Tennessee to construct CWD Incinerator

[sasquatch]

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[KoolBreeze]

What is scary about is the lack of knowledge regarding it and all of the speculation about how it spreads. Some even think it can survive in the soil, find its way into seeds, then plants, then the food chain, then _____, and ______. You get the picture. So it may not just be hunters and different species of deer that are ultimately affected by it.

 

[Poser]

What is scary about is the lack of knowledge regarding it and all of the speculation about how it spreads. Some even think it can survive in the soil, find its way into seeds, then plants, then the food chain, then _____, and ______. You get the picture. So it may not just be hunters and different species of deer that are ultimately affected by it.

True. We don’t know yet how it may effect scavengers such as birds, raccoons, coyotes, bears etc. While it appears so far not to have jumped species, since a all mammals produce Prions and interacting with the diseased prions (exposure to saliva, consumption etc) invariably has these diseased prions interacting with the cells of other mammals, at a minimum we need to confirm if that cellular interaction has any long or short term implications that we are presently not aware of.

If these diseased prions are a product of nature, be it evolution or mutation, and it’s only going to effect 20-30% of the cervid population, then maybe it’s like a lightning caused wildfire and we let it play it. But if this disease was caused by keeping deer in captivity and if it has a systematic effect up or down the food chain and, even worse, is 17 years from now, venison consumers start exhibiting symptoms associated with dementia that are traced back to CWD, it’s a different scenario entirely and we need to know everything we can learn about it.

Not all mammals are adaptable to captivity. People tried for centuries to raise geese like we do chickens and it simply doesn’t work. If you put geese in a chicken coop and rise them in captivity, they all die. They all died 3 centuries ago and they’ll all die today. And nobody really knows why. That’s why a goose at Kroger costs $60-$80 and a chicken cost $8. The high fence association with CWD is suspicious. Nothing has been proved yet, but it’s suspicious and we need to figure this out and either rule out a bunch of causes, concerns and data points or we need to take action to stop the further spread of the disease. Maybe a combination of the two, but we just don’t know enough yet.

It’s remarkably perplexing to me that there is this contingency of people who are taking up a decidedly anti science position on this.

 

[KoolBreeze]

How would you be able to tell if they deer had CWD immediately after shooting it in order to leave it there?

You can’t but a lot of us hunt on private property and can leave the remains on that same property once we’ve harvested what we can use or whatever. It doesn’t have to be the exact spot it fell in, just in the area is what they would like. Then you have the option of having game & fish testing it and awaiting the results before consuming it. But as I said above the tests aren’t 100% they say.

Hopefully it is something that doesn’t affect other species and we can get s handle on it soon.