18-011-1 Program Standards
NOTICE: APHIS Revises Chronic Wasting Disease Program Standards
USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service sent this bulletin at 03/28/2018 02:11 PM EDT
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is revising its Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Program Standards to better meet the needs of both animal health officials and the cervid industry. To ensure consistent terminology, APHIS is aligning the language in the program standards with the Code of Federal Regulations.
CWD is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), a progressive and fatal brain disease that can affect cervids, including deer, elk and moose. The CWD Herd Certification Program (HCP) provides a national approach to control CWD in farmed cervids. The program is a cooperative effort between APHIS, State animal health and wildlife agencies, and farmed cervid owners. APHIS coordinates with State agencies to encourage cervid owners to certify their herds and comply with the CWD Herd Certification Program Standards to prevent the introduction and spread of CWD.
The revisions cover a variety of topics including: adding guidelines for live animal testing in specific situations, clarifying how disease investigations should be handled, aligning with the Code of Federal Regulations’ requirement for mortality testing, simplifying fencing requirements, adding biosecurity recommendations, and describing our intended approach to update the CWD-susceptible species list. APHIS also outlines factors for determining indemnity and includes a table that outlines possible reductions in herd certification status that States may consider for herd owners that do not submit required mortality surveillance samples or consistently submit unusable testing samples.
The revisions are based on input from internal and external stakeholders, including scientific experts on CWD and TSEs from the United States and Canada, a working group of State and Federal animal health and wildlife officials and representatives from the farmed cervid industry. These stakeholders reviewed the program standards, identified sections for revision, and provided options for those revisions.
APHIS issued a summary of the working group’s discussions and recommended changes to the CWD Program Standards at the 2016 United States Animal Health Association meeting. The summary was available for public comment and 35 written comments were received.
Members of the public will be able to view the evaluation and submit comments beginning tomorrow at http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=APHIS-2018-0011. The revised program standards will take effect after the 30-day comment period ends, unless members of the public raise significant regulatory issues during the comment period.
APHIS will accept comments until April 30. Comments may be submitted through the following methods:
- Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=APHIS-2018-0011.
- Postal Mail/Commercial Delivery: Send your comment to Docket No. APHIS-2018-0011, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS, Station 3A-03.8, 4700 River Road Unit 118, Riverdale, MD 20737-1238.
- Supporting documents and any comments we receive on this docket may be viewed at http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=APHIS-2018-0011 or in our reading room, which is located in room 1141 of the USDA South Building, 14th Street and Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC. Normal reading room hours are 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, except holidays. To be sure someone is there to help you, please call (202) 799-7039 before coming.
2016 summary;
BILLING CODE: 3410-34-P
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
[Docket No. APHIS-2018-0011]
Notice of Availability of Proposed Changes to the Chronic Wasting Disease Herd Certification
Program Standards
AGENCY: Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, USDA.
ACTION: Notice of availability.
SUMMARY: We are advising the public that we are making available for review and comment
a revised version of the Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Herd Certification Program Standards.
The CWD Program Standards provide guidance on how to meet CWD Herd Certification
Program and interstate movement requirements. We are taking this action to address concerns of
State and industry participants about the existing standards.
DATES: We will consider all comments that we receive on or before [INSERT DATE 30
DAYS AFTER DATE OF PUBLICATION IN THE FEDERAL REGISTER].
ADDRESSES: You may submit comments by either of the following methods:
Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to
Postal Mail/Commercial Delivery: Send your comment to Docket No. APHIS-2018
0011, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS, Station 3A-03.8, 4700 River
Road Unit 118, Riverdale, MD 20737-1238.
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Supporting documents and any comments we receive on this docket may be viewed at
is located in room 1141 of the USDA South Building, 14th Street and Independence Avenue
SW., Washington, DC. Normal reading room hours are 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through
Friday, except holidays. To be sure someone is there to help you, please call (202) 799-7039
before coming.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Dr. Tracy Nichols, Staff Officer, Cervid Health
Team, Surveillance, Preparedness, and Response Services, VS, APHIS, USDA, 2150 Centre
Avenue, Bldg. B, Fort Collins, CO 80526; (970) 494-7380.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy of cervids
(members of Cervidae, the deer family). Species currently known to be susceptible to CWD
include elk, mule deer, moose, white-tailed deer, sika deer, muntjac, reindeer, and black-tailed
deer.
In 2014, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) implemented the
National CWD Herd Certification Program (HCP), a voluntary Federal-State-industry
cooperative program administered by APHIS and implemented by participating States.
Currently, 28 States participate in the program. States and herd owners choosing to participate
must comply with the provisions of 9 CFR parts 55 and 81 (referred to below as the regulations),
which include requirements for animal identification, interstate movement, fencing,
recordkeeping, herd inspections and inventories, animal mortality testing, and response to any
findings of CWD-exposed, -suspect, or -positive herds. APHIS monitors the approved State
HCPs to ensure consistency with Federal standards by means of annual State reporting. With
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each year of successful surveillance, participating herds will advance in status. After 5 years
with no evidence of CWD, APHIS will certify the herd as being low risk for CWD. Only captive
cervids from enrolled herds certified as low risk for CWD may move interstate.
The CWD Program Standards provide detailed guidance on how to meet the regulatory
requirements referred to above. An annual review of the Program Standards is conducted by
APHIS in collaboration with State agencies and industry representatives.
In response to concerns expressed by industry and State partners about the existing CWD
Program Standards, published in 2014, we convened a working group in 2016 to review the
document. Based on the group’s discussions, as well as recommendations from an internal
review, we determined that the Program Standards needed to undergo a number of revisions.
We are advising the public that we have prepared a revised version of the CWD Program
Standards. The proposed revisions include the following:
Revising the goal statement to focus on reducing the risk of interstate transmission of
CWD.
Clarifying that the Program Standards include detailed descriptions of suggested methods
approved by the APHIS Administrator to meet the regulatory requirements.
Making definitions of terms in the Program Standards consistent with the official
definitions in the regulations.
Describing APHIS’ intent to amend the regulations to define susceptible species based on
scientific evidence of natural infection or experimental infections through natural routes
and adding the genera Rangifer and Muntiacus to the list of susceptible species.
Providing support for implementing antemortem immunohistochemistry testing of rectal
anal mucosa associated lymphoid tissue (RAMALT) and medial retropharyngeal lymph
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node (MRPLN) biopsies conducted as a whole-herd test concurrently with genotyping at
Prion Protein Gene (PRNP) codon 96 in white-tailed deer in traceback, traceforward, and
CWD-exposed herds and for disease management in CWD-positive herds.
Providing support for initiating pilot projects using RAMALT and MRPLN biopsies
conducted concurrently with genotyping at PRNP codon 132 in elk in traceback,
traceforward, and CWD-exposed herds and for disease management in CWD-positive
herds to inform decisions about testing protocols.
Clarifying the definitions and processes for performing epidemiological investigations.
Replacing Appendix VI with a worksheet that States must submit for all positive herds
enrolled in the HCP as part of their annual HCP report. Additionally, for any herd for
which Federal indemnity is to be paid, a preliminary and final worksheet must have been
completed as part of the herd plan by a State representative.
Describing the factors that APHIS will consider when making decisions about providing
indemnity for CWD-positive, -exposed, and -suspect animals and describing the relative
priority of each factor.
Clarifying the consequences of poor quality and missing post-mortem surveillance
samples on herd status, as well as describing options States may consider as substitutions
for these samples.
Making the Program Standards language consistent with that of the regulations by
requiring CWD testing of all mortalities from certified herds, including at slaughter and
on hunt facilities when animals remain under the same ownership.
Streamlining the description of fencing characteristics considered necessary to prevent
ingress and egress of cervids for HCP-enrolled herds.
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Eliminating Appendix II: Fencing Requirements and References, and making these
scientific references available upon request.
Moving Part B, Section 5: Sanitary Precautions and Biosecurity Practices for Herd Plans
and Depopulations to an appendix, and simplifying recommendations for premises
decontamination.
Updating and streamlining Appendix IV: Guidelines for Environmental Contamination.
Consolidating the discussion of carcass disposal options in the main body of the Program
Standards and deleting Appendix V: Carcass Disposal.
The revised Program Standards may be viewed on the Regulations.gov website or in our
reading room. (Instructions for accessing Regulations.gov and information on the location and
hours of the reading room are provided under the heading ADDRESSES at the beginning of this
notice.) The documents are also available by contacting the person listed under FOR FURTHER
INFORMATION CONTACT.
After reviewing any comments we receive on the proposed updates, we will publish a
second notice in the Federal Register announcing our decision regarding the proposed changes.
Authority: 7 U.S.C. 8301-8317; 7 CFR 2.22, 2.80, and 371.4.
Done in Washington, DC, this 23rd day of March 2018.
Kevin Shea,
Administrator, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. [FR Doc. 2018-06341 Filed: 3/28/2018 8:45 am; Publication Date: 3/29/2018]
Two commenters recommended that we add requirements to address the potential escape of urine and feces from conveyances being used to move farmed or captive cervids interstate. One commenter stated that research has demonstrated that CWD can be transmitted by environmental transmission, and prions are excreted in the urine and feces of infected animals. The other commenter recommended that we also require decontamination for all transport vehicles and equipment that cross state lines and transporter recordkeeping to allow traceback of all live animals.
We do not consider these requirements to be necessary to mitigate the low risk associated with the movement through a State of farmed or captive cervids that are eligible for interstate movement under
9 CFR part 81. Such farmed or captive cervids are already at low risk for CWD. Wild cervids are unlikely to receive sustained exposure from urine or feces that inadvertently escapes a cervid transport vehicle moving on an interstate highway, for example. Decontamination of transport vehicles and equipment could be required by the receiving State after the animals have been offloaded at their destination. If the commenter is referring to decontamination during transport of a vehicle loaded with animals before the vehicle enters a State en route to its final destination, that would require unloading the cervids, which would potentially pose a greater risk of escape and may affect the welfare of the animals. Finally, all farmed or captive cervids moved interstate are required to be identified in accordance with § 81.2, which requires two forms of animal identification, one of which is official. Under § 81.4, the animal identification must be included on the certificate that accompanies the farmed or captive cervids moved interstate. These requirements allow for any traceback that should be necessary.
snip..
Wild Cervids
Both the July 2006 final rule and the June 2012 interim final rule included requirements for the interstate movement of wild cervids. Specifically, paragraph (b) of § 81.3 requires captive cervids captured from a wild population for interstate movement and release to be accompanied by a certificate stating that the source population has been determined to be low risk for CWD, based on a CWD surveillance program in wild cervid populations that is approved by the State Government of the receiving State and by APHIS.
One commenter stated that this provision preempts the authority of States to control the movement of wild cervids.
As noted in the Background section of the June 2012 interim final rule, the Federal CWD regulations indeed set minimum standards for CWD control. We believe that these are the minimum standards necessary to have an effective CWD control program. The movement of wild cervids captured for interstate movement and release could easily spread CWD. As a result, we have determined that it is necessary to impose minimum restrictions on this movement.
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) Notice:
Comment
Docket No. 00-108-10 Chronic Wasting Disease Herd Certification Program and Interstate Movement of Farmed or Captive Deer, Elk, and Moose; Program Standards
>>>The CWD herd certification program is a voluntary, cooperative program that establishes minimum requirements for the interstate movement of farmed or captive cervids, provisions for participating States to administer Approved State CWD Herd Certification Programs, and provisions for participating herds to become certified as having a low risk of being infected with CWD<<<
Greetings USDA/APHIS et al,
I kindly would like to comment on Docket No. 00-108-10 Chronic Wasting Disease Herd Certification Program and Interstate Movement of Farmed or Captive Deer, Elk, and Moose; Program Standards.
I believe, and in my opinion, and this has been proven by scientific facts, that without a validated and certified test for chronic wasting disease cwd, that is 100% sensitive, and in use, any voluntary effort will be futile. the voluntary ban on mad cow feed and SRMs have failed terribly, the bse mad cow surveillance program has failed terribly, as well as the testing for bse tse prion in cattle, this too has failed terrible. all this has been proven time and time again via OIG reports and GOA reports.
I believe that until this happens, 100% cwd testing with validated test, ALL MOVEMENT OF CERVIDS BETWEEN STATES MUST BE BANNED, AND THE BORDERS CLOSED TO INTERSTATE MOVEMENT OF CERVIDS. there is simply to much at risk.
In my opinion, and the opinions of many scientists and DNR officials, that these so called game farms are the cause of the spreading of chronic wasting disease cwd through much negligence. the game farms in my opinion are not the only cause, but a big factor. I kindly wish to submit the following to show what these factors are, and why interstate movement of cervids must be banned.
