CWD Positive. What would you do??

[Huckleberry Hound]

Depends. If I haven't killed a buck for awhile than its getting eaten ( cooked fully of course ) . If I have meat in the freezer from game Ive put down than I'd maybe only eat the choice cuts but I'd eat some of it either way. Many critters we shoot are full of nasty stuff such as bears infested with parasitic worms in the actual meat we eat. CWD supposedly being isolated to the nervous system sounds better to me especially since I'm not a brain eater.

Cooking the meat to the right temperature kills the trichinosis. Same reason pork has always been cooked well done. Not a good comparison with cwd.

 

[NoWiser]

I don't understand people wouldn't eat a cwd deer but continue to hunt where there seems a high probability to harvest a infected animal. You should just move along or is the infected skull ok to just hang on your wall?

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This is a very interesting point, and one I lost sleep over last year. My dad and I drew decent mule deer tags in Wyoming. I knew it was a CWD area but didn't pay a whole lot of attention until we drew the tags. At that point I did some research and realized there was a very real chance that we could shoot a deer with CWD. We still went hunting.

I ended up shooting a nice buck. Bigger than I expected, and one I wanted to put on the wall. I brought the skull to a CWD checkpoint and they removed the lymph nodes. The biologist noted that the buck was one of the older ones he'd seen - likely 6 to 7 years old. At that point I realized that the odds were drastically increased of this buck testing positive. If it tested positive I was going to toss the meat. I have young kids at home and won't feed it to them. I discussed it with the biologist and asked if he could, with a clear conscience, hang a deer on his wall after he wasted its meat. He said absolutely because you did the population a favor by removing a CWD positive animal.

I had a great feeling of guilt after that, that I put myself in this position of possibly having to waste an animal. I knew CWD was there and I knew I could have gone hunting elsewhere, where it hadn't been found yet. I applied for the tag anyways. I did not bring my buck to the taxidermist until the test results came back, luckily negative. I still don't know what I'd have done if it came back positive. I do not plan on hunting CWD endemic areas in the future, though. Big antlers are great and all, but not if there isn't meat to go along with them.

 

[Violent Hippie]

Cooking the meat to the right temperature kills the trichinosis. Same reason pork has always been cooked well done. Not a good comparison with cwd.
[/QU
I received the full ANTHRAX vaccine series so I should be good anyway.

 

[Stalker69]

People have been unknowly consuming CWD infected deer for decades. Not a single human case yet. However, knowing it's positve, I would not eat a bite of it. Sure it will make good dog food though!

How many people do you know that have been tested for it, none. That is why no humans have been known to have it. Now ask yourself how many people do you know that have died with Alzheimer’s. My mom did as did my father in law, the docs would not check for CWD when we asked them to. In fact they had no clue what we were talking about. Oh yea, they don’t test for Alzheimer’s either, they just diagnose you as having it when your memory starts to go. There could be cases of it, but if they don’t test, how will we ever know.

 

[Stalker69]

Cooking the meat to the right temperature kills the trichinosis. Same reason pork has always been cooked well done. Not a good comparison with cwd.
[/QU
I received the full ANTHRAX vaccine series so I should be good anyway.

Dude, you need to do some research, cooking will not kill it, anthrax vaccine will do nothing for you, if humans can get. Even autoclave sterilization does not kill it. So it will remain on your knives, cutting board, knife sheath and any thing else that came into contact with a positive animal, in-fact just because it comes back negative, does not mean it does not have CWD. It just means it was undetected at the time. They are not sure how long the animal can have it before they can actually detect it. It takes clusters of the prions to be able to see under the most powerful scopes. So until they are in clusters big enough to detect, most likely the animal had it for a period of time ( the unknown length) before that. Prions are small enough that many many can be in the sharpening scratches ( as smooth at it looks, there is still scratches) of your knife blade.

 

[Violent Hippie]

I was joking about the Anthrax vaccine making me all good although I did receive it. I previously posted I will read up on it some more and actually have some previous knowledge about CWD ( general prions more specifically ) through my bio classes and medical work ( although not covered often in human medical training ) as well as through hunting specific podcasts but must have forgotten the details. I was never too concerned about it ( as I again previously stated I don't eat brain, spine, or eyes and never have). I am full aware of parasitic worms and that trichinosis is killed bye cooking to certain temps ( not as hot as previously thought ) and not a direct comparison with prions BUT mentally I find eating parasitic infested meat (although cooked and "safe" ) is a harder mental hurdle than eating a deer back strap that had a neurological condition. I have seen patients MRI's that revealed calcified worms in their brain ( neurocysticercosis) due to consuming uncooked pork which is why they were having seizure and nystagmus ( involuntary movement of their eyes ) . I'm not trying to compare the 2 and I just mentioned it without laying out were I was coming from. Thanks for the concern and I'd still eat it in the scenarios I mentioned previously.

