Developing New Test for Deer and Elk Disease

Chronic Wasting Disease is killing wild deer and elk. And it’s slowly spreading to new areas in North America. Right now, tests for the disease are done after the animals are dead, but researchers say they might be getting closer to a test that can be given to live animals. The GLRC’s Christina Shockley reports:

Transcript

Chronic Wasting Disease is killing wild deer and elk. And it’s slowly spreading to new areas
in North America. Right now, tests for the disease are done after the animals are dead,
but researchers say they might be getting closer to a test that can be given to live animals.
The GLRC’s Christina Shockley reports on what this might mean in the fight against the disease:


Chronic Wasting Disease, or CWD, causes deer and elk to waste away and die.
The disease is causing hunters and wildlife officials to worry about the
future of the wild deer population. Right now, testing a brain sample from a
dead animal is the sure-fire way to detect the infectious protiens, called prions, that
cause the disease.


Alan Young is a Veterinary Science professor at South Dakota State University.
He’s developing the new test.


“Our ultimate goal is basically to develop a test for infectivity in blood,
by taking a blood sample, and then analyzing for the presence of the infectious prion protein.”


Young says a blood test would let deer and elk farmers know if their herds are
infected before the animals die. He says the research could also lead to a cure for CWD.


For the GLRC, I’m Christina Shockley.

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Aftermath of Chronic Wasting Disease

Wildlife managers in Wisconsin are facing a daunting task… how to dispose of thousands of potentially infectious deer carcasses. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gil Halsted reports:

Transcript

Wildlife managers in Wisconsin are facing a daunting task… how to dispose of thousands of potentially infectious deer carcasses. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gil Halsted reports:


Eighteen deer have tested positive for chronic wasting disease in an area of southwestern Wisconsin. To keep the disease from spreading, the state plans to kill 30-thousand deer in the area. But because the disease is related to mad cow disease, county landfills are refusing to bury the deer carcasses. The fear is that the mutant protein known as a prion that causes the disease could seep out of the landfill and pose a threat to human health.


Topf Wells is a spokesperson for Dane County, one of several counties that have refused to accept carcasses.


“The problem that many people are concerned about is that these prions are probably not destroyed by the forces in a landfill that lead to the decomposition of a lot of material.”


If counties don’t change their minds, the state may have to store thousands of deer carcasses in cold storage units during this fall’s hunt. Incinerating carcasses is another option. But at 75 dollars a deer it could prove too costly.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Gil Halsted.