Meat from deer contaminated with chronic wasting disease may be more dangerous than originally thought, according to ongoing research conducted by Stefanie Czub, of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and the University of Calgary.
The study was discussed during the 2017 North American Deer Summit earlier this month in Austin, Texas — a conference featuring some of the top researchers in the industry. During the project, which began in 2009, 18 macaques moneys were exposed to CWD in a variety of ways: by injecting into the brain, through contact with skin, oral administration and intravenously.
So far, results are available from five animals, according to a release from the CFIA. At this point, two animals that were exposed to CWD by direct introduction into the brain, one that was administered infected brain material orally and two that were fed infected meat all have become infected with CWD.
“The ‘supposed’ resistance of macaques was about the only prop remaining in the complacency wall (macaques’ genetics are closer to ours than squirrel monkeys, which also can contract CWD), but this is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Darrel Rowledge, director of the Alliance for Public Wildlife, in an interview with Josh Honeycutt of Realtree’s Brow Tines and Backstrap blog. Rowledge was one of those who presented on CWD at the Deer Summit in Texas. “The implications to markets are enormous, and governments here may have finally begun to take notice.”
CWD is a sister disease to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE — the infamous “mad cow disease” that killed 229 people in the United Kingdom — and is an incurable, always fatal degeneration of the brain, according to an analysis published by the Alliance for Public Wildlife. It was first documented in captive mule deer in the late 1960s.
Estimates show 7,000 to 15,000 CWD-infected animals are being consumed by humans every year, according to the analysis, and these sort of prior diseases are known for jumping between species barriers.
“Results of CWD laboratory challenges of non-human primates…