*** Spraker suggested an interesting explanation for the occurrence of CWD. The deer pens at the Foot Hills Campus were built some 30-40 years ago by a Dr. Bob Davis. At or abut that time, allegedly, some scrapie work was conducted at this site. When deer were introduced to the pens they occupied ground that had previously been occupied by sheep. ...
also, see where even decades back, the USDA had the same thought as they do today with CWD, not their problem...see page 27 below as well, where USDA stated back then, the same thing they stated in the state of Pennsylvania, not their damn business, once they escape, and they said the same thing about CWD in general back then ;
”The occurrence of CWD must be viewed against the contest of the locations in which it occurred. It was an incidental and unwelcome complication of the respective wildlife research programmes. Despite it’s subsequent recognition as a new disease of cervids, therefore justifying direct investigation, no specific research funding was forthcoming. The USDA veiwed it as a wildlife problem and consequently not their province!” ...page 26.
http://collections.europarchive.org/tna/20080102193705/http://www.bseinquiry.gov.uk/files/mb/m11b/tab01.pdf ;
”The occurrence of CWD must be viewed against the contest of the locations in which it occurred. It was an incidental and unwelcome complication of the respective wildlife research programmes. Despite it’s subsequent recognition as a new disease of cervids, therefore justifying direct investigation, no specific research funding was forthcoming. The USDA veiwed it as a wildlife problem and consequently not their province!” ...page 26.
sound familiar $$$
Sunday, January 06, 2013
USDA TO PGC ONCE CAPTIVES ESCAPE
*** "it‘s no longer its business.”
http://chronic-wasting-disease.blogspot.com/2013/01/usda-to-pgc-once-captives-escape-its-no.html ;
Wednesday, September 04, 2013
*** cwd - cervid captive livestock escapes, loose and on the run in the wild
http://chronic-wasting-disease.blogspot.com/2013/09/cwd-cervid-captive-livestock-escapes.htmlMonday, March 03, 2014
APHIS to Offer Indemnity for CWD Positive Herds as Part of Its Cervid Health Activities
http://chronic-wasting-disease.blogspot.com/2014/03/aphis-to-offer-indemnity-for-cwd.htmlThursday, March 6, 2014
TEXAS RECALL LIST MASSIVE FROM DEAD STOCK DOWNER CANCER COWS OFFAL from Class I Recall 002-2014 and 013-2014 Health Risk: High Jan 13, 2014 and Feb 8, 2014 shipped to Texas, Florida, and Illinois UPDATE FEBRUARY 14, 2014
http://downercattle.blogspot.com/2014/03/texas-recall-list-massive-from-dead.htmlSee attached file(s)
Sunday, June 23, 2013
National Animal Health Laboratory Network Reorganization Concept Paper (Document ID APHIS-2012-0105-0001)
***Terry S. Singeltary Sr. submission
Singeltary submission ;
Program Standards: Chronic Wasting Disease Herd Certification Program and Interstate Movement of Farmed or Captive Deer, Elk, and Moose
DOCUMENT ID: APHIS-2006-0118-0411
***Singeltary submission
Singeltary Submissions to EU on CWD TSE Prion
Friday, November 22, 2013
Wasting disease is threat to the entire UK deer population CWD TSE PRION disease in cervids
***SINGELTARY SUBMISSION
The Scottish Parliament's Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee has been looking into deer management, as you can see from the following press release,
***and your email has been forwarded to the committee for information:
Friday, November 22, 2013
Wasting disease is threat to the entire UK deer population
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Welsh Government and Food Standards Agency Wales Joint Public Consultation on the Proposed Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (Wales) Regulations 2013
*** Singeltary Submission WG18417
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 2018
The executioner in Nordfjella and Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion Skrantesjuke
SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 2018
Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion Goes Global Finland Falls, Behind Norway and S. Korea
FINLAND REPORTS FIRST CASE OF CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE CWD TSE PRION IN A moose or European elk (Alces alces)
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2018
NORWAY CWD TSE PRION Skrantesjuke Nordfjella zone 1 Complete Eradication Complete
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 05, 2017
Norway 30,000 deer animals have so far been tested for Skrantesyke chronic wasting disease CWD TSE PRION DISEASE
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2017
Norway Animal welfare surveillance at Nordfjella Skrantesjuke CWD TSE Prion Update
CWD TSE PRION AND REAL ESTATE LAND VALUES
Fatal deer disease would impact more than hunters in Alabama LAND VALUES
The impact
Alabama is a hunting crazy state.
“The economic impact, of course, is huge,” Sykes said. “Hunting is a major part of the economy in rural areas of Alabama. And hunting is a huge part of the culture in Alabama. It is a part of the fabric of so many people’s lives.”
Land values will likely be the first indicator of bad news if CWD comes to the state, said Jeff Roberts, a real estate agent who sells hunting land in the Black Belt.
“For farmers and landowners, leasing the hunting rights to their places is a huge secondary income for many,” he said. “If CWD comes to Alabama, the land values are going to go into the basement. I’ve had clients turn their backs on absolutely beautiful hunting tracts when they found out feral hogs were on the property. You can imagine what CWD would do to spook buyers.”
WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2017
*** Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion aka Mad Deer Disease and the Real Estate Market Land Values ***
*** After a natural route of exposure, 100% of WTD were susceptible to scrapie.
PO-039: A comparison of scrapie and chronic wasting disease in white-tailed deer Justin Greenlee, Jodi Smith, Eric Nicholson US Dept. Agriculture; Agricultural Research Service, National Animal Disease Center; Ames, IA USA
White-tailed deer are susceptible to the agent of sheep scrapie by intracerebral inoculation
snip...
It is unlikely that CWD will be eradicated from free-ranging cervids, and the disease is likely to continue to spread geographically [10]. However, the potential that white-tailed deer may be susceptible to sheep scrapie by a natural route presents an additional confounding factor to halting the spread of CWD. This leads to the additional speculations that
1) infected deer could serve as a reservoir to infect sheep with scrapie offering challenges to scrapie eradication efforts and
2) CWD spread need not remain geographically confined to current endemic areas, but could occur anywhere that sheep with scrapie and susceptible cervids cohabitate.
This work demonstrates for the first time that white-tailed deer are susceptible to sheep scrapie by intracerebral inoculation with a high attack rate and that the disease that results has similarities to CWD. These experiments will be repeated with a more natural route of inoculation to determine the likelihood of the potential transmission of sheep scrapie to white-tailed deer. If scrapie were to occur in white-tailed deer, results of this study indicate that it would be detected as a TSE, but may be difficult to differentiate from CWD without in-depth biochemical analysis.
2012
PO-039: A comparison of scrapie and chronic wasting disease in white-tailed deer
Justin Greenlee, Jodi Smith, Eric Nicholson US Dept. Agriculture; Agricultural Research Service, National Animal Disease Center; Ames, IA USA
snip...
The results of this study suggest that there are many similarities in the manifestation of CWD and scrapie in WTD after IC inoculation including early and widespread presence of PrPSc in lymphoid tissues, clinical signs of depression and weight loss progressing to wasting, and an incubation time of 21-23 months. Moreover, western blots (WB) done on brain material from the obex region have a molecular profile similar to CWD and distinct from tissues of the cerebrum or the scrapie inoculum. However, results of microscopic and IHC examination indicate that there are differences between the lesions expected in CWD and those that occur in deer with scrapie: amyloid plaques were not noted in any sections of brain examined from these deer and the pattern of immunoreactivity by IHC was diffuse rather than plaque-like.
*** After a natural route of exposure, 100% of WTD were susceptible to scrapie.
Deer developed clinical signs of wasting and mental depression and were necropsied from 28 to 33 months PI. Tissues from these deer were positive for PrPSc by IHC and WB. Similar to IC inoculated deer, samples from these deer exhibited two different molecular profiles: samples from obex resembled CWD whereas those from cerebrum were similar to the original scrapie inoculum. On further examination by WB using a panel of antibodies, the tissues from deer with scrapie exhibit properties differing from tissues either from sheep with scrapie or WTD with CWD. Samples from WTD with CWD or sheep with scrapie are strongly immunoreactive when probed with mAb P4, however, samples from WTD with scrapie are only weakly immunoreactive. In contrast, when probed with mAb’s 6H4 or SAF 84, samples from sheep with scrapie and WTD with CWD are weakly immunoreactive and samples from WTD with scrapie are strongly positive. This work demonstrates that WTD are highly susceptible to sheep scrapie, but on first passage, scrapie in WTD is differentiable from CWD.
2011
*** After a natural route of exposure, 100% of white-tailed deer were susceptible to scrapie.
TUESDAY, MARCH 28, 2017
*** Passage of scrapie to deer results in a new phenotype upon return passage to sheep ***
SHOOTING PENS (HIGH/LOW FENCE), CAPTIVE CERVID FARMING, BREEDING, SPERM MILLS, ANTLER MILLS, URINE MILLS, a petri dish for cwd tse prion disease...
*** Spraker suggested an interesting explanation for the occurrence of CWD. The deer pens at the Foot Hills Campus were built some 30-40 years ago by a Dr. Bob Davis. At or abut that time, allegedly, some scrapie work was conducted at this site. When deer were introduced to the pens they occupied ground that had previously been occupied by sheep.
COLORADO THE ORIGIN OF CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE CWD TSE PRION?
*** Spraker suggested an interesting explanation for the occurrence of CWD. The deer pens at the Foot Hills Campus were built some 30-40 years ago by a Dr. Bob Davis. At or abut that time, allegedly, some scrapie work was conducted at this site. When deer were introduced to the pens they occupied ground that had previously been occupied by sheep.
IN CONFIDENCE, REPORT OF AN UNCONVENTIONAL SLOW VIRUS DISEASE IN ANIMALS IN THE USA 1989
ALSO, one of the most, if not the most top TSE Prion God in Science today is Professor Adriano Aguzzi, and he recently commented on just this, on a cwd post on my facebook page August 20 at 1:44pm, quote;
''it pains me to no end to even comtemplate the possibility, but it seems entirely plausible that CWD originated from scientist-made spread of scrapie from sheep to deer in the colorado research facility. If true, a terrible burden for those involved.'' August 20 at 1:44pm ...end
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2017
Colorado Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion Mandatory Submission of test samples in some areas and zoonosis
TSE Scrapie, CWD, BSE, Prion, Soil
Clay content and pH: soil characteristic associations with the persistent presence of chronic wasting disease in northern Illinois
Sheena J. Dorak, Michelle L. Green, Michelle M. Wander, Marilyn O. Ruiz, Michael G. Buhnerkempe, Ting Tian, Jan E. Novakofski & Nohra E. Mateus-Pinilla
Scientific Reportsvolume 7, Article number: 18062(2017) doi:10.1038/s41598-017-18321-x
Download Citation
Ecological epidemiology Ecological modelling Infectious diseases Prions
Received: 21 August 2017
Accepted: 08 December 2017
Published online: 22 December 2017
Abstract
Environmental reservoirs are important to infectious disease transmission and persistence, but empirical analyses are relatively few. The natural environment is a reservoir for prions that cause chronic wasting disease (CWD) and influences the risk of transmission to susceptible cervids. Soil is one environmental component demonstrated to affect prion infectivity and persistence. Here we provide the first landscape predictive model for CWD based solely on soil characteristics. We built a boosted regression tree model to predict the probability of the persistent presence of CWD in a region of northern Illinois using CWD surveillance in deer and soils data. We evaluated the outcome for possible pathways by which soil characteristics may increase the probability of CWD transmission via environmental contamination. Soil clay content and pH were the most important predictive soil characteristics of the persistent presence of CWD. The results suggest that exposure to prions in the environment is greater where percent clay is less than 18% and soil pH is greater than 6.6. These characteristics could alter availability of prions immobilized in soil and contribute to the environmental risk factors involved in the epidemiological complexity of CWD infection in natural populations of white-tailed deer.
