Mad Deer Disease: No Joke for Meat-eaters

The funny notion of being a “cheesehead“ summons up a cruel and horrific new image in Wisconsin these days, due to the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) among the state‘s deer herd -- a disease which is spreading to human beings.
Linked to Mad Cow Disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, CWD has killed at least seven hunters or venison eaters under the age of 66 in the United States during the last nine years, according to an article by Fran Smith at Salon.com. It was first detected at a research facility in Colorado in 1967, and has since spread throughout the West. Researchers suspect that the number of its victims may be far greater as more is learned about this new affliction.
“In a highly publicized case, three Wisconsin hunters who attended wild-game feasts died of neurological diseases...“ Smith writes. “Another victim from Oklahoma died with a freezer full of venison. A 50-year-old Montana elk hunter died last summer; his brain tissue is now being analyzed at one of the world‘s foremost prion labs...“
Prion diseases attack the brain, literally hollowing it out until it resembles a Swiss cheese; then comes madness and sure death. Creutzfeldt-Jakob has been called “the fast Alzheimer‘s.“ It‘s a variant of Mad Cow Disease which claimed 130 lives in Britain. According to Smith, the first known American victim of Mad Cow turned up in early October, a 22-year-old woman who was born in Britain.
In Wisconsin, deer-hunting licenses are down 22% this year, and there‘s talk of killing off the state‘s entire herd of several million deer to stop the spread of the disease. Meanwhile, chest-thumping, venison-chomping politicians claim there‘s nothing to fear from eating deer burger and sausage; but check the Wisconsin press and you‘ll find that people are scared.
And well they should be -- and we too -- because the fear is that CWD has made the leap to beef, pork and chicken -- critters which may have already been consumed by thee or me.
That‘s because a major part of the transmission of Mad Cow in Britain involved the practice of mixing infected dead animals in the feed of other animals. It was this cannibalism of species that spread Mad Cow to thousands of cattle. For six years the British government poo-poohed the matter, refusing to take action until the overwhelming evidence of a tragedy -- and the death of many young people -- mandated the killing of hundreds of thousands of cattle throughout Europe.
The Wisconsin connection? The carcasses of road-killed deer and offal from the commercial processing of deer were ground up and mixed in with cattle feed over the past decade. Then too, “Wisconsin alone has more than 900 farms where deer and elk are raised and hunted, up from a handful 15 years ago. Farmers and ranchers trade deer and elk aggressively across state lines, raising the odds that an infectious outbreak will become an epidemic. One Colorado game farm shipped 400 exposed elk to more than a dozen states, including Wisconsin.“
Madison-based author John Stauber, who wrote the book “Mad Cow U.S.A.,“ says that politicians in Wisconsin are failing to act on what could be a colossal public health disaster because of the sanctity of hunting in the state, and the fact that the sport generates $1 billion per year for the state‘s economy.
Wisconsin, in case you don‘t know, shares a border with Michigan in the Upper Peninsula. Thus, DNR officials are monitoring Michigan‘s deer herd with a greater sense of urgency this year. The DNR plans to test 2,000 deer and 50 elk each year for signs of CWD. For what it‘s worth, if you spot a deer out there characterized by “emaciation, drooling, behavioral abnormalities and death,“ you may want to steer clear. Whatever you do, don‘t eat the brains -- that‘s where those deadly prions are concentrated.

Bon Appetit...
Do you eat meat? Guilty as charged here, but not especially proud of it, since its said that in the average meat-eater‘s lifetime, we carnivores will be responsible for the death of some 2,400 animals.
It‘s easy to suspect that the number is far higher, since Americans now tend to enjoy dining on the tenderest cuts, sending even more critters to the slaughter house to indulge our gluttony. America‘s love of boneless chicken breasts, for instance, means that the excess legs and thighs are sold overseas to folks who don‘t have the means to eat high on the hog, so to speak. People in Russia are said to be sick to death of eating chicken legs from America. As an aside, I served chicken breast tenders at a party on Labor Day, and it struck me that some 30 birds had to die for my barbeque.
But now, those chickens may be coming home to roost for meat-eaters, owing to the events unfolding in Wisconsin. There are researchers -- considered alarmists at present -- who claim that we meat-eaters may get our comeuppance yet with new variants of Cruetzfeldt-Jakob disease which could make the AIDS epidemic look like a mosquito bite by comparison.
The news hasn‘t done much to change my dining habits, but whenever I space-out on someone‘s name or some other no-brainer thing that should be easy to remember, I can‘t help getting that “oh-oh“ feeling that eating all of those dead animals may not have been such a great idea after all. Memory is the first thing to go when this dietary disease starts hollowing out your head. View On Our Website