+ cwd

Idaboy

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Not Cruerzfeldt or Scrapie, CWD in cervids is believed to be new to the landscape when it was discovered. The way it was described to me by the disease specialist Biologists who told me this insinuated it was more along the 10 year mark as I understood it.



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But it makes you wonder did it spontaneously occur then? Jump from another species? Or was it present but just extremely rare and then in the mid1900s we finally got saw more of it or knew what to look for...it's all really bizarre
 

grfox92

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But it makes you wonder did it spontaneously occur then? Jump from another species? Or was it present but just extremely rare and then in the mid1900s we finally got saw more of it or knew what to look for...it's all really bizarre
I agree. I made the comment "isn't it possible that this thing has been around for thousands of years and we've been eating it all along?" He said something to the effect that reaserchers were pretty confident it was new on the landscape.

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Beendare

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This study says bleach does fine with a couple minutes exposure.
From the link;
We found that a five-minute treatment with a 40% dilution of household bleach was effective at inactivating CWD seeding activity from stainless-steel wires and CWD-infected brain homogenates. However, bleach was not able to inactivate CWD seeding activity from solid tissues in our studies.
——-

It looks like I will be adding Bleach to my kit…..
 
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But it makes you wonder did it spontaneously occur then? Jump from another species? Or was it present but just extremely rare and then in the mid1900s we finally got saw more of it or knew what to look for...it's all really bizarre


I recall a speculative conclusion, that cwd was derived from scrapie.

TSE’s mutate, so kinda makes sence.
 

wytx

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This is correct, bleach kills the prions.

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Bleach does not kill the prions, make a call to the state lab In Laramie and ask for Jessica. She is in charge of the lab and CWD reseaerch and testing there. High temp is all that has been shown to kill the prions. They have to use a extremely high temp incinerator to kill them, bleach does not kill the prions.
 

Fordguy

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I recall a speculative conclusion, that cwd was derived from scrapie.

TSE’s mutate, so kinda makes sence.
CWD was first discovered in captive mule deer that were kept in a pen that had previously been used to house scrapie infected sheep at a facility in Colorado. Heck of a coincidence, isn't it?
Pulling from an almost 30 year old memory here, so do some research if you want to verify.
 

wytx

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Take a read , this is from a researcher that recently retired and has worked on CWD for many many year, we know him personally as we did Beth Williams.

CWD is not scrapie and scrapie is not CWD. There are several theories that CWD originated from scrapie (just as BSE did in Europe), which could be correct. For the most part, prion diseases are very specific in regards to the species they infect, with little cross-over to other species (also known as a species barrier). Scientists have learned how to overcome the species barrier by directly infecting the brain of the test animal, which bypasses an animal's normal defenses to disease. But sometimes, one passage of the agent through the brain isn't enough (strong species barrier) and they use the brain from the first experimentally infected animal to infect another (two passages). By passing the prion through two infections, the prion adapts to the new species and is able to cause disease. This is how they were able to get CWD to infect sheep; by making two passages of CWD into Suffolk lambs. If scrapie and CWD were the same disease, the sheep would have been equally susceptible to CWD as deer were to scrapie; not to mention the animals could have been infected naturally, rather than injecting the brain.

While the western blot results suggest that CWD and scrapie are similar, the origin of CWD still has not been determined, and more research is necessary before making such a claim. It should also be noted that CWD is having an effect on our deer populations and has been documented (by a full pathological examination) as a cause of death in hundreds of deer and elk in Wyoming.
 

cnelk

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From my house I can see the CSU deer pens where CWD was first discovered.

There’s a hiking trail that goes right by the pens that have deer, elk and other animals.

I shot and ate lots of deer before the CWD massacre in the early 2000s when it became a ‘scare’.

In Colorado, CWD testing areas jump around. Some years the areas are mandatory, the next year it’s voluntary. Sometimes it’s not required at all when it was required the year before.

Last year my son shot a MD buck in a required testing GMU. We took the buck to Kremmling and submitted the glands.

I took the meat home and processed it and we waited for the results….. and waited…. and waited.

I finally called the number and they told me that testing facilities wait until they had a bunch of deer to test before they start. But the CWD website says 7-10 days.

