by humans has tragic results!
As far as CWD goes, do they even know as much as they think they do?
Who can believe anything they tell us anymore???
WOQ

a reply to: wasobservingquietly

As far as CWD goes, do they even know as much as they think they do?

As far as CWD and Mad Cow go, they don't tell us 1/100th of what they know.

I've been following prion and prion disease research for over a decade. The news is not good. The healthiest perspective is to accept that prions are an important part of our evolutionary process. 'Cuz no way can we escape them or get rid of them.

a reply to: seeker1963

Let's not forget Monsanto and it's Frankenstein produce!

Let's not. Genetic tinkering can have unpredictable epigenetic effects. Life always finds its own way.