TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2016
Minnesota Tests confirm 2 CWD-positive deer near Lanesboro
TESTS CONFIRM 2 CWD-POSITIVE DEER NEAR LANESBORO
November 22, 2016
DNR initiates disease response plan; offers hunters information on field dressing
Test results show two deer harvested by hunters in southeastern Minnesota were infected with Chronic Wasting Disease, according to the Department of Natural Resources.
One deer has been confirmed as CWD-positive. Confirmation of the second is expected later this week. The deer, both male, were killed near Lanesboro in Fillmore County during the first firearms deer season.
The two deer were harvested approximately 1 mile apart. These are the only deer to test positive from 2,493 samples collected Nov. 5-13. Results are still pending from 373 additional test samples collected during the opening three days of the second firearms season, Nov. 19-21.
CWD is a fatal brain disease to deer, elk and moose but is not known to affect human health. While it is found in deer in states bordering southeastern Minnesota, it was only found in a single other wild deer in Minnesota in 2010.
The DNR discovered the disease when sampling hunter-killed deer this fall in southeastern Minnesota as part of its CWD surveillance program. Dr. Lou Cornicelli, DNR wildlife research manager, said hunter and landowner cooperation on disease surveillance is the key to keeping the state’s deer herd healthy.
“We were proactively looking for the disease, a proven strategy that allows us to manage CWD by finding it early, reacting quickly and aggressively to control it and hopefully eliminating its spread,” he said.
It is unknown how the two CWD-positive deer, which were harvested 4 miles west of Lanesboro in deer permit area 348, contracted the disease, Cornicelli said.
“We want to thank hunters who have brought their deer to our check stations for sampling,” he said. “While finding CWD-positive deer is disappointing, we plan to work with hunters, landowners and other organizations to protect the state’s deer herd and provide hunters the opportunity to pass on their deer hunting traditions.”
These are the first wild deer found to have CWD since a deer harvested in fall 2010 near Pine Island tested positive. It was found during a successful disease control effort prompted by the detection in 2009 of CWD on a domestic elk farm. The DNR, landowners and hunters worked together to sample more than 4,000 deer in the Pine Island area from 2011 to 2013, and no additional infected deer were found.
The National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the World Health Organization have found no scientific evidence that the disease presents a health risk to humans who come in contact with infected animals or eat infected meat. Still, the CDC advises against eating meat from animals known to have CWD...
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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2016
Minnesota Tests confirm 2 CWD-positive deer near Lanesboro
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Chronic Wasting Disease CWD surveillance, deer feeding ban continues in southeastern Minnesota
Friday, September 28, 2012
Stray elk renews concerns about deer farm security Minnesota
Friday, May 25, 2012
Chronic Wasting Disease CWD found in a farmed red deer from Ramsey County Minnesota
SATURDAY, MARCH 17, 2012
Minnesota CWD DNR, Can chronic wasting disease jump from deer to humans? yes, maybe some day YOUTUBE
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Minnesota, National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, has confirmed CWD case near Pine Island
Friday, January 21, 2011
MINNESOTA HIGHLY SUSPECT CWD POSITIVE WILD DEER FOUND NEAR PINE ISLAND
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Elk from Olmsted County herd depopulated to control CWD Three additional elk from the 558-head herd tested positive
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Chronic Wasting Disease found in a farmed elk from Olmsted County ST. PAUL, Minn.
CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE UPDATE September 6, 2002
Minnesota has announced the finding of CWD in a captive elk in Aitkin County. The animal was a five-year-old male. It had been purchased from a captive facility in Stearns County in August of 2000. The herd where the elk was found has been placed under quarantine as has two additional facilities where the infected elk had resided prior to it coming to the farm in Aitkin County. Minnesota DNR officials will test wild deer in the area to determine if there is any sign of CWD in the free-ranging population. This is the first case of CWD in either captive or freeranging cervids in Minnesota. Several more states have passed bans on the importation of deer and elk carcasses from states where CWD has been found in wild animals. Previously the states of Colorado, Illinois and Iowa and the province of Manitoba had passed such bans. The states of Vermont, Oregon and Missouri have enacted similar bans. Numerous states have issue voluntary advisories to their out-of-state hunters encouraging them not to bring the carcass or carcass parts of deer and elk into their state. The bans do permit the importation of boned out meat, hides or cape with no meat attached, clean skull cap with antler attached, finished taxidermy heads or the ivories of elk. The state of Georgia has recently banned the importation of live cervids into that state also. Some citizens of Colorado have formed a new political action group called Colorado Wildlife Defense (just happens that the acronym is CWD). The stated goal of this group are; Elimination of big game diseases, especially CWD; promotion of healthy wildlife habitat; promotion of scientifically sound wildlife research; promotion of a discussion of the ethics of hunting and wildlife management; education of the hunting and non hunting public. Their action plan calls for; requiring double fencing of all game farms at owners expense; all game farmers provide annual proof of bonding; prohibit new licenses for deer and elk farms; prohibit expansion in acreage of existing game farms; prohibit the transfer of game farm licenses; prohibit charging for hunting behind high wire; prohibit blocking of traditional migratory paths by high fences; requiring game farms to maintain environmental controls and prohibit the escape of contaminated water or soil; requiring immediate reporting of missing deer or elk from game farms; and requiring all game farm deer and elk to be tested for brucellosis and TB. Wisconsin has announced that 7 more free-ranging deer have tested positive for CWD. They have expanded their eradication zone by an additional 15 square miles to cover these findings. The total number of free-ranging CWD positive in Wisconsin is now 31 white-tail deer.