 

[JWP58]

How many people do you know that have been tested for it, none. That is why no humans have been known to have it. Now ask yourself how many people do you know that have died with Alzheimer’s. My mom did as did my father in law, the docs would not check for CWD when we asked them to. In fact they had no clue what we were talking about. Oh yea, they don’t test for Alzheimer’s either, they just diagnose you as having it when your memory starts to go. There could be cases of it, but if they don’t test, how will we ever know.

So alzheimers equals human contraction of cwd?

 

[brsnow]

So alzheimers equals human contraction of cwd?

The symptoms mirror what CWD type diseases look like in people.

 

[jmez]

The pathology doesn't.

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[brsnow]

The pathology doesn't.

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My wife is the doctor in the family, I work in finance;-) we have had interesting discussions, a friend passed away with creutzfeldt jakob disease, the body is considered contaminated and no autopsy was done. People can joke, personally to me is like tobacco in the 80-90’s. There was no proven link, but plenty of concerns. I am very careful to not feed it to my kids until it is found not positive. Seems reasonable.

 

[jmez]

The pathology still doesn't match. The spongiform diseases, even in people, have well defined post mortem lesions. Alzheimer's does as well. They aren't the same.

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[brsnow]

The pathology still doesn't match. The spongiform diseases, even in people, have well defined post mortem lesions. Alzheimer's does as well. They aren't the same.

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How do you determine pathology? Rarely are autopsy performed on people assumed to have died from Alzheimer’s. Would the differences be apparent during life?

 

[Sconnie77]

I wouldn't eat it or feed it to my kids.

 

[jmez]

Both diseases have different pathological findings and it's well defined for both. No, not everyone that dies has an autopsy.

If you want to talk in absolutes because not everyone has an autopsy then your friend did not die from Creutztfeldt-Jakob disease. It was an undetermined neurological condition.

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[brsnow]

Both diseases have different pathological findings and it's well defined for both. No, not everyone that dies has an autopsy.

If you want to talk in absolutes because not everyone has an autopsy then your friend did not die from Creutztfeldt-Jakob disease. It was an undetermined neurological condition.

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So while still alive you would not be able to tell the difference in a typical situation?

 

[6AYoteHunter]

I would be leary of eating it since you have such a high concentration of prions in an infected animal. If it makes the jump we are in serious trouble. A prion could easily end up on produce.

 

[jmez]

In clinical signs alone, maybe maybe not. But that can be said for pretty much any disease process affecting the brain.

Because different conditions produce similar clinical signs does not imply that they are in any way related. Also does not imply that they aren't related. It is a pretty big leap, conspiracy theory type, to try to link the conditions based on similar clinical signs and lack of an autopsy.

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[brsnow]

In clinical signs alone, maybe maybe not. But that can be said for pretty much any disease process affecting the brain.

Because different conditions produce similar clinical signs does not imply that they are in any way related. Also does not imply that they aren't related. It is a pretty big leap, conspiracy theory type, to try to link the conditions based on similar clinical signs and lack of an autopsy.

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It is not conspiracy or a leap. Simply stating a very common cause of death that is increasing looks similar unless you dive into the pathology, which the vast majority of the time doesn’t take place.

 

[jmez]

They haven't identified a link between the two in all the brains they have studied to date. They are both caused by misbehaving proteins but different diseases.

They also aren't really that similar clinically so that they would be easily confused. One is diagnosed in a million people per year and the other, 350 people per year, in the US.

No you can't have a true definitive Dx without an autopsy. You can do testing for each with sensitivity and specificity in the 90% range. It's a big stretch.

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[brsnow]

They haven't identified a link between the two in all the brains they have studied to date. They are both caused by misbehaving proteins but different diseases.

They also aren't really that similar clinically so that they would be easily confused. One is diagnosed in a million people per year and the other, 350 people per year, in the US.

No you can't have a true definitive Dx without an autopsy. You can do testing for each with sensitivity and specificity in the 90% range. It's a big stretch.

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Like I said reminds me of the discussion from the tobacco companies and the “identified link” back in the day. I will error on the side of caution and not eat meat that test positive. You try to dismiss when science and medicine should work to provide clarity.