The results came back over 2 weeks later, Negative. But we were going to eat the deer anyway.

This year the same GMU doesn’t have required testing.

If you follow the money, all CWD is funded by grants. So if there’s no grants, no testing. If minimal funding, minimal testing.

Life is short. Choose wisely. ;)
 

Fordguy

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Take a read , this is from a researcher that recently retired and has worked on CWD for many many year, we know him personally as we did Beth Williams.

CWD is not scrapie and scrapie is not CWD. There are several theories that CWD originated from scrapie (just as BSE did in Europe), which could be correct. For the most part, prion diseases are very specific in regards to the species they infect, with little cross-over to other species (also known as a species barrier). Scientists have learned how to overcome the species barrier by directly infecting the brain of the test animal, which bypasses an animal's normal defenses to disease. But sometimes, one passage of the agent through the brain isn't enough (strong species barrier) and they use the brain from the first experimentally infected animal to infect another (two passages). By passing the prion through two infections, the prion adapts to the new species and is able to cause disease. This is how they were able to get CWD to infect sheep; by making two passages of CWD into Suffolk lambs. If scrapie and CWD were the same disease, the sheep would have been equally susceptible to CWD as deer were to scrapie; not to mention the animals could have been infected naturally, rather than injecting the brain.

While the western blot results suggest that CWD and scrapie are similar, the origin of CWD still has not been determined, and more research is necessary before making such a claim. It should also be noted that CWD is having an effect on our deer populations and has been documented (by a full pathological examination) as a cause of death in hundreds of deer and elk in Wyoming.
I don't think anyone has said that scrapie is CWD. As has been said in this thread, replicating cellular structures can and do change or mutate. In the case of scrapie sheep infecting muledeer with a new disease (CWD), the longer scrapie sheep had been kept in the pen, the more likely it is that there would have been a source of altered/mutated scrapie prion that would be able to cross the species barrier- especially if one or more of the muledeer was genetically susceptible. The potentialy mutated, species-jumping prion may not be readily identifyable as having scrapie origins (a little out of my academic depth, but possible even if not very likely). CWD prions would not necessarily be infectious to sheep as they're no longer the same as (or similar enough to) scrapie prions.

Once the susceptible deer was infected and shedding prions, I have to believe that it would be more likely to infect the remaining cervid population.
This differs from Bovine variant CJD in that all of the bovine variant CJD cases (that I'm aware of) were the result of susceptible humans contracting the disease from consuming Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy prions, not Bovine Variant CJD prions.
By the time CWD was discovered in the captive mule deer I would speculate that the vast majority of the remaining deer (if not all of them) had contracted the disease from prions shed from the first susceptible muledeer carrier and not from the scrapie sheep. Once it crossed the species barrier in a single susceptible animal, all other cervids were likely infected by prions from that animal and not from the sheep.

Your two pass example in Suffolk lambs doesn't disprove this idea. The only thing that's missing is a single genetically susceptible Suffolk lamb or a slightly altered prion to begin infecting sheep with CWD through environmental exposure.

There's a lot of speculation and a lot of possibilities in several directions. No one is likely to have a definitive answer on CWD origins at this point, and maybe they never will. The theory that it started with a prion disease in one species that managed to jump to another species via mutation/genetic susceptibility is as sound a theory as any.

Not saying that my thoughts have better legs to stand on than anyone else's, but my mind immediately heads toward the obvious avenue when I comb through the articles that I've read or the conversations I've had with state deer biologists and infectious disease PhDs/Profs over the years (one of whom still travels to various other states to assist with CWD issues).

By the way, I didn't make a claim that CWD originated with sheep scrapie, only that it was a heck of a coincidence based on where it was first discovered. When two TSEs show up in different species in the exact area/pen one right after the other- if the second species didn't manage to contract it from environmental contamination from the first species, calling it "one heck of a coincidence" would be difficult to dispute.
Ending this novel now.
 

grfox92

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Bleach does not kill the prions, make a call to the state lab In Laramie and ask for Jessica. She is in charge of the lab and CWD reseaerch and testing there. High temp is all that has been shown to kill the prions. They have to use a extremely high temp incinerator to kill them, bleach does not kill the prions.
Are you going to ignore the study that has been referenced multiple times in this thread where it conclusively says 40% bleach deactivates prions on stainless steel?


