Would you eat a CWD-positive animal?

[WIbiggame]

Six-year follow-up of a point-source exposure to CWD contaminated venison in an Upstate New York community: risk behaviours and health outcomes 2005-2011 - PubMed

To this day, this incident remains the only known large-scale point-source exposure to a CWD infected deer. Prion diseases can incubate for multiple decades before the manifestation of clinical symptoms; thus, continued surveillance of this exposed study population represents a unique...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

This is the only study I could find about following known human consumption. No updates so I am assuming no news is good news.

 

[jakenbake]

NIH study shows chronic wasting disease unlikely to move from animals to people

Study of cerebral organoids reinforces evidence for substantial species barrier

www.nih.gov

That NIH release is some of the best news I've seen about CWD in a long time. As much of a fuss gets raised about every fake news story regarding "zombie deer", I'm disappointed this didn't get more coverage when it came out more than six months ago.

As to the discussion, to this date my wife and I have decided to get our deer tested if hunting within a known CWD area, with the assumption that we will be dumping the meat if CWD positive. Unfortunately in my state we don't have a state run lab the does the testing so if I ask our DNR to test, it'll be a 2-month wait on results. Because of this, I've shifted most of my hunting outside of the known CWD zones. I still hunt in some of my favorite old places because they make me happy, but I don't do it with the frequency or intensity that I used to. I also haven't killed a deer in any of those places since they got designated as CWD zones so the whole thing is somewhat academic to this point. If that NIH study can be further verified though... it might make a difference in that calculation.

 

[seeth07]

I don’t know the highest state prevalence. Some areas are quite high. My guess is that the state with the most CWD positives in a year is still at a fairly low percent of the state’s entire harvest. You do seem to be assuming that it’s a very high percentage. Do you have that percentage? I may be wrong.

Also, it seems like if a deer with CWD dies if something else, it was done a favor, so I’m not sure I buy the argument that eating meet from a sick animal is necessary to avoid the sin of killing deer just for fun.

It's extremely high in a lot of areas in WI.

Look around on this map here:

CWD prevalence in Wisconsin | | Wisconsin DNR

dnr.wisconsin.gov

Here is one example of an area. About half at one point were positive. Close to 300 positive tests per year for one part of a county that makes up about 1/4 of the total county. 1000 plus per year for that one county.



Some quick very rough math.

1000 cwd positive deer. 2000 total tested at 50% prevalence. That county has an annual harvest close to 4000. So half get tested. Even if we assume that all 1000 positive results go to the trash (they don't - my family and everyone I know pretty much eats them still) that leaves 2000 untested deer still to be consumed and at the prevalence rate of 50% that is 1000 yucky, nasty cwd disease ridden deer going into to people's tummies and they are all about to die. Every year. One county.

 

[seeth07]

20 years ago when cwd really hit WI, it was a totally different attitude here. People didn't want to eat deer then, it was scary and a bad thing.

We are all just so over it here and the way it was handled. No one here cares anymore and we have all mostly moved on and back to the way we treated and hunted deer pre cwd

 

[Lyfter1013]

They can’t test positive if you don’t get them tested

I say the same thing about chlamydia

 

[Lyfter1013]

So to these points…no. @Irrelevant is absolutely correct- it is statistically impossible to “prove” a negative. That’s why results are not reported as “negative”. They are reported as “not detected”. This all goes way back to the basic statistics we learned in school. There is always some non-zero probability that the animal is positive, but not far enough along in the disease progression to have detectable levels of prions. Then there is an additional non-zero probability that the subsample of the lymph node that got tested didn’t contain prions that were actually there. The test itself is not 100%- there is some non-zero chance that the test fails to detect prions even if they are present in the sample. So all of these little non-zero probabilities add up.

We all make decisions every day about things to include or exclude from our modern diet. We monitor our health, talk to our doctor, monitor intake of certain things or eliminate them entirely, based on our own health, our own value judgements and our own risk assessments. I have tossed deer that had septic pneumonia, even though the chance of me actually getting sick isn’t super high, I could have cooked the shit out of the meat and inactivated any organisms in there, and I could probably have been treated if I did happen to get sick. And many people here have done the same. Oddly enough, very few people question that decision. Yet talk about a 100% fatal disease shrouded in uncertainty and let the judgements roll in. Weird.

History has shown us again and again that eating diseased animals is generally not a good idea, thus I choose not to eat anything that I know is diseased. That’s my comfort level. If your decision-making paradigm leads you elsewhere, I kinda feel like its none of my business.

How can you tell a deer has septic pneumonia?

 

[Nick87]

20 years ago when cwd really hit WI, it was a totally different attitude here. People didn't want to eat deer then, it was scary and a bad thing.

