Bowsite.com

The study was conducted by the University of WY, WY state veterinary lab, CO Div. of Parks and Wildlife and WT Game and Fish. Cattle were housed with heavily infected elk and fed oral doses of infected brain material. No sign of it in the cattle.

https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2018/08/23/cdc-tse-mad-cow-chronic-wasting-disease-linked-fort-collins/878097002/

I worry more about distracted drivers than cwd.

I'm absolutely worried about it. Not the spread of CWD to humans (not yet at least) but the spread of this disease from deer herd to deer herd. At this time, not enough is being done to slow it's progress. The future of hunting could certainly be at stake for my kids generation; that worries me a lot.

Woods Walker, were you not also at UW when it was discovered in the elk pens? I think Sammie Blue was working with elk at CSU at the same time and she is never mentioned but I am almost positive she mentioned it to me and was not all that concerned, said Beth was studying it. So, where did it start, on Bald Mountain or in the CSU pens? The main question to me is, how or can you control it in a wild population? I have my doubts.

Yes, scrapie has been around for centuries and to the best of my knowledge has not been transmitted to humans. But bovine TSE (mad cow) has, so it isn't out of the question.

But collectively, on a national scale, think about the possible ramifications if CWD does. When those that pretend to be experts dismiss and spread falsehoods about CWD, that is the problem. Influential people are conflicting and dismissing established science with absolutely no leg to stand on. It's not just CWD either, it's a growing societal issue. Everyone is a damn expert on everything and social media has given every fake expert a platform to spew their stupidity.

Now, just for eddification. At no time did I say it was not something to worry about. Just what the ramifications may come to be, is yet to be determined. Is it cause to panic? Well, was it cause to panic 10-20-40 years ago? How about 150-years ago? How long has CWD been with us? Do you really think it started with a small herd of elk in a pen at CSU or UW? If so, where did they get it?

That's my thoughts on it also.

I know that every animal has diseases that affect it. I don’t go looking for ways to stop that as it will never be stopped. I just go hunting and leave the rest to the professors.

Am I concerned about CWD? Yes, but not to the point that I'm going to quit hunting and EATING what I kill. I had to turn in a head of a muledeer I shot in 2001 due to a mandatory testing requirement for that unit. So I took the head up to CSU to the test site. I asked to talk to someone who had a great deal of knowledge about CWD, so they asked me to wait out in the break/smoking area outside. A professor who was at the time the lead expert on CWD came out to talk to me, I figured this would make a great article for our club news letter that I was the editor of at the time. I ask him many questions, one was, is it possible for humans to contract CWD, his answer was at present, the studies showed that it would be a 1 in 1 billion chance, and only if the human had the right genetic markers, 1 in 1billion chance.

So I asked him if this was his deer and it tested negative would he eat it, he answered "I don't know, probably not if it came from an infected area, why take the chance" So as I sat there with him and a couple of his interns and associates as they smoked, I said to him, 1 in 1 billion chance right? yes he said, I said but 2 out 5 smokers WILL die from smoking right!? He looked at his cigarette, and at the others sitting the area, and said you make a good point. My deer came back negative, and my family and I ate ever bit of that deer, I'm still here 18yrs later. Now, had that deer tested positive? I'm not sure what I might have done. It takes so long to do the test, that the CPW policy of issuing another tag is pointless as most seasons will be over by the time you get your results back.

So, we humans know that a active volcano WILL erupt but we don't know when, yet we will live at it's base. We know that an Earth quack WILL happen in active areas of the world, we just don't know when, yet we live and thrive there, right!

What I'm saying is that being concerned about CWD is one thing, and we need to be, but crying 'The sky is falling, the sky is falling' makes no sense. Take precautions and or extra precautions and be truly informed about the issues. To add to the statements above, Colorado's deer population decline is 90% due to the huge deer culling they did in the early 2000's were thousands of deer were shot to 'see' if it would slow the spread of CWD- their not sure that worked, and the other is development in key grounds that muledeer need. As for elk, they are doing good, the recent decline was due to extra animals being killed during hunting seasons to get the herd to the objective size for habitat, it worked. I killed a muledeer this year that looked healthy and acted normal, no I didn't have it tested, and have eaten some already, am I worried, NO, until they have proof that humans are in danger of eating deer/elk/moose I'm not going to worry, but I will take precautions, and not just because of CWD, there are other diseases that one can get from handling animals, but no one is talking much about those. Best of luck this hunting seasons!!

Parts of the article I have added below but to read the total story, see Coloradoan.com.

" This tale of a disease killing deer and elk across Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and pockets of other states is one few have heard. That could all change given recent research that this disease has greater potential than originally thought to cross genetic barriers to harm humans."

