Mad cow-like disease spreads rapidly in wild deer
Copyright 2001, Environmental News Network
October 01, 2001
Wild deer as well as wild and captive elk in the western states have been plagued with an illness similar to mad cow disease called chronic wasting disease. Now the federal government is taking emergency steps to limit its spread.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has authorized an immediate transfer of $2.6 million to implement a chronic wasting disease (CWD) surveillance and indemnity program in the United States. This transfer of emergency funds will be used to reduce the spread of chronic wasting disease in captive elk herds.
Historically considered rare, chronic wasting disease is found in free-ranging deer and elk in a limited area of southeastern Wyoming, northeastern Colorado, and southwestern Nebraska.
In recent years, CWD has also been found in 14 captive elk herds in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. All positive herds are under state quarantines and some of them have been sent to slaughter.
The USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) says that of the 2,300 farmed elk herds in the United States, with a total of 110,000 animals, currently only four, with a total of 1,000 animals, are known to be CWD positive.
"We do not know the full extent of infection in farmed elk in the United States," agriculture officials say in the Federal Register Notice of the emergency declaration.
The USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will implement the chronic wasting disease program by purchasing positive and exposed elk from herds infected with chronic wasting disease. The infected animals will be slaughtered, and the owners will receive an indemnity, a payment, from the USDA.
Federal officials will also use the money to enhance surveillance and diagnostic testing for the disease, and increase training for producers and veterinarians.
There is currently no evidence that chronic wasting disease is linked to disease in humans, or in domestic animals other than deer and elk. CWD is part of a group of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (En-ce-fa-LA-pa-thees), known as TSEs, that includes scrapie and mad cow disease.
The Agriculture Department said these emergency funds are needed now because no funds have been available in the past for depopulation and payment of indemnity, so the only option for producers to gain some compensation for eliminating a CWD-positive herd is to slaughter the animals for human consumption.
"This option represents a very limited incentive for producers to participate in an eradication program. Also, it poses potential problems related to contamination of slaughter facilities and potential human exposure to preclinical infected animals that are not detectable with our current testing tools," ag officials said.
Aggressive action in controlling this disease now will decrease the chance of having to deal with a much larger, widespread, and costly problem later, such as the situation with mad cow disease in Europe.
The European Union is working to rebuild consumer confidence in Europe's beef after recent outbreaks of mad cow disease in France, Spain, and Germany. As demonstrated in Europe, once shaken, consumer confidence is very difficult to rebuild.
The human form of mad cow disease, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), has killed more than 80 people in the United Kingdom and two in Spain. There is no known cure for this deadly disease, or for any of the other diseases caused by TSE's that affect humans or animals.
There is currently no evidence that chronic wasting disease is linked to disease in humans, or in domestic animals other than deer and elk, the Agriculture Department says the "theoretical risk of such a link exists."