Oral Transmissibility of Prion Disease Is Enhanced by Binding to Soil Particles
Author Summary
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) are a group of incurable neurological diseases likely caused by a misfolded form of the prion protein. TSEs include scrapie in sheep, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (‘‘mad cow’’ disease) in cattle, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Scrapie and chronic wasting disease are unique among TSEs because they can be transmitted between animals, and the disease agents appear to persist in environments previously inhabited by infected animals. Soil has been hypothesized to act as a reservoir of infectivity and to bind the infectious agent. In the current study, we orally dosed experimental animals with a common clay mineral, montmorillonite, or whole soils laden with infectious prions, and compared the transmissibility to unbound agent. We found that prions bound to montmorillonite and whole soils remained orally infectious, and, in most cases, increased the oral transmission of disease compared to the unbound agent. The results presented in this study suggest that soil may contribute to environmental spread of TSEs by increasing the transmissibility of small amounts of infectious agent in the environment.
tse prion soil
cwd tse prion and soil, see more ;
January 14, 2018
Michigan’s Chronic Wasting Disease Working Group Recommendations Report to the Natural Resources Commission Prepared December 2017 CWD Confirmed Cases holding for now at 57 cases
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 07, 2018
Michigan DNR CWD National Perspective: Captive Herd Certification Program - Dr. Tracy Nichols
CURRENT STATUS OF CWD IN CAPTIVE CERVID HERDS IN 16 STATES AS OF MAY 2017
43 ELK HERDS
37 WTD HERDS
1 RED DEER HERD
6 MIX SPECIES HERDS
85 CWD-POSITIVE CAPTIVE HERDS
snip...see
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 07, 2018
Addressing deer disease: DNR, MSU collaborate on deer movement study in south-central Michigan
SATURDAY, MARCH 03, 2018
Minnesota CWD All seven of the remaining white-tailed deer on farm Positive
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2017
Todd Robbins-Miller President of Minnesota Deer Farmers Association is oblivious to Chronic Wasting CWD TSE PRION DISEASE risk factors
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2018
Pennsylvania NEW CWD MANAGEMENT AREA TO BE ANNOUNCED
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2018
Pennsylvania CWD TSE Prion has been found in captive deer in Huntingdon and Lancaster counties
Sent: Thu, Mar 22, 2018 4:00 pm
Subject: TEXAS CWD TSE PRION JUMP TO 100 POSITIVE, NEW CASES 17 BREEDER, 1 BREEDER RELEASE, AND 1 WILD SINCE JAN 31, 2018
TEXAS CWD TSE PRION JUMP TO 100 POSITIVE, NEW CASES 17 BREEDER, 1 BREEDER RELEASE, AND 1 WILD SINCE JAN 31, 2018
CWD Positives in Texas
Show entriesSearch:
CWD Positive
Year Confirmed CWD Positive
Confirmation Date Free Range / Captive County Source Species Sex Age
2018 03/16/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 2.5
2018 03/16/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 4.5
2018 03/16/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2018 03/16/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2018 03/16/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2018 03/16/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2018 03/16/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2018 03/16/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2018 03/16/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2018 03/16/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2018 03/16/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2018 03/16/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2018 03/09/18 Release Site Uvalde Facility #3 Elk F 4.5
2018 02/28/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2018 02/13/18 Free Range Hudspeth Mule Deer M 4.5
2018 02/13/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 7.5
2018 02/13/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 3.5
2018 02/13/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 1.5
2018 02/02/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 7.5
2018 01/31/18 Breeder Release Site Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 2.5
2018 01/29/18 Breeder Release Site Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 6.5
2018 01/08/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 3.5
2018 01/08/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 3.5
2018 01/08/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 6.5
2018 01/08/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 5.5
2018 01/08/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 4.5
2018 01/08/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 4.5
2018 01/08/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 8.5
2018 01/08/18 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 3.5
2018 01/08/18 Breeder Release Site Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 5.5
2018 01/08/18 Breeder Release Site Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 4.5
2017 9/13/17 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 5
2017 7/6/17 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #5 White-tailed Deer M 4
2017 12/29/17 Free Range Hartley White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2017 12/22/17 Free Range Hartley Mule Deer M 2.5
2017 12/22/17 Free Range Hartley Mule Deer M 4.5
2017 12/18/17 Free Range El Paso Mule Deer M 5.5
2017 11/29/17 Breeder Release Site Medina Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 4.5
2017 11/27/17 Breeder Release Site Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer M 4.5
2017 10/6/17 Release Site Medina Facility #3 Elk F 4
2017 10/6/17 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 1
2017 10/25/17 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #5 White-tailed Deer F 3
2017 10/11/17 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer M 7
2017 10/11/17 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 9
2017 10/11/17 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 9
2017 10/11/17 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 4
2017 10/11/17 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 6
2017 10/11/17 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer M 4
2017 10/11/17 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 4
2017 10/11/17 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 4
2017 10/11/17 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 4
2016 9/21/16 Breeder Release Site Medina Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 3.5
2016 6/29/16 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 1
2016 6/29/16 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer M 1
2016 6/29/16 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 1
2016 6/29/16 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer M 1
2016 6/29/16 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 4
2016 6/29/16 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 4
2016 6/29/16 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 4
2016 6/29/16 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 4
2016 6/29/16 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 4
2016 6/29/16 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 4
2016 6/29/16 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 4
2016 6/29/16 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 4
2016 6/29/16 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 4
2nd page
CWD Positive
Year Confirmed CWD Positive
Confirmation Date Free Range / Captive County Source Species Sex Age
2016 6-Jan Free Range Dallam Mule Deer M 2.5
2016 4/13/16 Breeder Deer Lavaca Facility #2 White-tailed Deer M 3
2016 4/13/16 Breeder Deer Lavaca Facility #2 White-tailed Deer M 3
2016 4/13/16 Breeder Deer Lavaca Facility #2 White-tailed Deer M 3
2016 4/13/16 Breeder Deer Lavaca Facility #2 White-tailed Deer M 3
2016 4/1/16 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer F 4.5
2016 3/29/16 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 3
2016 2/9/17 Free Range Hudspeth Mule Deer M 3.5
2016 2/9/17 Free Range Hudspeth Mule Deer M 7.5
2016 2/4/16 Breeder Release Site Medina Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 3
2016 2/18/17 Breeder Release Site Medina Facility #4 White-tailed Deer M 3.5
2016 2/17/17 Free Range Hudspeth Mule Deer M 7.5
2016 2/17/17 Free Range Hudspeth Mule Deer M 5.5
2016 12/6/16 Free Range Dallam Elk M 8.5
2016 10/28/16 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 5.5
2016 10/28/16 Breeder Deer Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer F 4.5
2016 1/6/17 Free Range El Paso Mule Deer M 4.5
2016 1/24/17 Free Range Medina White-tailed Deer M 1.5
2016 1/18/17 Free Range Hartley Mule Deer M 4.5
2016 1/18/17 Breeder Release Site Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 5.5
2016 1/18/17 Breeder Release Site Uvalde Facility #3 White-tailed Deer M 3.5
2015 9/14/15 Breeder Deer Lavaca Facility #2 White-tailed Deer M 3
2015 8/6/15 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #1 White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2015 8/6/15 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #1 White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2015 8/12/15 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #1 White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2015 6/30/15 Breeder Deer Medina Facility #1 White-tailed Deer M 2.5
2015 3/25/16 Free Range Hartley Mule Deer M 3.5
2015 3/18/16 Free Range Hudspeth Mule Deer M 5.5
2014 12/4/14 Free Range Hudspeth Mule Deer M 4.5
2012 7/12/12 Free Range Hudspeth Mule Deer F 6.5
2012 7/12/12 Free Range Hudspeth Mule Deer F 4.5
2012 12/28/12 Free Range Hudspeth Mule Deer M 3.5
2012 12/2/12 Free Range Hudspeth Mule Deer M 5.5
2012 12/10/12 Free Range Hudspeth Mule Deer M 4.5
2012 12/1/12 Free Range Hudspeth Mule Deer M 4.5
Showing 66 to 100 of 100 entries
THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2018
TEXAS CWD TSE PRION JUMP TO 100 POSITIVE, NEW CASES 17 BREEDER, 1 BREEDER RELEASE, AND 1 WILD SINCE JAN 31, 2018
TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 2018
Texas Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion Mad Deer Disease TPWD EXPANDS CONTAINMENT ZONE IN PANHANDLE
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2018
TEXAS TPWD CWD TSE PRION 2 MORE FROM BREEDER RELEASE SITE TOTALS 81 CASES TO DATE
CWD MAP
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2018
TEXAS CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE CWD TSE PRION MOUNTING, JUMPS TO 79 CASES TO DATE
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2018
***> Texas Deer Breeders Continue fight against the state’s wildlife agency and its regulations trying to contain CWD TSE Prion
SUNDAY, MAY 22, 2016
***> TEXAS CWD DEER BREEDERS PLEA TO GOVERNOR ABBOTT TO CIRCUMVENT TPWD SOUND SCIENCE TO LET DISEASE SPREAD
TEXAS HISTORY OF CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE CWD TRANSMISSIBLE SPONGIFORM ENCEPHALOPATHY TSE PRION AKA MAD COW TYPE DISEASE
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2018
Maryland Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion Found In Ten Deer Allegany and Washington Counties
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2018
Montana Special Hunts 9 more cases CWD TSE Prion to date, more samples still pending
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 09, 2018
Mississippi Chronic Wasting Disease confirmed in a White-tailed Deer
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2018
*** MISSISSIPPI STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH Chronic Wasting Disease: Public Health Recommendations ***
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 07, 2018
New Mexico Bans All Live Cervid Importation Due To CWD TSE Prion still NO Final 2017 Positives Update for N.M.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 09, 2018
Virginia 2017 Hunt Confirms 16 Cases Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 05, 2018
Nebraska Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion 2017 Survey Confirms 203 Positives From 1,807 Deer Sampled
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 03, 2018
Arkansas Reports 346 Positive CWD TSE Prion cases found as of January 8, 2018
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 08, 2018
Utah Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion Update to date from 2017 Hunting Season
TUESDAY, JANUARY 30, 2018
Colorado Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion 7/2015-6/2016 Results (2017?)
THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 2018
Ohio Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prioin aka mad deer update 2016-2017 SEASON SUMMARY
SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 2018
Pennsylvania CWD TSE Prion Cases Explodes 51 deer from the 2017-18 hunting seasons have tested positive for CWD majority of samples collected still are being analyzed
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2018
Illinois Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion cases mounting with 75 confirmed 2017 and 685 total to date
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 08, 2018
Iowa DNR Wayne County Confirms CWD with 7 additional CWD positive tests so far from deer in northeast from 2017 season
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2018
Chronic wasting disease management in ranched elk using rectal biopsy testing Research Paper 09 Feb 2018
January 14, 2018
Missouri MDC REPORTS 15 NEW CASES OF CWD TSE Prion in Deer
MONDAY, JANUARY 29, 2018
Wyoming, Hanna, WGFD diagnosed chronic wasting disease (CWD) for the first time in Deer Hunt Area 161
MONDAY, JANUARY 29, 2018
North Dakota CWD Confirmed whitetail buck and a mule deer doe 2017 deer gun season from unit 3F2
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2018
Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion RoundUp February 18, 2018
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2017
*** Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion (aka mad deer disease) Update USA December 14, 2017 ***
(zoonosis and environmental risk factors towards the bottom, after state by state reports)
MONDAY, MARCH 13, 2017
CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE CWD TSE PRION UDATE March 13, 2017
SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2017
CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE CWD TSE PRION GLOBAL UPDATE JANUARY 14, 2017
CWD, spreading it around...
for the game farm industry, and their constituents, to continue to believe that they are _NOT_, and or insinuate that they have _NEVER_ been part of the problem, will only continue to help spread cwd. the game farming industry, from the shooting pens, to the urine mills, the antler mills, the sperm mills, velvet mills, shooting pens, to large ranches, are not the only problem, but it is painfully obvious that they have been part of the problem for decades and decades, just spreading it around, as with transportation and or exportation and or importation of cervids from game farming industry, and have been proven to spread cwd. no one need to look any further than South Korea blunder ;
trucking and spreading cwd around...
Between 1996 and 2002, chronic wasting disease was diagnosed in 39 herds of farmed elk in Saskatchewan in a single epidemic. All of these herds were depopulated as part of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's (CFIA) disease eradication program. Animals, primarily over 12 mo of age, were tested for the presence CWD prions following euthanasia. Twenty-one of the herds were linked through movements of live animals with latent CWD from a single infected source herd in Saskatchewan, 17 through movements of animals from 7 of the secondarily infected herds.
***The source herd is believed to have become infected via importation of animals from a game farm in South Dakota where CWD was subsequently diagnosed (7,4). A wide range in herd prevalence of CWD at the time of herd depopulation of these herds was observed. Within-herd transmission was observed on some farms, while the disease remained confined to the introduced animals on other farms.
spreading cwd around...
Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) outbreaks and surveillance program in the Republic of Korea Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) outbreaks and surveillance program in the Republic of Korea
Hyun-Joo Sohn, Yoon-Hee Lee, Min-jeong Kim, Eun-Im Yun, Hyo-Jin Kim, Won-Yong Lee, Dong-Seob Tark, In- Soo Cho, Foreign Animal Disease Research Division, National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service, Republic of Korea
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been recognized as an important prion disease in native North America deer and Rocky mountain elks. The disease is a unique member of the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), which naturally affects only a few species. CWD had been limited to USA and Canada until 2000.
On 28 December 2000, information from the Canadian government showed that a total of 95 elk had been exported from farms with CWD to Korea.
These consisted of 23 elk in 1994 originating from the so-called "source farm" in Canada, and 72 elk in 1997, which had been held in pre export quarantine at the "source farm".
