The horrible disease called chronic wasting disease (CWD) is spreading among deer, moose, and elk throughout the US and Canada, and reindeer in Norway. This prion disease is similar to "mad cow disease" (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in cattle, scrapie in sheep and goats, or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. In CWD the brains become progressively like sponges - riddled with holes, along with deterioration in brain function, behavioral changes, and eventually death. Especially worrisome is that it is an infectious disease.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported in January 2019 that chronic wasting disease has been reported in deer, moose, and elk across 26 US states and 3 Canadian provinces - in both free ranging herds and also some captive herds (such as in ranches and game farms). The following excerpts are from the CDC site on Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD):
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a prion disease that affects deer, elk, reindeer, sika deer and moose. It has been found in some areas of North America, including Canada and the United States, Norway and South Korea. It may take over a year before an infected animal develops symptoms, which can include drastic weight loss (wasting), stumbling, listlessness and other neurologic symptoms. CWD can affect animals of all ages and some infected animals may die without ever developing the disease. CWD is fatal to animals and there are no treatments or vaccines.
To date, there have been no reported cases of CWD infection in people. However, animal studies suggest CWD poses a risk to some types of non-human primates, like monkeys, that eat meat from CWD-infected animals or come in contact with brain or body fluids from infected deer or elk. These studies raise concerns that there may also be a risk to people. Since 1997, the World Health Organization has recommended that it is important to keep the agents of all known prion diseases from entering the human food chain. ...continue reading "Can A Person Get Chronic Wasting Disease From Eating Infected Meat?"