Injustice in the Upper Peninsula
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Game farm deer had CWD http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=804928
Portage facility quarantined
By LEE BERGQUIST
lbergquist@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Oct. 10, 2008
A white-tailed deer kept at a game farm in Portage has tested positive for chronic wasting disease.
State Veterinarian Robert Ehlenfeldt said Friday that a 7 1/2 -year-old doe, killed on Sept. 20, had been infected with the fatal disease.
The animal was owned by Alligator Creek Whitetails near Junction City. State officials have quarantined the facility.
State regulations require that all farm-raised deer and elk 16 months or older must be tested after death. In this case, the deer had been “harvested,” according to the attending veterinarian, state officials said. But an exact cause of death was not immediately known.
An owner of the game farm would not comment Friday.
State officials were notified of the results on Thursday by the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa.
The last case of chronic wasting disease in a captive animal population was January 2005 on a farm in Crawford County, said Donna Gilson, a spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
To date, 97 farm-raised animals on eight Wisconsin farms and hunting preserves have tested positive. That includes 82 on a single farm in Portage.
Gilson said it was not clear on Friday whether there had been movement of deer between Alligator Creek Whitetails and the farm where 82 deer were found to have the disease.
The agriculture department will look at the animal’s history and trace movements of deer on and off the property to find out whether other herds may have been exposed.
Chronic wasting disease was discovered in the wild deer population in February 2002 west of Madison.
One theory for how the disease turned up in Wisconsin — until then, it had been found only in the West — is that deer or elk in game farms passed the disease to wild deer.
However, authorities say they do not know how the disease got to Wisconsin or if in fact it has long been present in the wild deer population.
Chronic wasting disease is always fatal and affects deer, elk and moose.
In Wisconsin, only deer have tested positive. The disease is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, which also includes mad cow disease in cattle, scrapie in sheep, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.
According to the World Health Organization, any tissue that may have come from deer with CWD should not be eaten, but there is no evidence that the disease can be transmitted to humans.