Based on export information of CWD suspected elk from Canada to Korea, CWD surveillance program was initiated by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) in 2001.
All elks imported in 1997 were traced back, however elks imported in 1994 were impossible to identify.
CWD control measures included stamping out of all animals in the affected farm, and thorough cleaning and disinfection of the premises.
In addition, nationwide clinical surveillance of Korean native cervids, and improved measures to ensure reporting of CWD suspect cases were implemented.
*Total of 9 elks were found to be affected. CWD was designated as a notifiable disease under the Act for Prevention of Livestock Epidemics in 2002.
*Additional CWD cases - 12 elks and 2 elks - were diagnosed in 2004 and 2005.
*Since February of 2005, when slaughtered elks were found to be positive, all slaughtered cervid for human consumption at abattoirs were designated as target of the CWD surveillance program.
Currently, CWD laboratory testing is only conducted by National Reference Laboratory on CWD, which is the Foreign Animal Disease Division (FADD) of National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service (NVRQS).
*In July 2010, one out of 3 elks from Farm 1 which were slaughtered for the human consumption was confirmed as positive.
*Consequently, all cervid - 54 elks, 41 Sika deer and 5 Albino deer - were culled and one elk was found to be positive.
Epidemiological investigations were conducted by Veterinary Epidemiology Division (VED) of NVRQS in collaboration with provincial veterinary services.
*Epidemiologically related farms were found as 3 farms and all cervid at these farms were culled and subjected to CWD diagnosis.
*Three elks and 5 crossbreeds (Red deer and Sika deer) were confirmed as positive at farm 2.
All cervids at Farm 3 and Farm 4 - 15 elks and 47 elks - were culled and confirmed as negative.
Further epidemiological investigations showed that these CWD outbreaks were linked to the importation of elks from Canada in 1994 based on circumstantial evidences.
*In December 2010, one elk was confirmed as positive at Farm 5.
*Consequently, all cervid - 3 elks, 11 Manchurian Sika deer and 20 Sika deer - were culled and one Manchurian Sika deer and seven Sika deer were found to be positive.
This is the first report of CWD in these sub-species of deer.
*Epidemiological investigations found that the owner of the Farm 2 in CWD outbreaks in July 2010 had co-owned the Farm 5.
*In addition, it was newly revealed that one positive elk was introduced from Farm 6 of Jinju-si Gyeongsang Namdo.
All cervid - 19 elks, 15 crossbreed (species unknown) and 64 Sika deer - of Farm 6 were culled, but all confirmed as negative.
: Corresponding author: Dr. Hyun-Joo Sohn (+82-31-467-1867, E-mail:
shonhj@korea.kr) 2011 Pre-congress Workshop: TSEs in animals and their environment 5
Friday, May 13, 2011
Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) outbreaks and surveillance program in the Republic of Korea
USA MAD DEER ROUNDUP
Feb. 16, 2018
Durkin: Stop private deer industry from trucking CWD across state
Patrick Durkin, For USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin Published 10:13 a.m. CT Feb. 16, 2018
A Waupaca County captive-deer shooting preserve that discovered its first two cases of chronic wasting disease in October found 10 more CWD cases last fall, with 11 of the deer coming from a breeding facility in Iowa County — Wisconsin’s most infected county.
Hunt’s End Deer Ranch near Ogdensburg is one of 376 fenced deer farms in Wisconsin, according to the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. Hunt’s End bought the diseased deer from Windy Ridge Whitetails, a 15-acre, 110-deer breeding facility south of Mineral Point in Iowa County. Of Wisconsin’s 4,175 CWD cases in wild deer, 2,261 (54 percent) are in Iowa County.
Since CWD’s discovery in three wild deer shot during the November 2001 gun season, CWD has been detected on 18 Wisconsin deer farms, of which 11 were “depopulated.” DATCP has identified 242 CWD cases in captive facilities the past 16 years.
The state’s worst site remains the former Buckhorn Flats Game Farm near Almond in Portage County, where 80 deer tested positive for this always-fatal disease from 2002 to 2006. When the U.S. Department of Agriculture shot out the 70-acre pen in January 2006, 60 of the remaining 76 deer carried CWD, a nearly 80 percent infection rate.
The Department of Natural Resources bought the heavily contaminated site for $465,000 in 2011 and has kept it fenced and deer-free since.
The last time DATCP exterminated a captive herd was November 2015, when it killed 228 deer at Fairchild Whitetails, a 10-acre breeding facility in Eau Claire County, and paid its owner, Richard Vojtik, $298,770 in compensation. Tests revealed 34 of those deer carried CWD (15 percent), but two bucks had escaped earlier. Those bucks roamed five months before being shot and tested. They, too, had CWD.
Both operations were outside the endemic CWD region in southern Wisconsin; Buckhorn Flats by about 60 miles and Fairchild Whitetails by about 120. Wisconsin’s four most active CWD outbreaks on deer farms are north of U.S. 10, and farther away from the endemic region — basically the DNR’s Southern Farmlands district — which had 584 CWD cases 2017-18 and 4,148 since 2001.
Those businesses are:
• Wilderness Whitetails, near Eland in Marathon County: 68 CWD cases, including 43 in 2017-18. DATCP first reported CWD there in December 2013 in a 5-year-old buck shot by a facility client. The operation also found three cases in 2014, nine in 2015 and 12 in 2016.
The preserve held about 310 deer in its 351-acre pen last summer. Since beginning tests in 2002, the facility tested 373 deer before finding its first case 11 years later.
• Hunt’s End, Waupaca County: 12 cases, all in 2017-18. The owners, Dusty and Mandy Reid, didn’t detect CWD on the 84-acre shooting facility until two 4-year-old bucks tested positive last fall. DATCP announced those cases Oct. 20, and disclosed 10 additional cases in response to my open-records request in January.
Both Oct. 20 bucks originated from Windy Ridge Whitetails. Nine other bucks from Windy Ridge, owned by Steven and Marsh Bertram, tested positive for CWD after being shot by Hunt’s End clients.
Now DATCP records covering the past five years showed Hunt’s End acquired 31 deer from Windy Ridge, which also sent a combined 67 whitetails to nine other Wisconsin deer farms during that period.
Paul McGraw, DATCP’s state veterinarian and administrator in animal health, quarantined three Hunt’s End properties Oct. 20, but let its owners, continue selling hunts because “properly handled dead animals leaving the premises do not pose a disease risk.”
McGraw also quarantined Windy Ridge, but the specifications let the business move more deer to the Waupaca shooting facility. It made two more shipments to Hunt’s End, the last occurring Nov. 13.
• Apple Creek Whitetails, Oconto County: 11 cases. Since discovering CWD in September 2016 in an 18-month-old doe killed inside the facility near Gillett, DATCP has identified 10 more cases, including three in 2017-18. The preserve held about 1,850 deer on 1,363 acres, and tested 466 in 2016. After first testing for CWD in 2009, the business processed 1,192 deer before finding its first case 18 months ago.
• Three Lakes Trophy Ranch, Oneida County: Nine cases. Since discovering CWD in December 2015 in a 3-year-old buck at Three Lakes, DATCP has identified eight more cases, including two in 2017-18. The preserve held about 545 whitetails on 570 acres.
Although the Hunt’s End outbreak traces to Iowa County deer, Windy Ridge Whitetails sent even more deer, 42, to Vojtik’s American Adventures Ranch near Fairchild with no documented problems. DATCP reports no CWD cases there, and Vojtik, who also owned the 10-acre Fairchild Whitetails breeding facility, said he hasn’t bought Windy Ridge deer the past two years.
Vojtik said Wednesday that he and his clients shoot out his enclosure’s herd of about 200 deer each year to reduce CWD risks. And because he’s not in DATCP’s herd-status program, he must only test 50 percent of deer dying there.
Meanwhile, Wilderness Whitetails tests all of its dead deer. It leads the state with 68 CWD cases, even though it has maintained a “closed herd” since opening its Eland facility in 2004, said its owner, Greg Flees, when reached Wednesday. Flees said all deer in the 351-acre facility were born there or came from his family’s Portage County breeding pen, which began in the 1970s and has never had CWD.
Flees said the jump from 12 CWD cases in 2016 to 43 in 2017 is no mystery or surprise. “We shot more deer to lower our densities, so we found more CWD,” he said. He thinks CWD was in the facility’s soils when they enclosed it with an 8-foot-high fence 14 years ago, or it arrived in alfalfa bales brought in for feed.
Perhaps the bigger mystery is why DATCP allows any deer from Iowa County to be shipped anywhere. Windy Ridge Whitetails is one of eight captive-deer facilities in CWD-infected counties — Sauk, Dane, Iowa, Rock, Walworth and Richland — enrolled in DATCP’s herd-status program, which allows deer transfers if facilities follow specified guidelines.
That won’t change soon, either. In a letter Jan. 30 responding to my open records request, Paul Dedinsky, DATCP’s chief legal counsel, wrote, “The Department is not proposing any rule changes to prohibit movement from CWD endemic areas.”
No doubt Wisconsin’s wild deer provide a vast, mostly undocumented pool for spreading CWD, but sick deer can only carry disease as far as they walk. With DATCP’s approval, privately owned deer could spread CWD wherever they’re trucked.
Patrick Durkin is a freelance writer who covers outdoors for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. Email him at
patrickdurkin56@gmail.com.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2018
Wisconsin Stop private deer industry from trucking CWD across state
MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2018
Wisconsin Rep. Milroy Wants More Action to Combat CWD TSE Prion aka Mad Deer Disease on Wisconsin's deer farms
SATURDAY, MARCH 03, 2018
WISCONSIN CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE TSE Prion DNR Study Finds CWD-Infected Deer Die At 3 Times Rate Of Healthy Animals
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2018
Wisconsin Deer from Now-Quarantined PA Lancaster County Farm Tests Positive for Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion
FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 2018
WISCONSIN REPORTS 588 CWD TSE PRION POSITIVE CASES FOR 2017 WITH 4170 CASES CONFIRMED TO DATE
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE CWD WISCONSIN Almond Deer (Buckhorn Flats) Farm Update DECEMBER 2011
The CWD infection rate was nearly 80%, the highest ever in a North American captive herd. RECOMMENDATION: That the Board approve the purchase of 80 acres of land for $465,000 for the Statewide Wildlife Habitat Program in Portage County and approve the restrictions on public use of the site.
SUMMARY:
The overall incidence of clinical CWD in white-tailed deer was 82% Species (cohort) CWD (cases/total) Incidence (%) Age at CWD death (mo)
captive deer farmers breeders entitlement program, i.e. indemnity program, why?
how many states have $465,000., and can quarantine and purchase there from, each cwd said infected farm, but how many states can afford this for all the cwd infected cervid game ranch type farms, and why do tax payers have to pay for it ???
For Immediate Release Thursday, October 2, 2014
*** TEST RESULTS FROM CAPTIVE DEER HERD WITH CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE RELEASED 79.8 percent of the deer tested positive for the disease ***
DES MOINES – The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship today announced that the test results from the depopulation of a quarantined captive deer herd in north-central Iowa showed that 284 of the 356 deer, or 79.8% of the herd, tested positive for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD).
For Immediate Release
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Dustin Vande Hoef 515/281-3375 or 515/326-1616 (cell) or Dustin.VandeHoef@IowaAgriculture.gov Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on email Share on print More Sharing Services 1
TEST RESULTS FROM CAPTIVE DEER HERD WITH CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE RELEASED 79.8 percent of the deer tested positive for the disease
DES MOINES – The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship today announced that the test results from the depopulation of a quarantined captive deer herd in north-central Iowa showed that 284 of the 356 deer, or 79.8% of the herd, tested positive for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). The owners of the quarantined herd have entered into a fence maintenance agreement with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, which requires the owners to maintain the 8’ foot perimeter fence around the herd premises for five years after the depopulation was complete and the premises had been cleaned and disinfected
CWD is a progressive, fatal, degenerative neurological disease of farmed and free-ranging deer, elk, and moose. There is no known treatment or vaccine for CWD. CWD is not a disease that affects humans.
On July 18, 2012, USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) National Veterinary Services Lab in Ames, IA confirmed that a male white tail deer harvested from a hunting preserve in southeast IA was positive for CWD. An investigation revealed that this animal had just been introduced into the hunting preserve from the above-referenced captive deer herd in north-central Iowa.
The captive deer herd was immediately quarantined to prevent the spread of CWD. The herd has remained in quarantine until its depopulation on August 25 to 27, 2014.
The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship participated in a joint operation to depopulate the infected herd with USDA Veterinary Services, which was the lead agency, and USDA Wildlife Services.
Federal indemnity funding became available in 2014. USDA APHIS appraised the captive deer herd of 376 animals at that time, which was before depopulation and testing, at $1,354,250. At that time a herd plan was developed with the owners and officials from USDA and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.