We are all just so over it here and the way it was handled. No one here cares anymore and we have all mostly moved on and back to the way we treated and hunted deer pre cwd

Pretty much the concensus here as well and the way it's still being handled.

 

[Hunting Wife]

How can you tell a deer has septic pneumonia?

Short answer- work for a wildlife vet and send him a necropsy report on it. That was his tentative diagnosis based on my notes and photos.

Lungs and pericardium adhered to each other, to the ribs, to the diaphragm in one giant pus-filled fibrous adhesion filling the thoracic cavity, ~10% normal lung tissue remaining, and angry red lymph nodes throughout the whole animal. Looked totally normal on the outside, not so much on the inside.

 

[Lyfter1013]

Short answer- work for a wildlife vet and send him a necropsy report on it. That was his tentative diagnosis based on my notes and photos.

Lungs and pericardium adhered to each other, to the ribs, to the diaphragm in one giant pus-filled fibrous adhesion filling the thoracic cavity, ~10% normal lung tissue remaining, and angry red lymph nodes throughout the whole animal. Looked totally normal on the outside, not so much on the inside.

Thanks for the explanation sounds like a pretty nasty situation. Makes me think would you have noticed if you had not gutted the deer? Say if you were pulling the quarters off like the gutless method?

Any chance you could post the pics?

 

[Hunting Wife]

Thanks for the explanation sounds like a pretty nasty situation. Makes me think would you have noticed if you had not gutted the deer? Say if you were pulling the quarters off like the gutless method?

Any chance you could post the pics?

Probably would not have noticed, other than weird looking lymph nodes when we butchered. Biggest downside to gutless method, and I will still sometimes take a quick peak inside once we’re done, just to see.

I had wanted to save the cape, and he was in a field so we were just going to gut him quick then take him on the game cart and cape him at home out of the weather. But I couldn’t figure out why nothing felt right up in the chest and I couldn’t pull anything out. Shined the light up in there to figure out why I was struggling so much and….gross.

This was 15+ years ago now though. I’d gladly share the pics if I still had them.

 

[Lyfter1013]

Probably would not have noticed, other than weird looking lymph nodes when we butchered. Biggest downside to gutless method, and I will still sometimes take a quick peak inside once we’re done, just to see.

I had wanted to save the cape, and he was in a field so we were just going to gut him quick then take him on the game cart and cape him at home out of the weather. But I couldn’t figure out why nothing felt right up in the chest and I couldn’t pull anything out. Shined the light up in there to figure out why I was struggling so much and….gross.

This was 15+ years ago now though. I’d gladly share the pics if I still had them.

That’s something I’ve never considered with the gutless method is not being able to see if there was something wrong on the inside of the deer. Im
Sure the number of deer with something wrong that you’d see is so low most would never come across one but still an interesting thought.

 

[Nick87]

Guess the family and I will live to see Christmas.

 

[ImBillT]

Nope.

CWD primarily spreads through prolonged/repeated exposure to prions via shared feeding areas, mineral licks, and social contact. Casual brief contact is much less likely to transmit the disease. The highest risk comes from areas where deer congregate repeatedly.

Are you admitting that it happens?

Scrapie free sheep have contracted scrapie after a stainless steel rubbing post that was used by a scrapie positive sheep was well cleaned and placed in the pen with the scrapie free sheep.

A quick Google search shows multiple sources saying CWD can be transmitted via nose to nose contact. You included “social contact” with the stipulation of prolong and repeated, so I guess it depends on your definition of “casual contact”. Even so, CWD appears to be much more easily transmitted than BSE.

 

[ImBillT]

It's extremely high in a lot of areas in WI.

Look around on this map here:

CWD prevalence in Wisconsin | | Wisconsin DNR

dnr.wisconsin.gov

Here is one example of an area. About half at one point were positive. Close to 300 positive tests per year for one part of a county that makes up about 1/4 of the total county. 1000 plus per year for that one county.

View attachment 351257

Some quick very rough math.

1000 cwd positive deer. 2000 total tested at 50% prevalence. That county has an annual harvest close to 4000. So half get tested. Even if we assume that all 1000 positive results go to the trash (they don't - my family and everyone I know pretty much eats them still) that leaves 2000 untested deer still to be consumed and at the prevalence rate of 50% that is 1000 yucky, nasty cwd disease ridden deer going into to people's tummies and they are all about to die. Every year. One county.

So that’s a lot of deer, but the post you quoted was in reference to a post mentioning an entire state, not a 1/4 of a county hot spot. I’m well aware that there are some hotspots with very high prevalence rates. I’m just not sure that any entire states have extremely high statewide prevalence. Also, that post was regarding the apparent “waste” of so much game meat as if it was unethical, and just killing deer for fun. I don’t see it as unethical to kill a deer and then decide not to eat it when I find out that it’s sick. I spared the deer a CWD death, and lost my tag(in most states) even though I wanted to kill a healthy deer and eat it. It’s not killing just for fun, and nothing unethical occurred.

