Risk of Chronic Wasting Disease from eating wild venison?

[Argent_Towers]

My friend has a plan this summer - he and I are going to try to find a farmer that will let us hunt deer on his land with “ag tags,” which he says means that we can hunt before the season starts. We would kill a few deer and then cut them up into venison, and store the meat for a long-term supply.

When I was younger, there were always hunters around who would give me venison, and I ate it without a thought - this was before I became the neurotic and paranoid person that I am today. I’ve heard about Chronic Wasting Disease many times and am under the impression that it’s basically the same as Mad Cow Disease, that it is fatal and incurable, and eats holes into your brain.

1. Is there a risk of this disease being transmitted to humans via the meat of wild deer?

2. Is there some way of observing the deer you are about to shoot to try to determine if it has CWD or not?

3. Can the deer be tested for CWD once it is dead, before you cut it up into meat? If so, how much does it cost to do this?

[Qadgop_the_Mercotan]

1. Risk is unknown. No known cases of deer CWD transmission to humans: Per the CDC:

Conversion of human prion protein by CWD-associated prions has been demonstrated in an in vitro cell-free experiment, but limited investigations have not identified strong evidence for CWD transmission to humans. More epidemiologic and laboratory studies are needed to monitor the possibility of such transmissions.

2. Probably not with great reliability, but: Chronic Wasting Disease Fact Sheet

Because the brain is the primary organ affected by the disease, infected animals begin to lose bodily functions and display abnormal behavior, such as staggering or standing with very poor posture. Animals may have an exaggerated wide posture, or may carry the head and ears lowered. Infected animals become very emaciated (thus “wasting” disease) and will appear in very poor body condition. Infected animals will also often stand near water and will consume large amounts of water. Drooling or excessive salivation may be apparent.

3. From the above cite:

If you wish to have your harvested animal tested, please DO NOT freeze the head. The brain sample must be taken soon after harvest. The entire head (it is acceptable to remove the antlers and the top of the skull) may be shipped chilled overnight in a water-tight container

[Harmonious_Discord]

Wisconsin DNR Guide to CWD in deer.

Wear rubber gloves when field dressing your deer.
·
Bone out the meat from your deer.
·
Minimize the handling of brain and spinal tissues.
·
Wash hands and instruments thoroughly after field dressing is completed.
·
Avoid consuming brain, spinal cord, eyes, spleen, tonsils and lymph nodes of harvested animals. (Normal field
dressing coupled with boning out of a carcass will essentially remove all of these parts.)
·
Request that your animal is processed individually, without meat from other animals being added to meat
from your animal.

[Argent_Towers]

I’m in Indiana - is this even a problem here? My friend who I am hunting with is from Wisconsin. He says that there, they have DNR stations where people go to bring the deer for testing. Don’t know if they have those over here.

[Harmonious_Discord]

@Argent Towers

I’m in Indiana - is this even a problem here? My friend who I am hunting with is from Wisconsin. He says that there, they have DNR stations where people go to bring the deer for testing. Don’t know if they have those over here.

You don’t get the results for individual deer. The testing is in areas around their CWD zones. They look for any positive results in the surrounding areas. They would then expend the eradication zones. Last year they finally admitted they couldn’t kill off all the deer in the eradication zones and their plan was a failure. To bad they had to bankrupt the DNR carrying out this program before they admitted this.

You’ll be fine sticking to the rules about what to eat and how to handle the meat. The disease has not been transfered to anything not in the deer family. States with CWD in the deer population do not have a higher rate of Creutzfeldt Jacob Disease than the rest of the world. With the information on the site I think you can see the CWD is not crossing over to humans, as it’s been around for years now.

[Little_Nemo]

My personal opinion is that it isn’t worth the risk. While there have been no known cases of any people catching CWD from eating venison, I don’t think anyone denies that prions can be transmitted by meat consumption. And my understanding is that diseases like CWD can theoretically develop years after the exposure. So I may be paranoid but I’m not sure that it isn’t possible that CWD may be transmittable to venison eaters and we just haven’t noticed yet.

My other understanding is that CWD is much more common in deer than MCD is in cattle. So the odds of any random deer having CWD is not worth gambling over.

As I said, this is just my personal opinion. But I’ve been turning down offers of venison for several years now.

[chorpler]

@Harmonious Discord

You’ll be fine sticking to the rules about what to eat and how to handle the meat. The disease has not been transfered to anything not in the deer family. States with CWD in the deer population do not have a higher rate of Creutzfeldt Jacob Disease than the rest of the world. With the information on the site I think you can see the CWD is not crossing over to humans, as it’s been around for years now.

Is there any possibility of an increase in CJD that has been misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s or some other disease?

[Argent_Towers]

I have ALWAYS suspected that to be the case. For all we know, the majority of “early-onset Alzheimer’s” could be Mad Cow.

Did we have nearly as high a rate of Alzheimer’s before the factory-farm system we have now where cows are fed parts of other cows?

[vetbridge]

Hunters I talk with are generally more concerned about Borreliosis (Lyme disease) that hunters have contracted after picking up ticks from their kill.

[Harmonious_Discord]

I really don’t care to address this farther as I don’t care if other people eat it or not. I gave the information I think removes reasonable doubt. You can swear off deer meat if you like. On the other hand Mad Cow Disease is known to affect people, and I hope you don’t eat beef if you won’t eat the deer.

[Fear_Itself]

@Argent Towers

For all we know, the majority of “early-onset Alzheimer’s” could be Mad Cow.

We, as in untrained message board readers? Certainly a medical examiner knows the difference during an autopsy on an Alzheimers victim. I don’t think they present the same at all post mortem. And, yes, I know not everybody gets an autopsy. But hundreds of Alhzeimer’s victims are autopsied each year, and unless you are suggesting a massive cover-up conspiracy by hundreds of ME’s, there is no way Mad Cow is being mistaken for Alzheimers:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/166096_rosehenry24.html

Still, only three cases of prion disease have surfaced among the hundreds of autopsies performed as part of a 20-year research study on Alzheimer’s at the UW, according to Gerard Schellenberg, a genetic researcher at the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System.