3-10 IAT CWD Transmission

Not very long ago, I saw an article about elk coming down with chronic wasting disease which is a neurological disorder wherein the brain starts to perforate. Of course this is a transmissible disease and conceivably could jump to cattle and bison that are being raised for human consumption. Could it then jump to humans? So I called I called Department of Agriculture veterinarian Dr. Scott Leibsle and got into a pretty informative discussion. "Chronic wasting disease belongs to a class of diseases known as transmissible, spongiform encephalopathys. The diseases caused by prions which occur in the central nervous system and they cause normal CNS proteins to convert to an abnormal shape. That results in degeneration of brain and nervous tissue. Clinical signs that you would typically see with chronic wasting disease are chronic weight loss or wasting, behavioral changes and eventually, death. To answer your question as to whether or not the disease can be passed on from one animal to the next or whether you can acquire the disease by consuming the meat, not very much is known about chronic wasting disease or any of these classes of disease called TSE's. The suspected route of transmission is through direct contact, whether it is through saliva or blood or any type of secretions from the animal, there is ongoing research but nothing is definitive. We just don't know a lot about the disease but that is the suspected route of transmission. It's never been proven that chronic wasting disease can ever be acquired by a human by eating infected meat."