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Beendare

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I’ve read through a massive amount of research on this- most of it a few years ago. The Prion institute claim at that time was nothing but very high temp kills these prions. They said prions can go into the ground and come up in plants and such- not good, these things just don’t go away.

Its good news that 5 minutes of a strong bleach concentration kills it- hopefully thats the case Just note; Clorox is only 7.55% Hypo Chlorite- not strong enough according to that one paper.
 

Flyjunky

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For those that discard cwd infected animals do you just not hunt where cwd has been shown to exist?
 
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For those that discard cwd infected animals do you just not hunt where cwd has been shown to exist?


Front range Colorado.
All private land.
In the last 8-10 years we’ve killed about 10 positive bucks and 2-3 positive does.
This is on my land and a friends a few minutes away.

To answer your question, I’ve pretty much stopped killing deer locally.
It’s not worth all the effort, just to receive positive result after positive result.

Of the dozen plus positives, only one buck didn’t look right.
Didn’t look or act sick, just had a strange look to him, maybe looked thin if I recall correctly.
 

Durran87

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For those that discard cwd infected animals do you just not hunt where cwd has been shown to exist?

We just shoot extra and plan to lose 25-50%. The problem with this approach is that deer numbers in our area are starting to drop too after 20 years of CWD. Gun deer season has become quieter, I’ve talked to a lot of hunters that have lost interest.

Now some of the butchers only accept deboned meat, while others act like CWD doesn’t exist. There are certainly lots of people consuming whatever mix comes out of the sausage shop. They all claim you get “your meat back” (and then who else’s??).

To add to the infection routes—studies have shown that prions can transmit through aerosol too…
 
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S

Stalker69

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If it’s that big of deal why do you even hunt?
Well I enjoy the hunt, archery is all I do for big game. And what I am going to do is hunt Africa every third or fourth year, now. Javelina and pigs in Texas every year. I do have a number of preference points here for elk, I will use eventually though.
 
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drdrop

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Laramie
From my house I can see the CSU deer pens where CWD was first discovered.

There’s a hiking trail that goes right by the pens that have deer, elk and other animals.

I shot and ate lots of deer before the CWD massacre in the early 2000s when it became a ‘scare’.

In Colorado, CWD testing areas jump around. Some years the areas are mandatory, the next year it’s voluntary. Sometimes it’s not required at all when it was required the year before.

Last year my son shot a MD buck in a required testing GMU. We took the buck to Kremmling and submitted the glands.

I took the meat home and processed it and we waited for the results….. and waited…. and waited.

I finally called the number and they told me that testing facilities wait until they had a bunch of deer to test before they start. But the CWD website says 7-10 days.

The results came back over 2 weeks later, Negative. But we were going to eat the deer anyway.

This year the same GMU doesn’t have required testing.

If you follow the money, all CWD is funded by grants. So if there’s no grants, no testing. If minimal funding, minimal testing.

Life is short. Choose wisely. ;)
I've learned that the WY G&F doesn't have the budget to monitor CWD in the same area year-to-year, so they rotate around the state at 5 year increments. That may also be the case with CO CPW regarding required CWD testing.
 

grfox92

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I've learned that the WY G&F doesn't have the budget to monitor CWD in the same area year-to-year, so they rotate around the state at 5 year increments. That may also be the case with CO CPW regarding required CWD testing.
I'm not saying that's false, but they have been monitoring my area for the last 5 years. Multiple units throughout the region with high focus on areas with their first possitive animals.

I have noticed they could give a shit about the areas with a very high prevalence. I guess at that point, why bother. It's there to stay.

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I’ve read through a massive amount of research on this- most of it a few years ago. The Prion institute claim at that time was nothing but very high temp kills these prions. They said prions can go into the ground and come up in plants and such- not good, these things just don’t go away.

Its good news that 5 minutes of a strong bleach concentration kills it- hopefully thats the case Just note; Clorox is only 7.55% Hypo Chlorite- not strong enough according to that one paper.

“All bleach concentrations tested are based on undiluted Purebright brand bleach considered as 100%, which contains 6% sodium hypochlorite.”
 
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