Chronic Wasting Disease in deer - precautions?

Looks like CWD has a growing foothold in Alberta. Not as bad as some places, but enough to pay attention to.

Do any of you hunters take special measures while field dressing and boning out an animal?

Can you eat infected meat? I thought the prions that transmit the disease could survive most forms of cooking.

Here is some authoritative information on CWD in deer and elk.

http://www.cwd-info.org/index.php/fuseaction/recommendations.precautions

Fortunately the desease is rare in most areas. It might pay to have a short conversation with your commercial processor before the season to gauge their level of knowledge in processing deer to avoid not only possible CWD infected tissue, but eliminating lead particles from fragmented bullets as well.

The most persistant advice I have seen is to avoid harvesting a deer that looks sick, and even then to avoid contact with certain parts of the deer when field dressing.

That's a good information source. I've seen essentially the same advice posted in many places.

The good news is that CWD is not known to transmit to humans. The CWD prion is entirely different from the "mad cow" type.

The bad news is it can take years for an infected animal to show symptoms.

Can the meat be eaten? The consensus seems to be "yes" especially if proper practices are followed. Though the WHO is being uber-conservative, apparently waiting for more evidence.

I'm wondering if people are actually taking this good advice and putting it into practice.

They have only learned how to deactivate or "kill" prions in the last couple of years, and it's difficult and still experimental. Cooking does nothing to them, neither does bleach, autoclaves, or any sort of sterilization.

One method involves sudden heavy pressures - they discovered this in Canada, kind of like a reverse hyperbolic chamber. One method uses chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide. There is a third method that I can't remember.

Prions are pretty scary things, I hope that CWD doesn't cross species, but I suppose it doesn't hurt to be safe.

I'm not a hunter so don't know about handling but I do know that deer taken in my county have to have their brains taken to Dept of Wildlife for examination.

We have a significant CWD problem in this county. So I would expect that you should wait to hear about the deer's brain test before consuming the meat.

I learned this in my Hunter Safety course.

(I took the course and left thoroughly frightened by the number of and nuances to the regulations that could bring prosecution. For me it's not worth the risk.)

The presence of the detergent sarkosyl during a 60-min incubation in NaOH enhances PrPRES reduction to ≥ 4·5 log10 units (i.e. below the limit of detection).


Pete

Don't let that shake you. I'm looking at the hunting regs for my state right now, and it's 129 pages. Pick a common species that you would like to hunt and select a public hunting area and just read the rules for those. Just go out and enjoy the hunt, and don't try to read and absorb the entire rulebook for all species and all areas all at once. The best advice is to go hunting with someone who has experience. That's the part you will remember most.