Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Chronic Wasting Disease Has Reached Europe

From The Wildlife Society News Bulletin:

A reindeer in Norway has been diagnosed with chronic wasting disease, a deadly disease that targets cervids, earlier this month.

This is the first time the disease, which was first detected in the United States in the 1960s, has reached Europe and is also the first-ever detection of the disease in a free-ranging reindeer (Rangifer tarandus). The reindeer was from the Nordfjella population in South Norway.

Wildlife biologists don’t know yet how the disease got to Norway. “That’s the million dollar question,” said Matthew Dunfee, the project coordinator of the Chronic Wasting Disease Alliance. “We hope to answer it in the next coming months.”

Dunfee said wildlife biologists became more aware of the disease’s prevalence in the U.S. in the early 2000s, but they still are unsure of how it started. Now that it has reached Norway and there’s no documented transmission route, they are trying to understand how it spread to the country.

There are two possibilities regarding how this happened, according to Dunfee. One option is that an animal was illegally and surreptitiously moved from an area in the U.S. where CWD is prevalent to Norway. Another possibility is that the disease, which takes the form of mad cow disease in cows or scrapie in bovines, which has been detected in Europe, could have jumped the species barrier into the reindeer. However, Dunfee was hesitant to suggest that was the case because previous research has shown this is a difficult barrier to cross.

In the meantime, Norway must take a few steps in order to prevent the disease from spreading, Dunfee said, especially because when the disease shows up in one animal, it’s likely to be in animals in the surrounding area as well. “The odds it will only be in one animal are very low,” he said.

First, managers should shut down any transmission modes possible, Dunfee said. This means prohibiting the transfer of live cervids or cervid parts. Then, they will begin to sample other animals in the area to determine the prevalence of the disease. Based on these findings, the biologists will make management recommendations. “Because there’s no known management technique to eradicate CWD, the name of the game is not to eradicated CWD, it is to manage it,” he said.

Wildlife biologists and managers in the U.S. continue to try to manage the disease as well. While Wyoming is known as the “great control” because it chose not to take management steps for CWD, other states such as Wisconsin have implemented significant management steps and, according to Dunfee, have lower prevalence rates.

Meanwhile, Arkansas reported its first case of CWD in an elk in Newton County this past February. Wildlife managers sampled elk and deer in and around the area and found 82 animals tested positive for the disease. Management decisions will be made in Arkansas within the next year. “That’s what Europe now has to deal with,” Dunfee said. “The first step is to figure out how much the disease spread in local herds. Then they can start to take adequate measures.”

Actually there is nothing new about Chronic Wasting Disease. It has been around since biblical times. It's just the name and identification that is new. CWD in wild cervids, mad cow disease, Scrapies in sheep and goats, and Creutzfelt Yakob disease in humans, are all the same disease. Scrapies has been around as long as men have herded sheep and goats. It's only that people are beginning to notice the rare disease in other animals and humans that it has become renown.

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/n...overview_of_chronic_wasting_disease.html
"CWD is a member of the transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) family of diseases, or prion diseases, that includes bovine spongiform encephalopathy; scrapie of sheep and goats; transmissible mink encephalopathy; and kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), and variant CJD of people."

It's often associated with cannibalism. Creutzfeldt Yakob disease was first identified in the 19th century in native cannibals living in the south Pacific and east Indies. The cause of mad cow disease was identified as stemming from placing the remains of dead cattle in cattle feed.

It also seems to be more prevalent in herds of animals living in confined spaces. This leads researchers to believe that cannibalism is not the only means of transmission.

KC

KC -

That's very interesting. I have a friend who HAD a Sister N Law that contacted the same as Mad Cow Disease. She deteriorated over a period of 1-1/2 yrs. and passed.

The Dr.s called the proper name and said same/similar to Mad Cow Disease.

I haven't seen the report you posted NOR haven't heard of it. Thanks


Jerry

UPDATED--Edited

I talked with my friend a little bit ago and it was his SISTER --not SIL. This happened between 3-4 yrs back.

Jerry

I'm told prion diseases occur naturally at low levels in quite a few species.


http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/prion/Pages/default.aspx

Maybe nothing, but maybe everything. Since the influx of illegals in Arkansas, Goat raising is at a very high level. There seems to at least be a possibility of cross species transfer of these types of prions. I doubt that is what happened, but I doubt that we will ever know the truth. miles

CWD was first detected in captive deer at Colorado State University. The deer pens were built on an area that had been used for many years to house domestic sheep. There has been speculation that prions that cause scrapie, a brain disease in sheep, remained in the soil. Somehow these prions may have been transmuted and became the agent of the infectious prion disease in Cervids that we now call Chronic Wasting Disease. CWD was first detected in wild deer in the immediate area of Fort Collins, Colorado, later spreading slowly through north-central Colorado and adjacent areas in southeast Wyoming.

The major cause of new outbreaks everywhere has been the transport of infected animals. It was introduced to the West Slope of Colorado by captive elk from Fort Collins that were relocated to an experimental captive facility near Maybell. When the research ended, the gates were opened and the captive elk were allowed to go free.

Many captive breeding herds of mule deer, white-tailed deer and elk throughout the U.S. now have infected animals. The sale, trade and transport of these animals are virtually always the means by which the disease is introduced into previously unaffected populations.

Yep. The deer breeders are going to ruin Texas deer hunting moving diseased animals.

one of the other speculations is hunters spreading CWD around the US, they try to regulate body part movement but there is no cleaning of the brain from the skull before you leave Colorado (for example) for the east coast.

if you bring it home and taxidermist lets the beetles go after your skull that should stop the spread.

if you bring it home decide against the euro-mount so you cut off what you need and throw the skull (and brains) over the bank, now you have released the western prions into the eastern eco-system

not blaming hunters, just saying one round of speculation that a lot of the state agencies have overlooked but a few vets have speculated upon

Many states have not allowed any bones from cervids from out of state for many years so I wouldn't say those agencies are overlooking it. Arkansas has only allowed cleaned skulls and boned out meat to cross state lines since 2005, well ahead of finding CWD here. Of course it's near impossible to enforce.