PEAX Equipment

CWD

nanuq

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I have been following the CWD issue closely over the past few years. What are your thoughts on this?

Is it possible this is a natural occurring disorder (such as cancer)? is it ALWAYS fatal? do you think we are finding it because we are looking for it? Is WI overreacting?

Many people think game farms are to blame for the "spread" of this disease yet two incidents may disprove this
(1) Recently, a Mule Deer on the White Sands Missile range tested positive. There are no game farms in this area.

(2) CWD has been found in the wild Whitetail herd yet no domestic deer/elk have tested positive

What are your thoughts????????
 
I've also been following it. For a while, it was very unpopular to talk about it -- it was an easy way to get labeled as an anti-hunter. I'm sorry to say that has changed: the news is all over.

First: Transmission of vCJD from BSE infected beef is quite low; spontaneous CJD incidence is also quite low among humans, but enough that we should expect a few hunters/yr to get it spontaneously. Without the kind of meat recycling that was done with Beef in England, or mink farms in the US, the rate of transmission had been low in those populations. I don't know how contageous scrappie is in sheep. But I am SHOCKED at the rate the CWD spreads in cervids. Its simply amazing. How in the world do we have any deer at all? Why hasn't this emerged earlier in the history of deer populations?

The saddest thing is that this is an anti-hunter's dream: as has been pointed out before by some PETA leaders: they are not primarily interested in the welfare of animals, but rather in how humans treat animals. If they all died by some natural contageon, they would be far more comfortable than they are with human game management which includes hunting.

But it isn't true that no transmission had been noted among elk in game farms. My understanding is that it showed up among elk and mule deer in a Colorado research station, which was where CWD was first clinically described as a pathology.

Dan

<FONT COLOR="#800080" SIZE="1">[ 06-22-2002 16:36: Message edited by: DanP ]</font>
 
Dan;
Thanks for your input.

I didn't mean to say no CWD has been found in Domestic herds only that no DOMESTIC animals in WI had tested positive. You are correct that CWD was first identified in a Research herd in CO.

Numerous animals (both Domestic & Wild) have been destroyed in the name of controlling CWD. It appears that that the "infectious" rate is about 1% in elk & 5% in Mule deer. These are rough numbers not scientific statistics. It will be interesting to see if these rates hold true in WI.
 
What I find surprising is that the transmission rate in humans is thousands of times less than in deer -- and we have to EAT our own dead to transmit Kuru (CJD). vCJD (mad cow) STILL only shows infection rates around 1/100,000. How in the world do we see deer getting infection rates around 5%? or even 1%?

Dan
 
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