Tag: chronic wasting disease

Case Shows How Easy CWD Could Spread

CWD could spread easier than you think 

Criminal charges recently filed against a father and son who ran a Kent County deer farm provide a shocking look at just how easy chronic wasting disease (CWD) might have spread to Michigan’s wild deer herd. Michigan Department of Natural Resources agents say a day after CWD was confirmed in a deer from their herd, the pair crept onto their quarantined farm at midnight, tranquilized a deer and loaded it into a trailer. DNR agents watching the property say they saw it all. When stopped on a road, the two told DNR officers they planned to release the deer into the wild. They didn’t have proper paperwork for the deer, and wanted to get rid of it. However, tests later showed the deer free of CWD.

The DNR recently said that it may have found the source of the always-fatal disease that’s similar to mad cow disease. The taxidermy shop next to the Kent County deer farm had accepted two deer from customers who illegally brought them from CWD zones in South Dakota and Wyoming. Continue reading Case Shows How Easy CWD Could Spread

CWD Found in Colorado Elk, Meat Recalled

Elk meat recalled in Colorado because of CWD 

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) has been present in the wild for decades in northeastern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming. CWD can effect white-tailed deer, mule deer, and elk. Since that time, CWD has spread through some of the state’s elk ranches in 2001 after an operation with some infected animals shipped elk around the state. Since there is no vaccine for cervids, thousands of captive elk were slaughtered in Colorado to prevent spread of the disease.

Consumers are being warned not to eat some retail elk meat sold at a recent farmers’ market in Longmont, Colorado. State and Boulder County health officers issued a recall Wednesday for elk meat sold on December 13 at a farmers’ market at the Boulder County Fairgrounds. The meat comes from an elk found to have chronic wasting disease from a ranch in northern Colorado. Though the disease is thought to be harmless to humans, health officials still warn against eating meat from infected animals. Continue reading CWD Found in Colorado Elk, Meat Recalled