"Opposing findings rekindle human infection fears. ie, Years after CWD research largely disarmed the public about a risk to human health, the disease continued its slow but steady (increase) in deer and elk and some moose. Then came a recent bombshell."

Preliminary results from an unpublished Canadian study released last year found that three of five macaque monkeys contracted CWD when fed the equivalent of 7-oz steak of deer meat tainted with the disease once a month for three years. A similar study conducted by National Institutes of Health in Montana found macaque monkeys did not contract of disease. The results from the Canadian experiments caused health agencies enough concern that the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention posted this on its website--. " the reason for the different experiments results are unknown. To date, there is no strong evidence for the occurrence of CWD in people and it is not known if people can get infected with CWD prions. Nevertheless, these experimental studies raise the concern that CWD may pose a risk to people and suggest that is is important to prevent human exposure to CWD."

Local Colorado Parks and Wildlife senior wildlife scientist/veterinarian Mike Miller acknowledges that, " you can never rule out a disease crossing species".

Another researcher retired, Schoonveld now 81 but did earlier research on mule deer prior to the discovery of CWD at the CSU facility, stated, " Can you imagine what would happen if the monkey research simulated in the human population? I do, it would be hell on wheels"

the total article can be seen on the Coloradoan website.

Keep in mind, this was written before CWD was discovered and I guess it was in the early days of discovery of all prion borne diseases. The point I am making and continue to make is that CWD, mad cow, scapies, etc., all must have originated somewhere. It-they-did not suddenly start when man first discovered them. Man invented the testing that found prion borne diseases, he did not invent the disease. Therefore, I contend that CWD was present long before the "discovery" of it at CSU. I contend it has been and is present to varying degrees in all sizable populations of cervidae, worldwide.

I yesterday, 9-6-18, contacted Sammie Blue, (not her real name), who was in the biology dept. at UW when it was found there, in the elk that came from CSU. She said that best she could recall, it was their thinking that the elk had it long before they came to CSU due to the amount of time required for the disease to manifest itself to a noticeable extent. In other words, at that time, the only way they had to tell if an elk was infected was for it to show visible signs or die. They felt, at that time, the length of time between contacting the disease and showing visible signs, may be years and probably, some were born with it.

What this boils down to, strictly in my opinion, is simply this. CWD is not a new disease at all. I contend it has always been there. There is no such thing as a disease free state if that state has any sizable cervidae population. There probably has always been CWD in our cervid populations and always will be. It cannot be stamped out or cured. There is only one way to prevent finding CWD...don't test for it.

I do not eat the meat of any animal that is visibly sick and often of any animal with a visible injury such as an old bullet or arrow wound that appears infected. To me, that is just common sense. But it would be, again, just my opinion, ridiculous to think we have not been eating the meat of CWD free animals all these years and now, suddenly, (as of the late 60's,) they have it. I believe they have had it all along.

If you know how to Google and find it, I suggest an article in the AG NEWS magazine from the University of WY, July 2018, Vol. #27. #2. Fall 2018, "Long-term research shows domestic cattle resist oral exposure to Chronic Wasting Disease." Many different agencies in different locations were involved in the ten-year study. The upshot of the entire study was basically, "We don't know..."

My wife now refuses to eat any game meat regardless of testing...

Just wondering, given that we have a population of 325 Million.

What else could possibly go wrong? :)

I sure hope they burned all those cattle's remains anyways, just to be safe.

what is CJD ? Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a rapidly progressive, invariably fatal neurodegenerative disorder believed to be caused by an abnormal isoform of a cellular glycoprotein known as the prion protein

what is CWD ? Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a prion disease or transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) of free-ranging and farmed cervids. what is scrapie ?

Scrapie. Scrapie, also called rida or tremblante du mouton, fatal neurodegenerative disease of sheep and goats. ... The agent responsible for those diseases is an abnormal prion, a deviant form of a benign protein normally found in the brain

I'm just sayin .......

The sentence you quoted is misleading (by whoever wrote it, not necessarily you).

There were three treatment groups: environmental exposure, oral exposure, control. The cattle housed with infected elk were in Sybille canyon. The animals fed CWD positive brain homogenate were fed the material, then placed in isolation rooms for 10 years. When you drive by the WSVL in Laramie right east of the I80/Snowy Range Rd junction, there is a small building off to the east from the main lab with a large chimney for the incinerator. In that building are actual isolation rooms. One animal was put in each room as a calf, and then necropsied 10 years later. Biosecurity was high in those rooms and even their feces was incinerated. They did not develop any disease obviously. Seeing them see the light of day for the first time in ten years on "necropsy day" was unique.