In 2000, a elk farmer in Wisconsin received elk from a CWD exposed herd in Colorado. At that time, the farmer advised the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture that both animals from the exposed herd in Colorado were dead. He has now advised Wisconsin Ag. that he was mistaken and that one of the animals is still alive in his herd. The second draft of the implementation documents for the National CWD Plan was distributed to committee members and others on Friday, August 30. The final documents are due to APHIS and USFWS on Friday, September 13. The herd of captive elk in Oklahoma that had been exposed to CWD will be destroyed this week. This herd had an elk test positive for CWD in 1997 but the depopulation of the herd was not agreed to by the owners and federal representatives until this week. Since the discovery of CWD in the herd, the remaining animals have been under quarantine, however, in the meantime the herd has dropped from 150 animals to 74. Due to a lack of communication, not all of the 76 animals that died in the interim were tested for CWD. All remaining animals will be tested but the true degree of infection rate of the herd will never be known.
The owners of the facility will not be permitted to restock the area with cervids for a period of five years. A New York based organization, BioTech Research Fund I LLC has committed a $1 million line of credit to fund commercialization of tests for brain-wasting disorders and production of various vaccines to Gene-Thera of Wheat Ridge, Colorado. Gene-Thera has spent three years developing new ways not only to diagnose CWD, but create vaccines for mad cow disease, E. coli contaminants and foot-and-mouth disease. Its tests for CWD have been successful in more than 100 samples from Colorado and Wisconsin according to company officials. Gene-Thera plans to license and market some o fits disease test kits by the end of the year, then begin volume distribution by mid-2003. The abstracts of the presentations from the CWD Conference in Denver August 6 and 7 have been posted on the Colorado Division of Wildlife web site. You will need adobe acrobat reader to read them.
Minnesota: Second case in a game farmed elk discovered in Stearns Co.
This is a trace forward from the previously affected game farm in Aitkins Co. An additional game farm in Benton Co is under quarantine.
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Supporting Documents: Colorado: CWD-Exposed Elk Used in 1990 Study- Wildlife officials call W. Slope move a mistake
Date: January 17, 2003 Source: Denver Post Contacts: Theo Stein Environment Writer
The Colorado Division of Wildlife knowingly used a herd of captive elk exposed to chronic wasting disease in a grazing study on the Western Slope in January 1990, possibly introducing the disease to the elk-rich area. "It was a bad call," said Jeff Ver Steeg, the division's top game manager. "I can't deny it." About 150 wild elk were allowed to graze in the same pens near Maybell after the research herd was removed and may have picked up the abnormal protein that causes the disease from the feces and urine left by the captive elk. While the Division of Wildlife has expressed concern before that its animals might have helped spread CWD, this is the first time the agency has acknowledged it knowingly moved elk exposed to CWD deep into an area where the disease was not known to already exist. Studies that could help determine the source of CWD on the Western Slope are incomplete, and officials say what data that do exist are so new and so spotty they may not provide all the answers. So far, it appears that less than 1 percent of deer and elk in the area are infected, compared with as much as 15 to 20 percent in hotspots in northeastern Colorado. But as wildlife officials grapple with CWD's appearance in northwestern Colorado, officials now admit the decision to continue the grazing study over the objections of some biologists was an error. At the time, biologists wanted to see whether elk grazing on winter range depleted forage that ranchers wanted for fattening cattle in spring. "I think in hindsight a lot of good people probably did some dumb things, myself included," said Bruce Gill, a retired wildlife manager who oversaw research efforts and remembers the debate over the project. "Had we known CWD would explode into such a potentially volatile ecologic and economic issue, we wouldn't have done it." Elk ranchers, who have been blamed for exporting the disease from its stronghold on the Colorado and Wyoming plains to seven states and two Canadian provinces, say the agency's belated disclosure smacks of a coverup. "It's pure negligence," said Jerry Perkins, a Delta banker and rancher who is now demanding a legislative inquiry. "If I'd have moved animals I knew to be infected