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Topic: Colorado: Sick elk tests positive for chronic wasting disease
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Kindgo
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US: Tests for chronic wasting disease in animals touted
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Weekend News Today
Lead: Faith
Source: UPI
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Wed Sep 25,2002 -- 2 companies report they have developed tests for chronic wasting disease with quick turnaround times but a University of Minnesota expert doubts the accuracy of tests that examine the lymph nodes and blood of deer and elk. The new tests were unveiled this week in advance of the fall deer-hunting season and are aimed at hunters and sportsmen who want some reassurance the animals they kill are safe to eat. One of the tests is marketed by William "Butch" Johnson of Hayward, Wis., and the other will be sold by GeneThera of Wheat Ridge, Colo. The company said the test looks for genetic markers but it is unclear when the test will be available to the public. Neither test has received government approval.
Chronic wasting disease affects deer and elk and is similar to mad cow disease in cattle and scrapie in sheep. Although health investigators have determined that mad cow developed in cattle that ate infected tissue from other animals, it still is unclear how scrapie -- which has been known for centuries -- and chronic wasting disease are transmitted. All 3 diseases attack the central nervous system and produce holes in the brain. A human form of mad cow, known as Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, is thought to be a variant caused by eating infected beef. Chronic wasting disease turned up in wild deer near Madison, Wis., earlier this year and was confirmed recently at 2 game farms elsewhere in the state. State officials have noted a drop in the number of hunting licenses sought this year. Federal officials have decided to certify only state and federal laboratories to handle chronic wasting disease testing and the federal labs determine only geographic areas where animals are infected, not whether an individual hunter's deer is healthy.
At present there is no indication chronic wasting disease can be passed on to humans and it is unclear whether these new tests are accurate. "I would caution them (hunters) regarding this test because it's not an approved test," Bender said. "Right now, hunters should follow the guidelines: Do not shoot ill animals, do not consume brain, spleen or spinal cord, take precautions when handling carcass to prevent cross contamination, wear gloves." Chronic wasting disease was first diagnosed in Fort Collins, Colo., 35 years ago and ever since has been killing antlered fauna slowly across a portion of Colorado and Wyoming. Recently, the disease has appeared in Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota and southern Canada.
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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Kindgo
Advanced Member
Member # 2
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posted
Weekend News Today
Lead: Faith
Source: Denver Post
Wed Sep 25,2002 -- A sick elk euthanized by a game warden in NW Colorado has tested positive for chronic wasting disease - a discovery that threatens to upend assumptions about the spread of the fatal brain malady. It's the 1st time a wild elk has come down with the disease on the state's hunting-dependent Western Slope. And with thousands of hunter-killed deer and elk samples headed to the Colorado Division of Wildlife's lab this fall, biologists are steeling themselves for more bad news. "Based on the way that things are shaping up now, it's going to be a long winter," said Mike Miller, the division's veterinarian and a leading national CWD researcher. The adult elk was found about 30 miles north of a hunting ranch near Hamilton where 10 infected mule deer were killed last spring, but Miller said there's no way to know whether the case is part of the same outbreak, or the leading edge of a new one.
"One thing we've learned is that because of the disease's long incubation period, we're always going to be a step behind," he said. "Either it's been around a lot longer, it moves around in ways we're unaware of, or it's more of a spontaneous, natural phenomenon than we ever wanted to believe." Hunting guide Ty Stewart, who has stalked elk and deer in northern Routt County for most of his 34 years, thinks the disease arrived years ago. "Sometimes you see animals and you don't know what's wrong with them, but they have that skin-and-bones look," he said. "I think they'll probably find it everywhere there's a good population of deer or elk." The disease, which infects mule deer, white-tailed deer and elk, is believed to be caused by an abnormal form of a natural brain protein. Infected animals may show no symptoms during a 1 to 5 year incubation period, but eventually turn into slobbering, wobbling zombies as accumulations of the mutant protein eat spongy holes in their brains.
No human cases of CWD have ever been documented, but its close relationship to mad cow disease, which has killed 120 Europeans, has caused health officials to urge hunters not to eat potentially infected meat. Once thought to be confined to Colorado and Wyoming, CWD has erupted in captive elk and wild deer herds all across the continental midsection during the last 7 years. "I think we're just seeing the 1st chapters with this disease," said Bob Saile, a Denver-based editor for Field and Stream.
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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