EDMONTON (CP) – The first case of chronic wasting disease at a whitetail deer farm in Canada has been confirmed near Edmonton, the Canadian Cervid Council said Wednesday. Two whitetail deer farms have been quarantined and a two-week moratorium on the movement of farmed whitetail deer and mule deer has been ordered, the council said in a news release.
The moratorium does not include deer going directly to slaughter as all meat is held pending a negative test for the disease.
“We have initiated a trace-out of where all animals that have left that farm in recent years have gone,” said Dr. George Luderbach of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. “As well, we are initiating looking for possible sources of the disease and how it got to that farm.”
Saskatchewan government officials have said recently that chronic wasting disease appears to be spreading in the wild deer population. It has also been found in elk on several game farms.
Chronic wasting disease is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy that attacks the brains and nervous systems of animals in the deer family. Nerve cells in the brains are hollowed out and the animal begins to stumble and waste away.
It’s related to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a variant of mad cow disease that affects humans.
Edmonton — The Alberta government has instituted mandatory testing for chronic wasting disease in elk and deer on farms.
Dr. Gerald Ollis, a veterinarian with Alberta Agriculture, said about 80 per cent of producers have participated in a voluntary testing program since 1996.
“But the 20 per cent that wasn’t participating is the group that was of some concern,” he said.
Dr. Ollis said it was just a coincidence the province officially announced the program Thursday, the same day federal and provincial health officials in Saskatchewan confirmed the first Canadian death from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.
Chronic wasting disease is a brain-destroying illness in deer and elk.
It is related to mad-cow disease in cattle, scrapie in sheep and goats, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. This group of diseases is caused by mutant proteins called prions which leave sponge-like holes in the brain.
Government officials say there is no scientific evidence to suggest that chronic wasting disease can affect humans.
The deaths of three outdoorsmen in Wisconsin from brain-wasting disease are being investigated by medical experts. The men knew one another and ate elk and deer meat during the 1980s and ’90s. All three died in the 1990s.
New York state prohibited feeding wild deer Wednesday, while extending a ban on importing deer and elk, both precautions against the introduction of chronic wasting disease.
There has only been one positive test in Alberta for a farmed elk with the illness.