Safe to Eat Venison

A long time ago I was deer hunting in Iowa, got lucky, and then ate some delicious venison. A short time after that happened, there was a deer that tested positive for chronic wasting disease and that gave me the heebie-jeebies. I’ve wondered forever if you can get some form of spongiform disease in the brain from eating infected meat. Here is the answer from Retired professor of veterinary medicine at Texas A&M, Dr. Don Davis. “There is a little more test positives for CWD in deer than there is in elk. There have only been three or four moose worldwide tested positive. Domestic animals, cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, horses are not susceptible. Only species in the deer family are susceptible. They’ve done tests on sub- humans. NIH came out with a 13 year study where they injected prions into the brains of macaque monkeys and they did not contract CWD.