Once the depopulation was complete and the premises had been cleaned and disinfected, indemnity of $917,100.00 from the USDA has been or will be paid to the owners as compensation for the 356 captive deer depopulated.
The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship operates a voluntary CWD program for farms that sell live animals. Currently 145 Iowa farms participate in the voluntary program. The above-referenced captive deer facility left the voluntary CWD program prior to the discovery of the disease as they had stopped selling live animals. All deer harvested in a hunting preserve must be tested for CWD.
-30-
79.8 percent of the deer tested positive for the disease
DES MOINES – The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship today announced that the test results from the depopulation of a quarantined captive deer herd in north-central Iowa showed that 284 of the 356 deer, or 79.8% of the herd, tested positive for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). The owners of the quarantined herd have entered into a fence maintenance agreement with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, which requires the owners to maintain the 8’ foot perimeter fence around the herd premises for five years after the depopulation was complete and the premises had been cleaned and disinfected
CWD is a progressive, fatal, degenerative neurological disease of farmed and free-ranging deer, elk, and moose. There is no known treatment or vaccine for CWD. CWD is not a disease that affects humans.
On July 18, 2012, USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) National Veterinary Services Lab in Ames, IA confirmed that a male white tail deer harvested from a hunting preserve in southeast IA was positive for CWD. An investigation revealed that this animal had just been introduced into the hunting preserve from the above-referenced captive deer herd in north-central Iowa.
The captive deer herd was immediately quarantined to prevent the spread of CWD. The herd has remained in quarantine until its depopulation on August 25 to 27, 2014.
The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship participated in a joint operation to depopulate the infected herd with USDA Veterinary Services, which was the lead agency, and USDA Wildlife Services.
Federal indemnity funding became available in 2014. USDA APHIS appraised the captive deer herd of 376 animals at that time, which was before depopulation and testing, at $1,354,250. At that time a herd plan was developed with the owners and officials from USDA and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.
Once the depopulation was complete and the premises had been cleaned and disinfected, indemnity of $917,100.00 from the USDA has been or will be paid to the owners as compensation for the 356 captive deer depopulated.
The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship operates a voluntary CWD program for farms that sell live animals. Currently 145 Iowa farms participate in the voluntary program. The above-referenced captive deer facility left the voluntary CWD program prior to the discovery of the disease as they had stopped selling live animals. All deer harvested in a hunting preserve must be tested for CWD.
INFORM: Cervid Health and States Indemnity FY 2015
USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service sent this bulletin at 09/19/2014 05:22 PM EDT
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Veterinary Services (VS) received a total of $3 million in appropriated funding to support cervid health activities in fiscal year (FY) 2014, and made approximately $1.0 million of this funding available for indemnity of chronic wasting disease (CWD) positive, suspect, and exposed farmed cervids. All of the available FY2014 indemnity funding was used to depopulate three CWD-infected herds. However, several States have asked about the availability of Federal indemnity funds for CWD-exposed animals in the future.
VS plans to offer Federal indemnity for CWD-exposed cervids beginning in FY2015. Briefly, we will prioritize the highest risk CWD-exposed animals for indemnity based on the availability of funding. Any newly reported CWD-positive herds will be considered for indemnity as they are identified, based first on funding availability and secondly on the risk presented by the herd.
We will reassess our fiscal year funding on a quarterly basis so that providing indemnity for exposed animals does not exhaust available funding early in the fiscal year. By taking this fiscally cautious approach, we hope to provide indemnity for positive herds identified later in the fiscal year while removing high-risk animals from the landscape as soon as possible to minimize the risk for disease spread. Further, removal and testing of these exposed animals will provide a better understanding of the disease risk presented by these animals/herds.
VS plans to work with our State and industry stakeholders on the criteria to assess the risk and on the process through which States can request this indemnity. These will be finalized in a VS Guidance Document in the near future. We look forward to working with you to implement this process in the coming year.
***
MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2018
Wisconsin Rep. Milroy Wants More Action to Combat CWD TSE Prion aka Mad Deer Disease on Wisconsin's deer farms
SATURDAY, MARCH 03, 2018
WISCONSIN CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE TSE Prion DNR Study Finds CWD-Infected Deer Die At 3 Times Rate Of Healthy Animals
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2018
Wisconsin Deer from Now-Quarantined PA Lancaster County Farm Tests Positive for Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion
FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 2018
WISCONSIN REPORTS 588 CWD TSE PRION POSITIVE CASES FOR 2017 WITH 4170 CASES CONFIRMED TO DATE
USA MAD DEER ROUNDUP
Feb. 16, 2018
Durkin: Stop private deer industry from trucking CWD across state
Patrick Durkin, For USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin Published 10:13 a.m. CT Feb. 16, 2018
A Waupaca County captive-deer shooting preserve that discovered its first two cases of chronic wasting disease in October found 10 more CWD cases last fall, with 11 of the deer coming from a breeding facility in Iowa County — Wisconsin’s most infected county.
Hunt’s End Deer Ranch near Ogdensburg is one of 376 fenced deer farms in Wisconsin, according to the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. Hunt’s End bought the diseased deer from Windy Ridge Whitetails, a 15-acre, 110-deer breeding facility south of Mineral Point in Iowa County. Of Wisconsin’s 4,175 CWD cases in wild deer, 2,261 (54 percent) are in Iowa County.
Since CWD’s discovery in three wild deer shot during the November 2001 gun season, CWD has been detected on 18 Wisconsin deer farms, of which 11 were “depopulated.” DATCP has identified 242 CWD cases in captive facilities the past 16 years.
The state’s worst site remains the former Buckhorn Flats Game Farm near Almond in Portage County, where 80 deer tested positive for this always-fatal disease from 2002 to 2006. When the U.S. Department of Agriculture shot out the 70-acre pen in January 2006, 60 of the remaining 76 deer carried CWD, a nearly 80 percent infection rate.
The Department of Natural Resources bought the heavily contaminated site for $465,000 in 2011 and has kept it fenced and deer-free since.
The last time DATCP exterminated a captive herd was November 2015, when it killed 228 deer at Fairchild Whitetails, a 10-acre breeding facility in Eau Claire County, and paid its owner, Richard Vojtik, $298,770 in compensation. Tests revealed 34 of those deer carried CWD (15 percent), but two bucks had escaped earlier. Those bucks roamed five months before being shot and tested. They, too, had CWD.
Both operations were outside the endemic CWD region in southern Wisconsin; Buckhorn Flats by about 60 miles and Fairchild Whitetails by about 120. Wisconsin’s four most active CWD outbreaks on deer farms are north of U.S. 10, and farther away from the endemic region — basically the DNR’s Southern Farmlands district — which had 584 CWD cases 2017-18 and 4,148 since 2001.
Those businesses are:
• Wilderness Whitetails, near Eland in Marathon County: 68 CWD cases, including 43 in 2017-18. DATCP first reported CWD there in December 2013 in a 5-year-old buck shot by a facility client. The operation also found three cases in 2014, nine in 2015 and 12 in 2016.
The preserve held about 310 deer in its 351-acre pen last summer. Since beginning tests in 2002, the facility tested 373 deer before finding its first case 11 years later.
• Hunt’s End, Waupaca County: 12 cases, all in 2017-18. The owners, Dusty and Mandy Reid, didn’t detect CWD on the 84-acre shooting facility until two 4-year-old bucks tested positive last fall. DATCP announced those cases Oct. 20, and disclosed 10 additional cases in response to my open-records request in January.
Both Oct. 20 bucks originated from Windy Ridge Whitetails. Nine other bucks from Windy Ridge, owned by Steven and Marsh Bertram, tested positive for CWD after being shot by Hunt’s End clients.
Now DATCP records covering the past five years showed Hunt’s End acquired 31 deer from Windy Ridge, which also sent a combined 67 whitetails to nine other Wisconsin deer farms during that period.
Paul McGraw, DATCP’s state veterinarian and administrator in animal health, quarantined three Hunt’s End properties Oct. 20, but let its owners, continue selling hunts because “properly handled dead animals leaving the premises do not pose a disease risk.”
McGraw also quarantined Windy Ridge, but the specifications let the business move more deer to the Waupaca shooting facility. It made two more shipments to Hunt’s End, the last occurring Nov. 13.
• Apple Creek Whitetails, Oconto County: 11 cases. Since discovering CWD in September 2016 in an 18-month-old doe killed inside the facility near Gillett, DATCP has identified 10 more cases, including three in 2017-18. The preserve held about 1,850 deer on 1,363 acres, and tested 466 in 2016. After first testing for CWD in 2009, the business processed 1,192 deer before finding its first case 18 months ago.
• Three Lakes Trophy Ranch, Oneida County: Nine cases. Since discovering CWD in December 2015 in a 3-year-old buck at Three Lakes, DATCP has identified eight more cases, including two in 2017-18. The preserve held about 545 whitetails on 570 acres.
Although the Hunt’s End outbreak traces to Iowa County deer, Windy Ridge Whitetails sent even more deer, 42, to Vojtik’s American Adventures Ranch near Fairchild with no documented problems. DATCP reports no CWD cases there, and Vojtik, who also owned the 10-acre Fairchild Whitetails breeding facility, said he hasn’t bought Windy Ridge deer the past two years.
Vojtik said Wednesday that he and his clients shoot out his enclosure’s herd of about 200 deer each year to reduce CWD risks. And because he’s not in DATCP’s herd-status program, he must only test 50 percent of deer dying there.
Meanwhile, Wilderness Whitetails tests all of its dead deer. It leads the state with 68 CWD cases, even though it has maintained a “closed herd” since opening its Eland facility in 2004, said its owner, Greg Flees, when reached Wednesday. Flees said all deer in the 351-acre facility were born there or came from his family’s Portage County breeding pen, which began in the 1970s and has never had CWD.
Flees said the jump from 12 CWD cases in 2016 to 43 in 2017 is no mystery or surprise. “We shot more deer to lower our densities, so we found more CWD,” he said. He thinks CWD was in the facility’s soils when they enclosed it with an 8-foot-high fence 14 years ago, or it arrived in alfalfa bales brought in for feed.
Perhaps the bigger mystery is why DATCP allows any deer from Iowa County to be shipped anywhere. Windy Ridge Whitetails is one of eight captive-deer facilities in CWD-infected counties — Sauk, Dane, Iowa, Rock, Walworth and Richland — enrolled in DATCP’s herd-status program, which allows deer transfers if facilities follow specified guidelines.
That won’t change soon, either. In a letter Jan. 30 responding to my open records request, Paul Dedinsky, DATCP’s chief legal counsel, wrote, “The Department is not proposing any rule changes to prohibit movement from CWD endemic areas.”
No doubt Wisconsin’s wild deer provide a vast, mostly undocumented pool for spreading CWD, but sick deer can only carry disease as far as they walk. With DATCP’s approval, privately owned deer could spread CWD wherever they’re trucked.
Patrick Durkin is a freelance writer who covers outdoors for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. Email him at
patrickdurkin56@gmail.com.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2018
Wisconsin Stop private deer industry from trucking CWD across state
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE CWD WISCONSIN Almond Deer (Buckhorn Flats) Farm Update DECEMBER 2011
The CWD infection rate was nearly 80%, the highest ever in a North American captive herd. RECOMMENDATION: That the Board approve the purchase of 80 acres of land for $465,000 for the Statewide Wildlife Habitat Program in Portage County and approve the restrictions on public use of the site.
SUMMARY:
captive deer farmers breeders entitlement program, i.e. indemnity program, why?
how many states have $465,000., and can quarantine and purchase there from, each cwd said infected farm, but how many states can afford this for all the cwd infected cervid game ranch type farms, and why do tax payers have to pay for it ???
For Immediate Release Thursday, October 2, 2014
*** TEST RESULTS FROM CAPTIVE DEER HERD WITH CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE RELEASED 79.8 percent of the deer tested positive for the disease ***
DES MOINES – The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship today announced that the test results from the depopulation of a quarantined captive deer herd in north-central Iowa showed that 284 of the 356 deer, or 79.8% of the herd, tested positive for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD).
For Immediate Release
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Dustin Vande Hoef 515/281-3375 or 515/326-1616 (cell) or Dustin.VandeHoef@IowaAgriculture.gov Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on email Share on print More Sharing Services 1
TEST RESULTS FROM CAPTIVE DEER HERD WITH CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE RELEASED 79.8 percent of the deer tested positive for the disease
DES MOINES – The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship today announced that the test results from the depopulation of a quarantined captive deer herd in north-central Iowa showed that 284 of the 356 deer, or 79.8% of the herd, tested positive for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). The owners of the quarantined herd have entered into a fence maintenance agreement with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, which requires the owners to maintain the 8’ foot perimeter fence around the herd premises for five years after the depopulation was complete and the premises had been cleaned and disinfected
CWD is a progressive, fatal, degenerative neurological disease of farmed and free-ranging deer, elk, and moose. There is no known treatment or vaccine for CWD. CWD is not a disease that affects humans.
