Mad Cow Disease, Called Chronic Wasting Disease, is Back
Chronic Wasting Disease or CWD – mad cow disease in deer – never really went away but it is back big time – just in time for deer hunting season.
According to the Daily Mail, CWD is nicknamed “zombie deer disease” because it “causes parts of the brain to slowly deteriorate into a spongy consistency, leaving infected animals to drool and stare blankly before they die.”
Like mad cow disease, CWD is caused by prions – invisible infectious particles that lack a nucleus but still manage to reproduce. They cannot be inactivated (killed) by cooking, heat, autoclaves, ammonia, bleach, hydrogen peroxide, alcohol, phenol, lye, formaldehyde or radiation.
Captive Deer Operations Indicted
The new US CWS scare originated in captive deer where the government says CWD was first observed in 1967.
Why are deer captive? For EZ or canned hunting in “fenced” operations, “breeding stock” and for the sale of their velvet, antlers and musk.
Can people catch CWD? Yes! In humans, CWD can cause the dementia-like variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) which is terminal in humans like in animals. While non-variant CJD might occur sporadically, vCJD occurs in clusters-where the meat has been “harvested” and eaten. In 2005, 200 to 250 people unwittingly ate CWD-infected deer in a New York state county.
Concerns for Hunters
Now, New York authorities caution to not “consume game that appears sick or diseased,” and warn that illegally imported carcasses and parts will be confiscated and destroyed to prevent disease spread.
When the disease was active before, the Fort Collins Coloradoan reported that a local hunter said when his buck was found to be CWD-infected that he worried about his blood-soaked hands on his truck’s steering wheel and door handles and his blood-soaked clothes.
Important State Revenues
A 2002 outbreak of CWD in Wisconsin led to “free fire zones” in which all deer would be killed including does and fawns to wipe out the disease. (Despite claims of deer “overpopulation,” Wisconsin had, at the time, 700 licensed deer and elk farms. Deer hunting was a $400 million business in the state.)
As recently as May, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department killed 250 captive whitetail deer to contain CWD though the disease is a often abetted by captive operations.
Another Disease Linked to Animals Going on Right Now
They say that those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat it and exhibit A is bird flu (H5N1) which has jumped species just like Covid and now infects US dairy cattle, and pigs, red foxes, skunks, cats and goats. US farm workers are now infected and H5N1 is found in US food products.
Millions died from Covid but until it was one’s own great aunt Bessie in a nursing home and until everyone including the bus driver was wearing a mask, the public and public health authorities elected to ignore it. What me worry?
Is A New Pandemic Brewing?
Covid was not made in a lab per conspiracies but caused by the intermingling at slaughter of species like civet cats, raccoon dogs, hedgehogs and other wildlife according to the most recent, highly regarded scientific investigations.
While both the Spanish Flu and Covid jumped species and killed millions, apparently ignorance, even now, is bliss when it comes to the next pandemic likely brewing before our very eyes.
Why should people who love animals follow these two deadly developments? Because whether incarcerating deer on hunting operations, incarcerating pigs, cows and birds on factory farms or eating wildlife from unhygienic wet markets, there is an extremely high correlation between animal mistreatment and global pandemics: Literally, what happens to them will likely happen to humans.
