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AUGUSTA, Maine -- The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the United States Department of Agriculture^s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, with the cooperation of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and the Maine Department of Agriculture are planning to test a sample of Maine deer for a condition called Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) during the November hunting season. In free-ranging animals, Chronic Wasting Disease has only been found so far in parts of Colorado and Wyoming.
In the United States, scientists from the CDC have conducted extensive interviews with family members of young adults who have been affected with Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease, looking for any common factor. Three of the affected young adults had consumed deer meat at some point during their lives. The reason for studying deer from western Maine is that a 28-year-old woman was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) in 1997. As a child in the early 1970^s, her mother believes her child had consumed venison from western Maine. She also consumed elk harvested in a western state when she was a young child.
"In Maine, we have been participating with a southeast wildlife disease group that has been surveying all 50 states for a number of years, and we have never seen any evidence of this disease in deer from Maine," said Gerry Lavigne, "We examine over 7,000 deer a year in the state, and our agency along with the University of Maine have been monitoring diseases in deer since the mid-1960^s, and we have never seen this disease here or anything like it."
Although there is no known relationship between Chronic Wasting Disease and any other illness of animals or people, USDA has cooperated with state animal health and wildlife officials to test deer in the areas from which these human patients obtained their venison. Such studies have been started in Utah and Oklahoma, and all deer and elk tested so far in those states have been negative.
At present, experts and public health officials have no evidence that Chronic Wasting Disease can be transmitted to humans, or to animals other than deer and elk.. Chronic Wasting Disease is a brain infection of mule deer, elk, white-tailed deer, and black-tailed deer. Affected animals become very thin, and show behavioral changes. Usually only adult animals become ill with Chronic Wasting Disease. Veterinarians have diagnosed CWD in farmed elk in three states.
In all, 4500 deer and elk outside the affected area in the western United States have been tested; all have been negative for Chronic Wasting Disease. Under the microscope, brains from Chronic Wasting Disease affected deer and elk appear similar to brains from cattle affected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), and brains of humans affected with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). Creutzfeld Jacob Disease affects about one person in a million each year. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, has never been found in the United States, although thousands of cattle have been tested.
Plans are to sample a maximum of 300 hunter-killed deer during the coming season. Samples will be gathered at meat cutters and deer sampled will be older than one and one half years of age. Testing of samples will be conducted at USDA^s National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa and results will not be available for at least six months. Based on experience in other states, it is considered highly unlikely that any evidence of Chronic Wasting Disease will be found in Maine.
For more information about the Maine Deer Chronic Wasting Disease Study, contact Mark Latti at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, telephone 207-287-6008. More detailed information from USDA about Chronic Wasting Disease, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, and other animal diseases is available on the internet at http://www.aphis.gov/oa/bse
Uploaded: 10/22/1999
Uploaded: 10/22/1999