On July 18, 2012, USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) National Veterinary Services Lab in Ames, IA confirmed that a male white tail deer harvested from a hunting preserve in southeast IA was positive for CWD. An investigation revealed that this animal had just been introduced into the hunting preserve from the above-referenced captive deer herd in north-central Iowa.
The captive deer herd was immediately quarantined to prevent the spread of CWD. The herd has remained in quarantine until its depopulation on August 25 to 27, 2014.
The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship participated in a joint operation to depopulate the infected herd with USDA Veterinary Services, which was the lead agency, and USDA Wildlife Services.
Federal indemnity funding became available in 2014. USDA APHIS appraised the captive deer herd of 376 animals at that time, which was before depopulation and testing, at $1,354,250. At that time a herd plan was developed with the owners and officials from USDA and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.
Once the depopulation was complete and the premises had been cleaned and disinfected, indemnity of $917,100.00 from the USDA has been or will be paid to the owners as compensation for the 356 captive deer depopulated.
The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship operates a voluntary CWD program for farms that sell live animals. Currently 145 Iowa farms participate in the voluntary program. The above-referenced captive deer facility left the voluntary CWD program prior to the discovery of the disease as they had stopped selling live animals. All deer harvested in a hunting preserve must be tested for CWD.
-30-
79.8 percent of the deer tested positive for the disease
DES MOINES – The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship today announced that the test results from the depopulation of a quarantined captive deer herd in north-central Iowa showed that 284 of the 356 deer, or 79.8% of the herd, tested positive for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). The owners of the quarantined herd have entered into a fence maintenance agreement with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, which requires the owners to maintain the 8’ foot perimeter fence around the herd premises for five years after the depopulation was complete and the premises had been cleaned and disinfected
CWD is a progressive, fatal, degenerative neurological disease of farmed and free-ranging deer, elk, and moose. There is no known treatment or vaccine for CWD. CWD is not a disease that affects humans.
On July 18, 2012, USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) National Veterinary Services Lab in Ames, IA confirmed that a male white tail deer harvested from a hunting preserve in southeast IA was positive for CWD. An investigation revealed that this animal had just been introduced into the hunting preserve from the above-referenced captive deer herd in north-central Iowa.
The captive deer herd was immediately quarantined to prevent the spread of CWD. The herd has remained in quarantine until its depopulation on August 25 to 27, 2014.
The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship participated in a joint operation to depopulate the infected herd with USDA Veterinary Services, which was the lead agency, and USDA Wildlife Services.
Federal indemnity funding became available in 2014. USDA APHIS appraised the captive deer herd of 376 animals at that time, which was before depopulation and testing, at $1,354,250. At that time a herd plan was developed with the owners and officials from USDA and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.
Once the depopulation was complete and the premises had been cleaned and disinfected, indemnity of $917,100.00 from the USDA has been or will be paid to the owners as compensation for the 356 captive deer depopulated.
The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship operates a voluntary CWD program for farms that sell live animals. Currently 145 Iowa farms participate in the voluntary program. The above-referenced captive deer facility left the voluntary CWD program prior to the discovery of the disease as they had stopped selling live animals. All deer harvested in a hunting preserve must be tested for CWD.
INFORM: Cervid Health and States Indemnity FY 2015
USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service sent this bulletin at 09/19/2014 05:22 PM EDT
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Veterinary Services (VS) received a total of $3 million in appropriated funding to support cervid health activities in fiscal year (FY) 2014, and made approximately $1.0 million of this funding available for indemnity of chronic wasting disease (CWD) positive, suspect, and exposed farmed cervids. All of the available FY2014 indemnity funding was used to depopulate three CWD-infected herds. However, several States have asked about the availability of Federal indemnity funds for CWD-exposed animals in the future.
VS plans to offer Federal indemnity for CWD-exposed cervids beginning in FY2015. Briefly, we will prioritize the highest risk CWD-exposed animals for indemnity based on the availability of funding. Any newly reported CWD-positive herds will be considered for indemnity as they are identified, based first on funding availability and secondly on the risk presented by the herd.
We will reassess our fiscal year funding on a quarterly basis so that providing indemnity for exposed animals does not exhaust available funding early in the fiscal year. By taking this fiscally cautious approach, we hope to provide indemnity for positive herds identified later in the fiscal year while removing high-risk animals from the landscape as soon as possible to minimize the risk for disease spread. Further, removal and testing of these exposed animals will provide a better understanding of the disease risk presented by these animals/herds.
VS plans to work with our State and industry stakeholders on the criteria to assess the risk and on the process through which States can request this indemnity. These will be finalized in a VS Guidance Document in the near future. We look forward to working with you to implement this process in the coming year.
***
$$$ indemnity, welfare for deer farmers, or, an entitlement program, paid for by taxpayers, paying to play, for farming cwd, on the backs of the tax payers...imo...tss
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 07, 2018
Michigan DNR CWD National Perspective: Captive Herd Certification Program - Dr. Tracy Nichols
CURRENT STATUS OF CWD IN CAPTIVE CERVID HERDS IN 16 STATES AS OF MAY 2017
43 ELK HERDS
37 WTD HERDS
1 RED DEER HERD
6 MIX SPECIES HERDS
85 CWD-POSITIVE CAPTIVE HERDS
snip...see
THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2018
TEXAS CWD TSE PRION JUMP TO 100 POSITIVE, NEW CASES 17 BREEDER, 1 BREEDER RELEASE, AND 1 WILD SINCE JAN 31, 2018
TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 2018
Texas Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion Mad Deer Disease TPWD EXPANDS CONTAINMENT ZONE IN PANHANDLE
SATURDAY, MARCH 03, 2018
Minnesota CWD All seven of the remaining white-tailed deer on farm Positive
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2017
Todd Robbins-Miller President of Minnesota Deer Farmers Association is oblivious to Chronic Wasting CWD TSE PRION DISEASE risk factors
02/28/2018
NEW CWD MANAGEMENT AREA ESTABLISHED
HARRISBURG, PA - People who live and hunt deer within parts of Lancaster, Lebanon and Berks counties now need to comply with special rules intended to slow the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD).
The Pennsylvania Game Commission today established Disease Management Area 4 (DMA 4) in response to a CWD-positive deer recently detected at a captive deer farm in Lancaster County.
DMA 4 encompasses 346 square miles in northeastern Lancaster County, southeastern Lebanon County and western Berks County. The northern part of DMA 4 runs roughly between the cities of Lebanon and Reading. The DMA includes the boroughs of Adamstown, Denver, Ephrata, Mohnton, Richland, Womelsdorf and Wyomissing. State Game Lands 46, 220, 225, 274 and 425 are included in DMA 4.
Within DMAs, special rules apply. The intentional feeding of deer is prohibited. Hunters may not use urine-based deer attractants or possess them while afield. And hunters who harvest deer within a DMA may not transport the carcass outside the DMA without first removing and properly disposing of all high-risk deer parts, including the head and backbone.
While the rules might pose an inconvenience, they are meant to slow the spread of CWD, which so far has been detected in only a few parts of the state.
“CWD is an increasing problem in Pennsylvania, and as the disease emerges in new areas, more Pennsylvanians are impacted,” said Game Commission Executive Director Bryan Burhans. “To this point, however, CWD has been detected in captive or free-ranging deer only in a few, isolated areas of the state. That’s good news for all Pennsylvanians who enjoy deer and deer hunting. And we continue to focus our resources on ways to minimize CWD’s impacts statewide.”
CWD, which is always fatal to deer, elk and other cervids, first was detected in Pennsylvania in 2012 at a captive deer farm in Adams County. CWD has been detected among free-ranging deer in two areas of the state.
In addition to establishing DMA 4, the Game Commission will increase its CWD sampling there.
Within DMA 4, the agency will begin testing all known road-killed deer for CWD. Come hunting season, bins for the collection of deer heads and other high-risk deer parts will be placed in areas for the public to use. Hunters who deposit the heads of the deer they harvest in designated collection bins will be able to have their deer tested, free of charge. And DMAP permits for use within DMA 4 will be available for purchase.
Wayne Laroche, the Game Commission’s special assistant for CWD response, said increased sampling within DMA 4 is necessary to find out whether CWD exists among free-ranging deer there, and adjust the response accordingly.
“We need to know the full extent of the CWD problem in any area where the disease exists,” Laroche said. “We have not detected CWD among free-ranging deer in DMA 4, and maybe we won’t. But if CWD is out there, we surely need to know about it to confront it head-on.”
Information on CWD and Pennsylvania’s DMAs, including maps of all DMAs, is available at www.pgc.pa.gov.
DMA 4 boundary
The exact boundary of DMA 4 is as follows: Beginning in the northwestern extent of the DMA in the city of Lebanon, at the intersection of state Route 897 and U.S. Route 422, proceed east on U.S. Route 422 for 12.3 miles to state Route 419. Turn left on state Route 419 and proceed north for 2.3 miles to Christmas Village Road (state Route 4010). Turn right, proceeding east on Christmas Village Road for 5.1 miles to North Heidelberg Road (state Route 3033). Turn left on North Heidelberg Road, proceeding northeast for 0.6 miles to state Route 183. Turn right on state Route 183, proceeding southeast for 7.7 miles to the U.S. 222. Turn right on U.S. 222 proceeding southwest for 3.2 miles to the interchange with U.S. Route 422 Bypass. Proceed on U.S. Route 422 Bypass for 2.4 miles to intersection with Business Route 222E (Lancaster Avenue). Proceed south on Business 222E for 0.6 miles to the intersection with state Route 625. Turn left onto state Route 625 and proceed south for 16.7 miles to the intersection with Route 23. Turn right on Route 23, proceeding westerly for 9.7 miles to intersection with state Route 772 (Glenbrook Road). Turn right on state Route 772, proceeding northwest for 9.3 miles to state Route 501 (Furnace Hills Pike). Turn right on state Route 501, proceeding northerly for 5 miles to the intersection with U.S. Route 322 (West 28th Division Highway). Turn left on U.S. Route 322, proceeding westerly for 1.3 miles to the Pennsylvania Turnpike (U.S. Route 76). Move right along U.S. Route 76, proceeding east for 0.7 miles to the western boundary of State Game Lands 46. Proceed north, then east for 1.2 miles along the game lands boundary to state Route 501 (Furnace Hills Pike). Turn left on state Route 501, proceeding north for 4.1 miles to the intersection with state Route 419. Turn left, proceeding west for 0.1 miles to state Route 897 (South 5th Street). Turn right on state Route 897, proceeding northwest for 6.2 miles to the starting point at the intersection of state Route 897 and U.S. Route 422.
CWD in Pennsylvania
In Pennsylvania, the Game Commission oversees the management and protection of all free-ranging deer, while farm-raised deer and facilities are overseen by the state Department of Agriculture. The agencies work together to monitor chronic wasting disease.
After CWD was detected in 2012 at a captive deer farm in Adams County, the Game Commission established Disease Management Area 1 (DMA 1), a nearly 600-square-mile area in Adams and York counties, in which restrictions regarding the hunting and feeding of deer applied.
CWD was detected among free-ranging deer a few months later, in three deer harvested by hunters in Bedford and Blair counties in the 2012 firearms season. The deer were detected through the Game Commission’s ongoing CWD surveillance program.
Those CWD-positive deer resulted in the creation of DMA 2, which initially encompassed nearly 900 square miles in parts of Bedford, Blair, Cambria and Huntingdon counties, but since has expanded annually due to the detection of additional free-ranging and captive CWD-positive deer. DMA 2 now encompasses more than 2,845 square miles in parts of Adams, Bedford, Blair Cambria, Clearfield, Cumberland, Franklin, Fulton, Huntingdon and Somerset counties.
So far, 104 free-ranging CWD-positive deer, and 46 of CWD-positive captive deer, have been detected within DMA 2.
In 2014, CWD was detected at a captive deer farm in Jefferson County, leading to the creation of DMA 3, which encompasses about 350 square miles in parts of Clearfield, Indiana and Jefferson counties. In July 2017, a sick-looking adult buck euthanized a month earlier on state game lands in Clearfield County, within DMA 3, was confirmed as CWD-positive. An additional CWD-positive deer was detected within DMA 3 in the 2017-18 hunting season.
In 2017, the Game Commission eliminated DMA 1 after five years of monitoring, which included the testing of 4,800 wild deer; CWD never was found in the wild within DMA 1.
Hunters harvesting deer within DMAs are prohibited from transporting the high-risk parts of those deer (head and backbone) outside the DMA. If those hunters live outside the DMA, and are processing the deer themselves, they must remove and properly dispose of the high-risk parts before taking other parts of the deer home.