around like that, I'd be in jail." Grand Junction veterinarian and sportsman Dick Steele said he faults the agency for not disclosing information about CWD-exposed research animals before October, when information was posted on the Division of Wildlife website. "This went way beyond poor judgment," he said. "My main concern is that this has been hidden for the last 12 years. It would have been real important to our decision-making process on how to deal with CWD." While the Maybell information is new, Perkins and other ranchers have long suspected Division of Wildlife research facilities near Meeker and Kremmling, which temporarily housed mule deer kept in heavily infected pens at the Fort Collins facility, have leaked CWD to the wild. Fear of an outbreak led the agency to sample 450 deer around the Meeker and Kremmling facilities. None tested positive, but the sample size was only large enough to detect cases if the infection rate was greater than 1 percent. This fall, tests on 23,000 deer and elk submitted by hunters statewide have revealed 48 CWD cases north of Interstate 70 and west of the Continental Divide. Biologists believe the infection rate in that area, which includes the Maybell, Meeker and Kremmling sites, is still well below 1 percent. But CWD has never been contained in a wild population, so experts fear the problem will grow worse.
The Division of Wildlife says it will be months before a statistical analysis of the fall's sampling results can be completed, an exercise that may shed light on the disease's origin on the Western Slope. "We're just not going to speculate at this point," said Ver Steeg of the possible Maybell connection. "This is one possibility, but certainly not the only possibility." Some biologists think a defunct elk ranch near Pagoda, which had dozens of unexplained deaths in the mid-'90s, is another, a suggestion Perkins rejects. "It may be inconclusive to them," said Perkins. "It isn't inconclusive to us."
To date, 19 CWD-positive animals have been found on six Wisconsin farms.
*** All have been white-tailed deer except for one elk imported from a Minnesota herd later found to be infected.
More than 8,000 farm-raised deer and elk have been tested in Wisconsin, and about 540 herds are enrolled in the CWD monitoring program.
CWD disease detected on Lac qui Parle County cervid farm southwestern Minnesota (2006-03-15)
Date: March 15, 2006 at 12:36 pm PST
Chronic wasting disease detected on Lac qui Parle County cervid farm (2006-03-15) The Board of Animal Health announced today that chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been detected in one domestic white-tailed deer on a cervid farm in Lac qui Parle County, which is located in southwestern Minnesota.
Immediately, DNR officials will conduct a local deer survey to determine the number of wild deer in the area. It is expected that not many deer will be found because the area is highly agricultural, with little deer habitat surrounding the farm. DNR will conduct opportunistic sampling of deer, like road kills, in the immediate area now and will conduct intensive hunter-harvested surveillance during the 2006 firearm deer season.
Although this positive animal is a captive deer, DNR has conducted surveillance for CWD in wild deer in the area. The farm is located near the northern boundary of deer permit area 447, where wild deer surveillance for CWD last occurred in 2003.
Lou Cornicelli, DNR big game program coordinator, said, "In 2003, we conducted wild deer CWD surveillance in adjoining permit areas 433, 446 and 447. In total, we collected 392 samples from those permit areas during the regular firearm deer season and CWD was not detected."
The sampling of wild deer was designed statistically to have a 95 percent confidence of detecting a 1 percent infection rate, according to Mike DonCarlos, DNR wildlife programs manager.
"This situation is very similar to the positive elk farm discovered in Stearns County in 2003, which followed the first discovery of CWD in an Aitkin County elk farm," DonCarlos said. “The DNR response will be similar to the Stearns County action and will include an initial assessment of wild deer populations in the area and development of a surveillance program for next fall."
From 2002 to 2004, DNR staff collected nearly 28,000 CWD samples statewide and no disease found in the wild herd.
"The intensive surveillance conducted in 2003 indicated CWD was not present in wild deer," Cornicelli said. “In addition, all indications are that this positive captive deer has not contacted any wild deer, but we will conduct additional surveillance this fall to be sure."
Friday, August 05, 2016
MINNESOTA CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE SURVEILLANCE AND TESTING CWD TSE PRION UPDATE
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