White-tailed Deer in Portage County Tests Positive for CWD

White-tailed Deer in Portage County Tests Positive for CWD

Posted: Dec 17, 2008 06:48 PM CST

MADISON - A second white-tailed deer has tested positive for chronic wasting disease, from a herd of deer that were euthanized in November on a Portage County hunting preserve.

The first CWD-positive deer, a 7½-year-old doe, was discovered during routine testing after it was shot in September. That discovery led to destroying the herd so the rest of the deer could be tested. The second positive deer is a 3½-year-old doe.

Wildlife specialists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services shot 64 deer at Alligator Creek Whitetails LLC near Junction City, beginning Wednesday, Nov. 12, and finishing Tuesday, Nov. 18. Because the hunting preserve is made up of 119 acres of open, wooded, and tall-grass marsh lands, the shooters returned after snow fell to check for tracks to see whether any deer remained. At that time, they shot two more deer. Those CWD test results are not available yet.

The National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, confirmed the positive result after initial screening tests at the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory in Madison.

The CWD-positive deer had been born on the property and did not have ties to any other deer farm. The preserve was placed under quarantine immediately when the first positive test result was reported Oct. 9 to the state veterinarian's office. A quarantine means that no live deer could be moved onto or off the premises.

Areas of heavy deer traffic on the preserve will have the top soil removed and replaced to reduce the risk of contamination. Stocking deer or elk on the property is prohibited for five years, and fences must be maintained during that time to prevent free-ranging deer from entering. The herd owner will receive state and federal indemnities that pay a portion of the appraised value of the deer.

This was the first new CWD-infected herd on a Wisconsin farm since January 2005. To date, 98 farm-raised animals in Wisconsin have tested positive for CWD, including 82 on a separate Portage County operation. One of the infected animals was an elk; the rest have been white-tailed deer. More than 22,500 farm-raised deer in Wisconsin have been tested for CWD.

Chronic wasting disease is a disease that is known to affect deer, elk and moose. Prions - a particular type of protein in the brain - become malformed and create microscopic holes in the brain. The disease is always fatal. Scientists have not determined exactly what causes the malformed prions or how the disease is transmitted, but one means of transmission may be ingestion of prion-contaminated soil. When CWD was first reported in free-ranging white-tailed deer in Wisconsin in February 2002, it was the first appearance of the disease east of the Mississippi River. CWD was first found in a Wisconsin farm-raised deer in September 2002.


http://www.nbc26.com/Global/story.asp?S=9541420



THEY need to get a handle on these deer farms, or just shut them down altogether. they seem to be nothing more than a petri dish of deadly pathogens, especially CWD. i know there are folks that make a living out there in this industry, but at what expense to the wild are we willing to let money and greed go, and how far $

a few findings to ponder ;

0C7.04

North American Cervids Harbor Two Distinct CWD Strains

Authors

Angers, R. Seward, T, Napier, D., Browning, S., Miller, M., Balachandran A., McKenzie, D., Hoover, E., Telling, G. 'University of Kentucky; Colorado Division of Wildlife, Canadian Food Inspection Agency; University Of Wisconsin; Colorado State University.

Content

Despite the increasing geographic distribution and host range of CWD, little is known about the prion strain(s) responsible for distinct outbreaks of the disease. To address this we inoculated CWD-susceptible Tg(CerPrP)1536+/· mice with 29 individual prion samples from various geographic locations in North America. Upon serial passage, intrastudy incubation periods consistently diverged and clustered into two main groups with means around 210 and 290 days, with corresponding differences in neuropathology. Prion strain designations were utilized to distinguish between the two groups: Type I CWD mice succumbed to disease in the 200 day range and displayed a symmetrical pattern of vacuolation and PrPSc deposition, whereas Type II CWD mice succumbed to disease near 300 days and displayed a strikingly different pattern characterized by large local accumulations of florid plaques distributed asymmetrically. Type II CWD bears a striking resemblance to unstable parental scrapie strains such as 87A which give rise to stable, short incubation period strains such as ME7 under certain passage conditions. In agreement, the only groups of CWD-inoculated mice with unwavering incubation periods were those with Type I CWD. Additionally, following endpoint titration of a CWD sample, Type I CWD could be recovered only at the lowest dilution tested (10-1), whereas Type II CWD was detected in mice inoculated with all dilutions resulting in disease. Although strain properties are believed to be encoded in the tertiary structure of the infectious prion protein, we found no biochemical differences between Type I and Type II CWD. Our data confirm the co·existence of two distinct prion strains in CWD-infected cervids and suggest that Type II CWD is the parent strain of Type I CWD.

see page 29, and see other CWD studies ;


http://www.neuroprion.org/resources/pdf_docs/conferences/prion2008/abstract-book-prion2008.pdf



Sunday, November 23, 2008

PRION October 8th - 10th 2008 Book of Abstracts


http://bse-atypical.blogspot.com/2008/11/prion-october-8th-10th-2008-book-of.html



Saturday, September 06, 2008

Chronic wasting disease in a Wisconsin white-tailed deer farm 79% INFECTION RATE Contents: September 1 2008, Volume 20, Issue 5

snip...see full text ;


http://chronic-wasting-disease.blogspot.com/2008/11/commentary-crimes-hurt-essence-of.html




kind regards, terry