Deer meat may be transported outside a DMA so long as the head and backbone have been removed. Antlers may also be transported from a DMA if the skull plate is free of visible brain material.
Hunters using professional meat processors to process the meat from deer they harvest within a DMA must take the deer to processors within the DMA, or otherwise included on the list of approved processors associated with that DMA. There’s also a list of approved taxidermists associated with each DMA.
The feeding of deer and the use or field possession of urine-based deer lures while hunting also are prohibited within DMAs.
# # #
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2018
Pennsylvania NEW CWD MANAGEMENT AREA TO BE ANNOUNCED
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2018
Pennsylvania CWD TSE Prion has been found in captive deer in Huntingdon and Lancaster counties
ATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 2018Pennsylvania CWD TSE Prion Cases Explodes 51 deer from the 2017-18 hunting seasons have tested positive for CWD majority of samples collected still are being analyzedhttp://chronic-wasting-disease.blogspot.com/2018/01/pennsylvania-cwd-tse-prion-cases.html
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2017
Pennsylvania Four Deer Test Positive for Chronic Wasting Disease on Franklin, Fulton County Quarantined Hunting Preserves
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2017
Pennsylvania GAME COMMISSION OFFERS FREE CWD TESTS FOR DMA-HARVESTED DEER
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2017
Pennsylvania Game Commission has scheduled a series of public meetings to ensure Pennsylvanians remain informed about chronic wasting disease CWD TSE Prion
SATURDAY, AUGUST 12, 2017
*** Pennsylvania 27 deer from Bedford County farm test positive for chronic wasting disease ***
WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 2017
PENNSYLVANIA CWD FOUND IN THE WILD IN CLEARFIELD COUNTY
PENNSYLVANIA Third Case of CWD Discovered in a Captive Deer Farm in Four Months
Chronic wasting disease research becomes more crucial as cases grow in Pa. deer With fatal deer disease on the rise, Penn State researchers hunt for answers to help limit CWD's spread Jeff Mulhollem May 23, 2017 UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa, — The recent announcement by the Pennsylvania Game Commission that it found 25 more wild deer with chronic wasting disease last year underlines the importance of studies being conducted by a team of researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.
With the overarching goal of determining how the always-fatal-to-cervids disease will disburse through the state's free-ranging white-tailed deer herd, the research is aimed at informing the commission's efforts to slow or limit the spread of the disease, according to David Walter, adjunct assistant professor of wildlife ecology.
Often referred to as CWD, chronic wasting disease infects the brain and nervous system of cervids. The illness, which belongs to a group of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or prion diseases, eventually produces enough damage to the brains of affected animals to result in death. While CWD is similar to so-called mad cow disease in cattle and scrapie in sheep, there is no known relationship between them.
There is no strong evidence, either, that humans can contract CWD, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, although the disease is similar to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare, fatal syndrome that afflicts people.
Walter, who is assistant unit leader of the Pennsylvania Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at Penn State, conducted research from 2007 to 2011 on the spread of the disease in Colorado and Nebraska in free-ranging mule deer and white-tailed deer. Since coming to Penn State in 2012, he has concentrated on the CWD outbreak spreading through deer herds in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Working under Walter's guidance in 2013-14, master's degree student Tyler Evans, now a wildlife biologist with the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources, investigated the geographic coordinates where deer testing positive for CWD were found, and he modeled the likely future spread of the disease in Pennsylvania.
Miller and a deer head Chronic wasting disease infects the brain and nervous system of cervids, and animals cannot be tested while they are alive. Here, researcher Will Miller (left) samples a deer head for the disease.
Image: Penn State "That research looked at what environmental variables were associated with the presence or absence of chronic wasting disease in the Northeast," Walter said. "We obtained the geographic coordinates of hunter-killed deer that tested positive for CWD and overlaid them on a map showing a variety of habitat and landscape features. The analysis showed a high prevalence of CWD in deer sampled from low-lying open and developed landscapes."
Now, Walter's advisee Will Miller, a doctoral degree candidate in the Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, is continuing to study the spread of CWD in Pennsylvania. But he is focusing on whether some deer might be susceptible to the disease because of their genes, and how genetic variation in deer might influence where and how fast the disease spreads.
"It appears that deer in Pennsylvania's Northern Tier are less related to those in Maryland and in southern Pennsylvania," Walter said. "That may well have implications for how CWD spreads."
Walter and Miller are slated to travel to Edinburgh, Scotland, in late May to attend an international conference focused on prions and diseases the mysterious proteins cause. At the conference, Miller will present findings of his research focusing on genetic susceptibility of some deer in Pennsylvania to chronic wasting disease.
Detected in captive and free-ranging deer and elk in 23 states and two Canadian provinces, CWD was found last year in reindeer in Norway, Walter pointed out. "The Europeans are eager to learn what we know about the disease, based on our experience in North America," he said. "But despite all that we are learning about the disease, there is much we still don't know."
In the case of the outbreak in Pennsylvania's wild deer, that includes how the disease infected free-ranging deer in Pennsylvania. Among the possible sources, two include captive deer and wild deer moving from Maryland. Although researchers have seen evidence that deer may carry the disease over the border with Maryland, the Pennsylvania counties of Blair and Bedford, where CWD originally was found in 2012, also had the highest inventories of captive cervids in Pennsylvania.
map showing CWD outbreaks Genetics research focusing on "microsatellite markers" in white-tailed deer in Pennsylvania and surrounding states has indicated four clusters within deer herds with animal movement more likely within a cluster than between clusters.
Image: Penn State The location of the original outbreak, which was more than 40 miles from the Maryland border, makes it difficult to confirm the actual source of infection.
"In southern Fulton and Bedford counties, we have seen more CWD-positive deer along the border," Walter said. "We have seen over time that it is likely the disease is moving into this area from the West Virginia-Maryland outbreak."
The Game Commission tests both hunter-killed deer and animals killed on highways in parts of the state for CWD to assess the dimensions of the outbreak, Walter noted. The dual approach addresses sampling bias built into testing hunter harvests.
Because hunters are restricted by antler regulations from killing young male deer, and they mostly pass on taking young females and button bucks, some reached the mistaken conclusion that the disease primarily infects older deer. But road kills show that is not the case, Walter explained.
"It is a chronic disease, so it takes a while for the animal to succumb, but there is a fallacy out there that young deer can't get it — but they do, and we are detecting it now. Wisconsin has found CWD in fawns," he said.
"Most of the road kills with CWD are yearling males and females. We don't see that in hunter harvests, so our data from across the country has been skewed. Collecting and testing road kills has been a great investment of resources, and it has proved to be very valuable in finding this disease in areas we wouldn't find it otherwise."
Chronic wasting disease is not established in Pennsylvania yet, the way it is in Wisconsin and West Virginia, Walter believes, and he would like to see the Game Commission and state Department of Agriculture take steps, such as targeted culling of deer in CWD hotspots, to keep it at bay.
MEDIA CONTACTS: Jeff Muhollem jjm29@psu.edu Work Phone: 814-863-2719
MONDAY, MAY 15, 2017
Pennsylvania 25 more deer test positive for CWD TSE PRION in the wild
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 01, 2017
South central Pennsylvania Captive Deer Tests Positive for Chronic Wasting Disease
FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2017
Pennsylvania Deer Tests Positive for Chronic Wasting Disease four-year-old white-tailed deer Franklin County Hunting Preserve
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
PENNSYLVANIA TWELVE MORE CASES OF CWD FOUND: STATE GEARS UP FOR ADDITIONAL CONTROL MEASURES
Sunday, October 18, 2015
*** Pennsylvania Game Commission Law and Law Makers CWD TSE PRION Bans Singeltary 2002 from speaking A smelly situation UPDATED 2015
Saturday, November 07, 2015
PENNSYLVANIA CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE CWD TSE PRION RULES EXPAND
Saturday, November 07, 2015
Pennsylvania 2015 September Minutes CWD Urine Scents
Tuesday, May 05, 2015
Pennsylvania CWD DETECTED IN SIX MORE FREE-RANGING DEER Disease Management Area 2 again expanded due to new cases Release #030-15
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Louisiana deer mystery unleashes litigation 6 does still missing from CWD index herd in Pennsylvania Great Escape
Saturday, June 29, 2013
PENNSYLVANIA CAPTIVE CWD INDEX HERD MATE YELLOW *47 STILL RUNNING LOOSE IN INDIANA, YELLOW NUMBER 2 STILL MISSING, AND OTHERS ON THE RUN STILL IN LOUISIANA
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
*** CWD GONE WILD, More cervid escapees from more shooting pens on the loose in Pennsylvania
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Chronic Wasting Disease CWD quarantine Louisiana via CWD index herd Pennsylvania Update May 28, 2013
*** 6 doe from Pennsylvania CWD index herd still on the loose in Louisiana, quarantine began on October 18, 2012, still ongoing, Lake Charles premises.
Sunday, January 06, 2013
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
PENNSYLVANIA 2012 THE GREAT ESCAPE OF CWD INVESTIGATION MOVES INTO LOUISIANA and INDIANA
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
PA Captive deer from CWD-positive farm roaming free
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Pennsylvania Confirms First Case CWD Adams County Captive Deer Tests Positive
”The occurrence of CWD must be viewed against the contest of the locations in which it occurred. It was an incidental and unwelcome complication of the respective wildlife research programmes. Despite it’s subsequent recognition as a new disease of cervids, therefore justifying direct investigation, no specific research funding was forthcoming. The USDA veiwed it as a wildlife problem and consequently not their province!” page 26.https://web.archive.org/web/20060307063531/http://www.bseinquiry.gov.uk/files/mb/m11b/tab01.pdf
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 03, 2012
Wisconsin Farm-Raised Deer Farms and CWD there from 2012 report Singeltary et al
Monday, January 16, 2012
9 GAME FARMS IN WISCONSIN TEST POSITIVE FOR CWD
see full text and more here ;
Thursday, February 09, 2012
50 GAME FARMS IN USA INFECTED WITH CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE
early days and game farms
MONDAY, MARCH 05, 2018
TRUCKING AROUND AND SPREADING CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE CWD TSE PRION VIA MOVEMENT OF CERVID AND TRANSPORTATION VEHICLES
MONDAY, MARCH 05, 2018
Chronic Wasting Disease: Status, Science, and Management EXPLANATION U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2017–1138 March 2018
Sunday, February 25, 2018
PRION ROUND TABLE CONFERENCE 2018 MAY, 22-25 A REVIEW
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2018
World Animal Organization (OIE) Appoints Veterinary Institute as first European reference laboratory for land animal health field of CWD or skrantesjuke scratch disease
TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 2018
Scientific opinion on chronic wasting disease (II) EFSA Panel on Biological Hazards (BIOHAZ) ZOONOSIS
''IN PARTICULAR THE US DATA DO NOT CLEARLY EXCLUDE THE POSSIBILITY OF HUMAN (SPORADIC OR FAMILIAL) TSE DEVELOPMENT DUE TO CONSUMPTION OF VENISON. THE WORKING GROUP THUS RECOGNIZES A POTENTIAL RISK TO CONSUMERS IF A TSE WOULD BE PRESENT IN EUROPEAN CERVIDS.''
SCIENTIFIC OPINION ON CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE (II)
EFSA Panel on Biological Hazards (BIOHAZ) Antonia Ricci Ana Allende Declan Bolton Marianne Chemaly Robert Davies Pablo Salvador Fernández Escámez ... See all authors
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 2018
The executioner in Nordfjella and Chronic Wasting Disease CWD TSE Prion Skrantesjuke
O.05: Transmission of prions to primates after extended silent incubation periods: Implications for BSE and scrapie risk assessment in human populations Emmanuel Comoy, Jacqueline Mikol, Valerie Durand, Sophie Luccantoni, Evelyne Correia, Nathalie Lescoutra, Capucine Dehen, and Jean-Philippe Deslys Atomic Energy Commission; Fontenay-aux-Roses, France Prion diseases (PD) are the unique neurodegenerative proteinopathies reputed to be transmissible under field conditions since decades. The transmission of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) to humans evidenced that an animal PD might be zoonotic under appropriate conditions. Contrarily, in the absence of obvious (epidemiological or experimental) elements supporting a transmission or genetic predispositions, PD, like the other proteinopathies, are reputed to occur spontaneously (atpical animal prion strains, sporadic CJD summing 80% of human prion cases). Non-human primate models provided the first evidences supporting the transmissibiity of human prion strains and the zoonotic potential of BSE. Among them, cynomolgus macaques brought major information for BSE risk assessment for human health (Chen, 2014), according to their phylogenetic proximity to humans and extended lifetime. We used this model to assess the zoonotic potential of other animal PD from bovine, ovine and cervid origins even after very long silent incubation periods.
