CWD SCARE

One recent weekend, Channel 10 News ran a story detailing that two Texas hunters had died from eating CWD-tainted venison. Since the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) has told us that one of every three deer in our area is infected with Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) from the tests that the commission runs on samples of deer taken during hunting seasons and that are taken from road-killed deer, the possible transfer of CWD to humans is chilling.

Being frightened by this possibility myself, I went to the Internet to locate the whole story. Two men hunting from the same lodge in Texas who ate venison from the same deer population died soon afterwards, according to a report authored by researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center of San Antonio, published in the journal “Neurology.” Both men died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human version of CWD. The authors said the research pointed to a “possible novel animal to human transmission of CWD,” though they acknowledged that the study did not prove that consuming venison from a deer infected with CWD eventually caused the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. That possibility had not been ruled out either.

Internet information also noted that experts in the field say that “no strong evidence” exists to indicate that prions seen in CWD can infect humans. However, studies involving primates have suggested that CWD is transferable to primates and “raises a concern that CWD may pose a risk to people and suggest that it is important to prevent human exposure to CWD.”

In the May 10, 2024, issue of “Pennsylvania Outdoor News,” Editor Jeff Mulhollem writes that the Centers for Disease Control has said “there’s no connection between their [the hunters] deaths and being exposed to CWD.” However, the report has “sent shudders through the hunting communities – like our state’s – dealing with CWD in their herds.”

Mulhollem added, “We are already hearing from hunters in Bedford and Blair counties, where CWD is now endemic in the deer population, who say their families will not be eating any more venison.”

In its efforts to understand and to combat the spread of CWD, one thing the PGC has done is to place containers in convenient areas for hunters to drop off the heads of their harvested deer for testing. With the possibility of the jump of CWD to humans who have eaten venison from a population of infected deer, it is a good idea to have any deer you harvest this year tested for CWD. As the PGC advises, don’t eat meat from an infected deer.