mad cow disease (Page 7)

Hunters in many states have been warned not to eat deer or elk meat, since it can be contaminated with chronic wasting disease (CWD), a version of Mad Cow Disease, which can be transferred to humans who eat the meat. Mad Cow was spread by farmers grinding up cow bones and feeding them to cattle, but how does CWD spread in wild animals? The answer may be that prions stay alive in the dirt.

Prions are the infectious proteins that spread the disease and researchers have found that they’re more likely to live some types of soil than in others, which may be why some areas of the country are affected, while others aren’t. CWD was first detected in deer and elk in Colorado and Wyoming in the 1980s, and in Wisconsin in 2002.
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When a Canadian cow recently tested positive for Mad Cow Disease, meat producers began quarantining and testing their beef. Now the FDA has announced that part of the affected cow may have been used to make dog food that was shipped to the U.S.

There’s no scientific evidence that dogs can Mad Cow or transmit it to humans. However, deer and elk do get a form of the disease, and do transmit it to humans who eat the meat of diseased animals.
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Three hunters recently died of Creutzfeldt-Jakobdisease, meaning chronic wasting disease, which affects deerand elk and is related to Mad Cow disease, can betransferred to humans by eating meat. CWD has become socommon in deer that hunting is seriously threatened in manyareas of the U.S. The hunting season starts in September,and Jack Ward Thomas, of the U.S. Forest Service, says, “Thespecter of ‘mad deer’ turning the human brain to Swisscheese is too important to ignore.”
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Two young men, ages 26 and 28, died last fall in the same Michigan hospital of a rare brain disease that occurs mainly in elderly people. The incident, which raises fears that the human form of mad cow disease is here in the USA, prompted a swift investigation by federal health officials, but doctors familiar with the cases say there is no evidence to support that fear. They say autopsies and other tests indicate the victims died from so-called ”classic” forms of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).
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