*** We recently observed the direct transmission of a natural classical scrapie isolate to macaque after a 10-year silent incubation period,
***with features similar to some reported for human cases of sporadic CJD, albeit requiring fourfold long incubation than BSE. Scrapie, as recently evoked in humanized mice (Cassard, 2014),
***is the third potentially zoonotic PD (with BSE and L-type BSE),
***thus questioning the origin of human sporadic cases.
We will present an updated panorama of our different transmission studies and discuss the implications of such extended incubation periods on risk assessment of animal PD for human health.
===============
***thus questioning the origin of human sporadic cases***
===============
***our findings suggest that possible transmission risk of H-type BSE to sheep and human. Bioassay will be required to determine whether the PMCA products are infectious to these animals.
==============
***Transmission data also revealed that several scrapie prions propagate in HuPrP-Tg mice with efficiency comparable to that of cattle BSE. While the efficiency of transmission at primary passage was low, subsequent passages resulted in a highly virulent prion disease in both Met129 and Val129 mice.
***Transmission of the different scrapie isolates in these mice leads to the emergence of prion strain phenotypes that showed similar characteristics to those displayed by MM1 or VV2 sCJD prion.
***These results demonstrate that scrapie prions have a zoonotic potential and raise new questions about the possible link between animal and human prions.
PRION 2016 TOKYO
Saturday, April 23, 2016
SCRAPIE WS-01: Prion diseases in animals and zoonotic potential 2016
Prion. 10:S15-S21. 2016 ISSN: 1933-6896 printl 1933-690X online
Taylor & Francis
Prion 2016 Animal Prion Disease Workshop Abstracts
WS-01: Prion diseases in animals and zoonotic potential
Juan Maria Torres a, Olivier Andreoletti b, J uan-Carlos Espinosa a. Vincent Beringue c. Patricia Aguilar a,
Natalia Fernandez-Borges a. and Alba Marin-Moreno a
"Centro de Investigacion en Sanidad Animal ( CISA-INIA ). Valdeolmos, Madrid. Spain; b UMR INRA -ENVT 1225 Interactions Holes Agents Pathogenes. ENVT. Toulouse. France: "UR892. Virologie lmmunologie MolécuIaires, Jouy-en-Josas. France
Dietary exposure to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) contaminated bovine tissues is considered as the origin of variant Creutzfeldt Jakob (vCJD) disease in human. To date, BSE agent is the only recognized zoonotic prion. Despite the variety of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) agents that have been circulating for centuries in farmed ruminants there is no apparent epidemiological link between exposure to ruminant products and the occurrence of other form of TSE in human like sporadic Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (sCJD). However, the zoonotic potential of the diversity of circulating TSE agents has never been systematically assessed. The major issue in experimental assessment of TSEs zoonotic potential lies in the modeling of the ‘species barrier‘, the biological phenomenon that limits TSE agents’ propagation from a species to another. In the last decade, mice genetically engineered to express normal forms of the human prion protein has proved essential in studying human prions pathogenesis and modeling the capacity of TSEs to cross the human species barrier.
To assess the zoonotic potential of prions circulating in farmed ruminants, we study their transmission ability in transgenic mice expressing human PrPC (HuPrP-Tg). Two lines of mice expressing different forms of the human PrPC (129Met or 129Val) are used to determine the role of the Met129Val dimorphism in susceptibility/resistance to the different agents.
These transmission experiments confirm the ability of BSE prions to propagate in 129M- HuPrP-Tg mice and demonstrate that Met129 homozygotes may be susceptible to BSE in sheep or goat to a greater degree than the BSE agent in cattle and that these agents can convey molecular properties and neuropathological indistinguishable from vCJD. However homozygous 129V mice are resistant to all tested BSE derived prions independently of the originating species suggesting a higher transmission barrier for 129V-PrP variant.
Transmission data also revealed that several scrapie prions propagate in HuPrP-Tg mice with efficiency comparable to that of cattle BSE. While the efficiency of transmission at primary passage was low, subsequent passages resulted in a highly virulent prion disease in both Met129 and Val129 mice.
Transmission of the different scrapie isolates in these mice leads to the emergence of prion strain phenotypes that showed similar characteristics to those displayed by MM1 or VV2 sCJD prion.
These results demonstrate that scrapie prions have a zoonotic potential and raise new questions about the possible link between animal and human prions.
why do we not want to do TSE transmission studies on chimpanzees $
5. A positive result from a chimpanzee challenged severly would likely create alarm in some circles even if the result could not be interpreted for man. I have a view that all these agents could be transmitted provided a large enough dose by appropriate routes was given and the animals kept long enough. Until the mechanisms of the species barrier are more clearly understood it might be best to retain that hypothesis.
snip...
R. BRADLEY
Title: Transmission of scrapie prions to primate after an extended silent incubation period)
*** In complement to the recent demonstration that humanized mice are susceptible to scrapie, we report here the first observation of direct transmission of a natural classical scrapie isolate to a macaque after a 10-year incubation period. Neuropathologic examination revealed all of the features of a prion disease: spongiform change, neuronal loss, and accumulation of PrPres throughout the CNS.
*** This observation strengthens the questioning of the harmlessness of scrapie to humans, at a time when protective measures for human and animal health are being dismantled and reduced as c-BSE is considered controlled and being eradicated.
*** Our results underscore the importance of precautionary and protective measures and the necessity for long-term experimental transmission studies to assess the zoonotic potential of other animal prion strains.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2018
Experimental sheep BSE prions generate the vCJD phenotype when serially passaged in transgenic mice expressing human prion protein
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2017
Detection of PrPBSE and prion infectivity in the ileal Peyer’s patch of young calves as early as 2 months after oral challenge with classical bovine spongiform encephalopathy
Diagnosis and Reporting of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
Singeltary, Sr et al. JAMA.2001; 285: 733-734. Vol. 285 No. 6, February 14, 2001 JAMA Diagnosis and Reporting of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
To the Editor:
In their Research Letter, Dr Gibbons and colleagues1 reported that the annual US death rate due to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) has been stable since 1985. These estimates, however, are based only on reported cases, and do not include misdiagnosed or preclinical cases. It seems to me that misdiagnosis alone would drastically change these figures. An unknown number of persons with a diagnosis of Alzheimer disease in fact may have CJD, although only a small number of these patients receive the postmortem examination necessary to make this diagnosis. Furthermore, only a few states have made CJD reportable. Human and animal transmissible spongiform encephalopathies should be reportable nationwide and internationally.
Terry S. Singeltary, Sr Bacliff, Tex
1. Gibbons RV, Holman RC, Belay ED, Schonberger LB. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the United States: 1979-1998. JAMA. 2000;284:2322-2323.
Tracking spongiform encephalopathies in North America
Xavier Bosch
Published: August 2003
Summary;
“My name is Terry S Singeltary Sr, and I live in Bacliff, Texas. I lost my mom to hvCJD (Heidenhain variant CJD) and have been searching for answers ever since. What I have found is that we have not been told the truth. CWD in deer and elk is a small portion of a much bigger problem.”
49-year-old Singeltary is one of a number of people who have remained largely unsatisfied after being told that a close relative died from a rapidly progressive dementia compatible with spontaneous Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). So he decided to gather hundreds of documents on transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) and realised that if Britons could get variant CJD from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), Americans might get a similar disorder from chronic wasting disease (CWD) the relative of mad cow disease seen among deer and elk in the USA. Although his feverish search did not lead him to the smoking gun linking CWD to a similar disease in North American people, it did uncover a largely disappointing situation.
Singeltary was greatly demoralised at the few attempts to monitor the occurrence of CJD and CWD in the USA. Only a few states have made CJD reportable. Human and animal TSEs should be reportable nationwide and internationally, he complained in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA 2003; 285: 733). "I hope that the CDC does not continue to expect us to still believe that the 85% plus of all CJD cases which are sporadic are all spontaneous, without route or source."
Until recently, CWD was thought to be confined to the wild in a small region in Colorado. But since early 2002, it has been reported in other areas, including Wisconsin, South Dakota, and the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Indeed, the occurrence of CWD in states that were not endemic previously increased concern about a widespread outbreak and possible transmission to people and cattle.
To date, experimental studies have proven that the CWD agent can be transmitted to cattle by intracerebral inoculation and that it can cross the mucous membranes of the digestive tract to initiate infection in lymphoid tissue before invasion of the central nervous system. Yet the plausibility of CWD spreading to people has remained elusive.
Part of the problem seems to stem from the US surveillance system. CJD is only reported in those areas known to be endemic foci of CWD. Moreover, US authorities have been criticised for not having performed enough prionic tests in farm deer and elk.
Although in November last year the US Food and Drug Administration issued a directive to state public-health and agriculture officials prohibiting material from CWD-positive animals from being used as an ingredient in feed for any animal species, epidemiological control and research in the USA has been quite different from the situation in the UK and Europe regarding BSE.
"Getting data on TSEs in the USA from the government is like pulling teeth", Singeltary argues. "You get it when they want you to have it, and only what they want you to have."
Norman Foster, director of the Cognitive Disorders Clinic at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI, USA), says that "current surveillance of prion disease in people in the USA is inadequate to detect whether CWD is occurring in human beings"; adding that, "the cases that we know about are reassuring, because they do not suggest the appearance of a new variant of CJD in the USA or atypical features in patients that might be exposed to CWD. However, until we establish a system that identifies and analyses a high proportion of suspected prion disease cases we will not know for sure". The USA should develop a system modelled on that established in the UK, he points out.
Ali Samii, a neurologist at Seattle VA Medical Center who recently reported the cases of three hunters "two of whom were friends" who died from pathologically confirmed CJD, says that "at present there are insufficient data to claim transmission of CWD into humans"; adding that "[only] by asking [the questions of venison consumption and deer/elk hunting] in every case can we collect suspect cases and look into the plausibility of transmission further". Samii argues that by making both doctors and hunters more aware of the possibility of prions spreading through eating venison, doctors treating hunters with dementia can consider a possible prion disease, and doctors treating CJD patients will know to ask whether they ate venison.
CDC spokesman Ermias Belay says that the CDC "will not be investigating the [Samii] cases because there is no evidence that the men ate CWD-infected meat". He notes that although "the likelihood of CWD jumping the species barrier to infect humans cannot be ruled out 100%" and that "[we] cannot be 100% sure that CWD does not exist in humans& the data seeking evidence of CWD transmission to humans have been very limited".
26 March 2003
Terry S. Singeltary, retired (medically) CJD WATCH
I lost my mother to hvCJD (Heidenhain Variant CJD). I would like to comment on the CDC's attempts to monitor the occurrence of emerging forms of CJD. Asante, Collinge et al [1] have reported that BSE transmission to the 129-methionine genotype can lead to an alternate phenotype that is indistinguishable from type 2 PrPSc, the commonest sporadic CJD. However, CJD and all human TSEs are not reportable nationally. CJD and all human TSEs must be made reportable in every state and internationally. I hope that the CDC does not continue to expect us to still believe that the 85%+ of all CJD cases which are sporadic are all spontaneous, without route/source. We have many TSEs in the USA in both animal and man. CWD in deer/elk is spreading rapidly and CWD does transmit to mink, ferret, cattle, and squirrel monkey by intracerebral inoculation. With the known incubation periods in other TSEs, oral transmission studies of CWD may take much longer. Every victim/family of CJD/TSEs should be asked about route and source of this agent. To prolong this will only spread the agent and needlessly expose others. In light of the findings of Asante and Collinge et al, there should be drastic measures to safeguard the medical and surgical arena from sporadic CJDs and all human TSEs. I only ponder how many sporadic CJDs in the USA are type 2 PrPSc?
2001 FDA CJD TSE Prion Singeltary Submission
*** U.S.A. 50 STATE BSE MAD COW CONFERENCE CALL Jan. 9, 2001
2 January 2000 British Medical Journal U.S.
Scientist should be concerned with a CJD epidemic in the U.S., as well
15 November 1999 British Medical Journal hvCJD in the USA * BSE in U.S.
Sunday, February 25, 2018
PRION ROUND TABLE CONFERENCE 2018 MAY, 22-25 A REVIEW
***Moreover, sporadic disease has never been observed in breeding colonies or primate research laboratories, most notably among hundreds of animals over several decades of study at the National Institutes of Health25, and in nearly twenty older animals continuously housed in our own facility.***
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Variably protease-sensitive prionopathy (VPSPr), sporadic creutzfeldt jakob disease sCJD, the same disease, what if?
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 2018
USDA APHIS NOTICE: APHIS Revises Chronic Wasting Disease Program Standards March 28, 2018
Scientific opinion on chronic wasting disease (II) EFSA Panel on Biological Hazards (BIOHAZ) ZOONOSIS
FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2018
Docket No. APHIS-2018-0011 Chronic Wasting Disease Herd Certification Program Standards Singeltary Submission March 30, 2018
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