In terms of how many people are eating CWD positive deer I would say two things. First, with an estimated incubation period of 12+ years in humans that begs the question, how many CWD positive deer were eaten 12+ years ago? According to your chart that number is far lower than today. Second, I would say that it’s very low risk. Millions of people ate BSE positive cattle and were seemingly fine. They probably didn’t eat 30-250lbs off a single sick animal like we would with a deer or elk. How that relates to transmission risk, I don’t know.

This thread was supposed to be would you or wouldn’t you, and that’s where I really planned to leave my answer until I saw so many things being posted that were just not correct. Eat it if you want. I take plenty of risks that are more likely to bite me, but they also have bigger payoffs. I don’t see a payoff to eating a CWD positive animal in a country where I won’t miss a meal whether I eat that deer or not, and can afford to eat almost any normal American food for each one of those meals without being stressed financially, and I’m not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. It’s almost like saying “if you pull this lever, there’s only a 1/10,000,000 chance that it will kill you, but you don’t have to pull the lever, and you don’t benefit from pulling it”, and yet some people are acting like people who don’t want to eat a CWD positive animal are making some sort of terrible decision. I just don’t see the upside to eating it. I might view it differently if I lived where half the deer were testing positive and my freezer was empty and I only killed one buck a year and the last three year’s bucks were all positive as well. I don’t know.

 

[seeth07]

I might view it differently if I lived where half the deer were testing positive and my freezer was empty and I only killed one buck a year and the last three year’s bucks were all positive as well. I don’t know.

This is a good thought. In southwest to central WI, this is what we are dealing with. This year, one deer was shot on my property and the guy decided to get it tested and it was positive. Last year no testing but year before it was 2/3 (again testing done by friends I allowed to hunt here and the one we shot was not tested and is the one of those three not proven positive). All three positive in that time were still consumed because it's almost a given that when you shoot an adult deer here, it's likely to have cwd.

Fun fact, the deer this year is getting aged and my guess is she was 10 plus years old due to having no teeth left. Yet she was positive with no ill signs. Seems like just because cwd is in your area doesn't mean that deer can't still live to be old.

 

[Nick87]

This is a good thought. In southwest to central WI, this is what we are dealing with. This year, one deer was shot on my property and the guy decided to get it tested and it was positive. Last year no testing but year before it was 2/3 (again testing done by friends I allowed to hunt here and the one we shot was not tested and is the one of those three not proven positive). All three positive in that time were still consumed because it's almost a given that when you shoot an adult deer here, it's likely to have cwd.

Fun fact, the deer this year is getting aged and my guess is she was 10 plus years old due to having no teeth left. Yet she was positive with no ill signs. Seems like just because cwd is in your area doesn't mean that deer can't still live to be old.

Curious, do they make you guys mark where the deer was harvested upon testing?

 

[seeth07]

Curious, do they make you guys mark where the deer was harvested upon testing?

just county harvested, not like exact gps coordinates or anything. I however haven't tested one in probably 8 years or so so maybe its slightly different

 

[Nick87]

just county harvested, not like exact gps coordinates or anything. I however haven't tested one in probably 8 years or so so maybe its slightly different

We have to show what section it cane from. That way they know where to set up bait and shoot. A lot of people just lie about the location. It's a mess.

 

[ImBillT]

Fun fact, the deer this year is getting aged and my guess is she was 10 plus years old due to having no teeth left. Yet she was positive with no ill signs. Seems like just because cwd is in your area doesn't mean that deer can't still live to be old.

My understanding is that age class and population aren’t really impacted until prevalence is quite high. That makes sense. If only 1-5% have it, well they’re most likely to be older deer because they’ve had more opportunity to be exposed to the rare-ish disease, and then if it takes 16+ months to show symptoms, well there you go. It takes high prevalence to reduce age class and population. Unfortunately I’m unaware of any locations that have had steady or decreasing prevalence over a span of decades. It seems like a slow, but ever increasing prevalence that will only get worse. Which really sucks. Perhaps in the end it won’t turn out that way.

 

[kodiakisland]

We can have our deer tested. I don't. If it appears healthy right up to the point it dies, I eat it.
Just not something I worry about.

Shot a really nice looking buck a few years ago that gave no outward appearance of anything wrong. Cut into him and there was buckets of pus from the shoulder to the ham. I didn't eat him.
If the deer acts healthy and everything looks good butchering it, I'm not worried about it.