Posted on 01/03/2003 8:30:54 PM PST by Black Powder
CHICAGO, Jan 3 (Reuters) - A fatal illness related to mad cow disease has been confirmed in three more Illinois deer, bringing the state's total number of cases to seven, state wildlife officials said on Friday.
The illness, chronic wasting disease (CWD), was discovered in Illinois in November. All seven of the state's cases have been identified in wild deer killed in counties bordering Wisconsin, where CWD has been found in at least 50 wild deer since last February.
"It appears that they're all in the same general area. That's probably where we thought we would find it, given that chronic wasting is in the wild deer herds in Wisconsin," Illinois Department of Natural Resources spokesman Tim Schweizer said.
Separately on Friday, Wisconsin agriculture officials said CWD was diagnosed in four more deer from a captive herd in Walworth County that was destroyed on Dec. 12 after a doe from the farm tested positive for the disease.
Like mad cow disease, CWD is a fatal illness caused by misshapen proteins called prions that attack the brain. Unlike mad cow, CWD has never been proven to cause illness in humans or cattle. However, the World Health Organization has warned against eating venison or any part of a deer or elk that appears sick.
First observed in North American deer in the 1960s, CWD had been confined to the Rocky Mountain and Great Plains regions until last year, when the first cases of the disease were confirmed in Wisconsin.
In addition to the Walworth County herd, CWD has also been found on a deer farm in Portage County, Wisconsin. That herd will likely be destroyed, Wisconsin Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Lisa Hull said.
Wisconsin launched a massive effort last year to combat CWD in the wild. The state aims to eliminate the wild deer population in a roughly 400-square-mile zone west of the capital city of Madison, in which all of the state's cases have been found.
The state is also testing tens of thousands of wild deer shot by hunters statewide this fall. As of Friday, Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources reported 50 positive cases of CWD from tests on 7,785 wild deer. The state is awaiting results on brain tissue from another 30,456 deer.
Following its initial CWD case, in a visibly sick deer shot by a landowner, Illinois has confirmed six cases from tests on more than 2,500 deer killed by hunters this fall. Results are pending on another 1,500, Schweizer said.
Wildlife officials in several other U.S. states have stepped up testing as well.
Other newspaper accounts of this story have said that this "elimination" would continue for 5 consecutive years. How do you eliminate the entire deer populaion over a 20 x 20 mile area — and make sure it stays that way for 5 years?
My question is, how the heck did the deer get it? We understand the etiology of the disease in cattle, but deer don't eat ground-up toxic deer, so...?
Hunting seasons and limits have traditionally been the management tool of choice when it comes to Deer herds.
If they open a season and leave it open the hunters will do the rest, though I am not sure how many would participate being that the venison would be wasted.
I know that here in Missouri the MDC has stepped up its CWD testing program for fear of it spreading here.
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