CWD and eating venison

[EastMT]

If I remember right it’s like 14,000 deg to destroy the prions or some ungodly high temp. The other problem is it has been shown to transmit to game by adhering to plants and in turn being consumed.

I agree with you taking all the steps recommended and avoiding contact with all CNS material is the best we can do without quitting hunting, and I’ll keep hunting if I have to leave the heads in the field and only do the gutless method, hopefully it doesn’t get that bad. I do know that feeders and large congregations of game will only increase the transmission of this disease.

Did sick workers inhale pig brain fragments? | The Star

Here is a crazy article about sickness from blowing hog brains out with compressed air, I think precautions should be taken when doing a euro mount, water or air blasting has the ability to make small particles airborn, inhale or ingest them on accident.



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[LostArra]

I think precautions should be taken when doing a euro mount, water or air blasting has the ability to make small particles airborn, inhale or ingest them on accident.



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So far no protests or walkouts by the dermestid beetle union.

 

[EastMT]

So far no protests or walkouts by the dermestid beetle union.

Hahaha, keep them in the dark.


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[LostArra]

Wyoming strongly encourages hunters in our part of the state to get their animals tested, however I know several folks who work at the testing lab that do not. We do not harvest sick animals and CWD is not an end of the world concern for us. We've been living with it since it was recognized. No human problems at all and a cattle study in high fenced pens at the G&F research facility showed no transmission to cattle over many years.
The testing here is not inconvenient, district office, state lab , research facility at Sybille, and game check stations all take samples. You can take the lymph nodes out yourself and drop them off at the lab. Seems to me the NR are about the only folks worrying about this around here.
The testing we had done this year due to a study in the area had our results back in less than 2 days, 4 mature bucks taken from property that borders the research facility tested negative. No need to panic if you hunt deer or elk around SE Wyoming.

After my criticism of Wyoming I should point out that Oklahoma is more suspect. The official stance by the wildlife department is that CWD is not present in Oklahoma deer even though it has been found in Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, New Mexico and Colorado which is every state that borders Oklahoma. 77 deer were tested in 2017 and 42 in 2018.

It was found in 1998 in a captive elk herd brought from Montana which was euthanized and no deer in the surrounding area were found to test positive.

The only place to have a deer tested is at the vet school at Oklahoma State University.

 

[jsb]

This is my opinion as well.

Also, this is a prion that can sit in the soil. We talk about the possibility of coming in contact with CWD from infected animals but wouldn’t we also be coming in contact with it in the soil? This prion has had to have been around a long time.

That is a good point. You would think crops would be spreading it too with all the deer hanging out. Never even thought of that. Seems almost more likely to transmit that way as opposed to eating flesh that can't even be directly tested for it.

 

[lcxctf2000]

I lived and hunted in the middle of the CWD zone in WI when it broke out there over a decade ago. Total eradication of the deer in that area was the DNRs goal. We could kill all the deer we wanted. My friends and family have been eating deer in that area for generations and we ate every deer we killed while helping the DNR reduce the population. They still eat them now. I am pretty sure driving to work is more of a health risk.

Did you get any of the deer you harvested tested for CWD?

 

[MuleyFever]

Did you get any of the deer you harvested tested for CWD?

I remember stopping and having a couple tested. They took the sample but I never saw any results.

 

[skifunk2]

CWD is a member of the transmissable spongiform encephalopathy family, similar to Mad cow disease or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. I work in the meat industry and with BSE there are several different places the prions are located, the USDA has named these SRM’s or Specified Risk Material.

I do not know the age correlation with game, but in beef it’s never been found in an animal under 30 months old. Since these are related, I’ll give you what I know about it.

In all ages, the tonsils and distal ilium(part of the small intestine) are SRM’s. The tonsils are in the back of the throat as you know, but also on the back of the tongue below the vallate papillae, see attached, they are the little wrinkled area below the last set of little circles.

In all cattle over 30 months there are many more SRM’s. I use the following goofy acronym to remember them all:

BEST VD’S

Brain
Eyes
Skull
Trigeminal Ganglia (nerves in back of head)

Vertebral Collumn
Dorsal Root Ganglia(nerves in spine)
Spinal Cord

As you can see, all of these items are central nervous system parts. So if you don’t boil and eat whole necks, boil game heads to eat, eat eyes, or use the small intestine, your risk is greatly reduced. A few of the safety guidelines are easy, like if you saw the horns off your deer, don’t use the same blade for edible parts. If you saw through the spine, same thing. Most of theses are easy to avoid. The one that you will hit most is the spinal cord and the base of the skull. Easy fix, use a good knife for most of the cutting, switch to an extra used just for the final few cuts of the spinal cord.

So the risk is not in consuming game meat, it is in consuming game meat contaminated with the prions. With a few easy steps you can reduce your chance of exposure down to a minimum.

I hope this helps, it’s not worth a panic, but your attention to it sure can’t hurt.

Coop





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I was a cattle buyer for a big packer when BSE hit in the early 2000s. Talk about frantic, trying to get hundreds of cattle across the Canadian border before it closed. Not a day I’ll ever forget in that business. How fast our processing changed after that to ensure the correct testing and procedures were in place was amazing.

 

[jsb]

I took one of my deer to Montana FWP this year because I wanted to have it tested. Watched as a game warden removed the lymph nodes (I think I could do it although it is a little mysterious). I had to pay shipping and a fee to have it tested because I did not shoot it in one of the known infected zones. Still awaiting the results. The wardens were clearly new to this process. Not happy either and did not seem eager to get any bad news. Sucks. Last thing I want to do is discard hard earned venison. I am purely a meat hunter.

 

[juan trueno]

Right now there is no definitive proof that it does affect humans, as far as how long it’s been around, I would say longer than us but who knows.

There are so many problems with diagnosis Creutzfeldt-Jacobs Disease the human variant. It’s like these guys in the NFL with concussions, you can’t be certain until after death looking at tissue samples.

The main concern about wildlife stems from 3 CJD diagnosis’s in the 90’s from guys who ate venison, so that created the concern, and had grown from there. But in all, it’s mostly theories and much is unknown, therefore no need to panic, but it doesn’t hurt to take a few minor precautions just in case.

There was just a case of a man in NY that died of CJD that was known for eating squirrel brains. Did that cause it, or some other wildlife he ate? Hard to tell but taking a pass on eating brains has certainly never hurt anyone.


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That Pretty much sums up the way I live my life “taking a pass on brains never hurt anyone” could go on my tombstone. I saw a lot of George a romero’s Films when I was younger.

 

[lcxctf2000]

I remember stopping and having a couple tested. They took the sample but I never saw any results.

Bummer. I've killed 20 or so deer in heart of WI CWD zone and had every single one tested. We've had two positives and received results back on all that were tested.

Overall I am disappointed at the lack of testing for CWD. As hunters we are the biggest potential source of data on this disease and the ability to track it's spread. It's to our benefit to help figure it out, but so many of us just don't seem to care.

 

[MuleyFever]

Yeah I was young and definitely did not care. Probably why I do not remember seeing any results.