EU Scientists Class Eastern Europe at Risk of BSE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BRUSSELS (Reuters Health) Apr 02 2001 - The European Commission said on Monday its scientific
advisers believed certain east European countries including Poland, the Czech Republic and
Hungary were likely to have bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in their cattle herds.

The opinion, issued by the scientists on a range of nonEuropean Union countries, forms part of
the Commission's assessment of the BSE risk presented by those wishing to export beef to the EU.

Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, the Slovak Republic, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania
and Switzerland were classed category III, which means "likely to present a BSE risk, even if not
confirmed, or presenting a low level of confirmed BSE risk."

All those countries not in category I, which means that BSE is "highly unlikely," must remove
potentially dangerous cattle tissue, such as spinal cords, at the slaughterhouse from meat they
intend to export to the EU.

The Commission said the countries in category III have imported significant amounts of live cattle
and meat and bonemeal from EU countries where BSE has been confirmed. "Therefore, it is
regarded likely that their cattle herds were exposed to potentially BSE-contaminated feed and
subsequently infected," the Commission said in a statement.

Switzerland remains the only country outside the EU to have confirmed the presence of native
cases of BSE.

The category II country list, where a BSE risk is deemed to be unlikely but not be excluded, includes
the US, Canada, India, Pakistan and Colombia.

Category I countries include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Norway and New Zealand.

Dolly C
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
German ostriches may have mad cow disease

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_284800.html?menu=news.latestheadlines

      Ostriches are thought to be dying of mad cow disease in Germany.

      The birds have developed BSE type symptoms after being fed animal
bonemeal, which is blamed for causing the disease in cows.

      German newspaper Die Zeit reports that the symptoms were seen in
ostriches in various zoos. The paper says Britain's Ministry of Agriculture
has ordered research to be conducted into the possible transmission of BSE
from cattle to birds.

      Vets at a Hanover college who examined the brains of the affected
animals reported that they found the same kind of holes in the ostrich brains
as were found in BSE-infected cattle.

      Other experts have dismissed any transmission of BSE to birds. No BSE
cases have been reported from commercial ostrich farms - because their
animals are slaughtered before they are old enough to develop the illness.

      Ostriches in zoos can live for 20 years or so while those bred for
their meat are killed when they reach about 15 months.

Subj:  [CJDNEWS] CWD in Nebraska deer
Date: 5/17/01 3:44:55 PM Mountain Daylight Time
From: dbc
Reply-to: CJDNEWS-owner@yahoogroups.com
To: cjdvoice@yahoogroups.com, cjdnews@yahoogroups.com

From John Stauber, author of "MAD COW USA"...

Dolly C
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Subj:   CWD in Nebraska deer
Date:   5/17/01 11:13:27 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From:   JOHNCSTAUBER@cs.com

From the Lincoln (Nebraska) Journal Star 5/17/01.

Doe infected with wasting disease

       One of 61 deer recently killed in western Nebraska and tested by
wildlife biologists had the fatal brain illness called chronic wasting disease.

       The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission received test results late
Monday from the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, said
Bruce Morrison, assistant administrator of the commission's wildlife
division. A team of agency biologists shot the infected 2-year-old mule deer
doe in southwest Kimball County.

       "Of course, I'd prefer we had none," Morrison said Tuesday. "But one
out of 104 is still less than 1 percent."

       In March, biologists collected 43 deer from the same area - Kimball,
Cheyenne, Deuel, Keith and Perkins counties - all of which tested CWD-free.

       The commission launched the testing program after the discovery of a
wild mule deer with wasting disease last November. A hunter killed the young
buck in Kimball County and voluntarily had it tested for the disease. It was
the first time it had shown up in a wild deer in Nebraska, despite its
presence in Colorado and Wyoming wild herds for years.

       While scientists don't fully understand what causes it, wasting
disease involves mutated proteins that form spongelike holes in brain tissue.
It can only be tested by examining brain stems, and there is no vaccine or cure.

       The same sort of protein disorder causes mad cow disease in bovines
and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Wasting disease spreads between deer
and elk but has never been proven to naturally transmit to humans or domestic
livestock. However, it has been detected in three confined elk herds in
Nebraska since 1998.

       When compared with other elk and deer diseases, wasting disease
spreads slowly. Nonetheless, game managers want to keep it out of the
whitetail-dense counties of eastern Nebraska where they fear it could spread
more rapidly. Not only does the agency want to protect deer, but also annual
sales of roughly 90,000 deer hunting permits.

       In an ongoing response to the threat, the commission will again offer
free testing for deer killed by hunters in western Nebraska, including
counties bordering Colorado and northern Sioux County. The agency first
offered the voluntary testing four years ago.

       In addition, the commission hopes to sell an additional 300 antlerless
deer hunting permits for the region. By reducing the number of does, game
managers hope to slow the disease's advance in the Panhandle.

       Although scientists don't believe CWD can infect humans, they urge
hunters to avoid shooting sick-looking deer. Also, hunters should wear rubber
gloves when field dressing deer and avoid handling the brains and spinal
cords, where the mutant proteins concentrate.

The seven other commissioners meeting Thursday in Grand Junction did not endorse the proposal, but the executive director of the Colorado Mule Deer Association did.

Denny Behrens, a Grand Junction real estate builder, said outside the meeting that state practices are threatening deer herds on the Western Slope.

"They are not doing enough," he complained of state agencies.

The commissioners met to discuss various wildlife issues, including CWD and the trapping of fox.

In a tie vote the commission rejected a measure first proposed by the Colorado Trappers Association to again allow live trapping of the swift fox, pine marten and opposum. The measure means no trapping of these species will be allowed. During a sometimes heated session, a dozen people spoke on both sides of the issue.

The morning session focused on CWD, a disease related to mad cow disease that has crippled the cattle industry in Great Britain.

Already, 107 people have died of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, believed caused by cattle affected by mad cow disease.

Chronic Wasting Disease is related to mad cow disease in that both are caused by a protein called a prion. Also, both are part of a family of degenerative neurological conditions known as transmissable spongiform encephalopathy.

So far, the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports no evidence that CWD can be contracted by humans the way mad cow disease apparently has. In the absence of proof of human risk, many scientists and regulators see little cause for extreme action.

Shoemaker, however, said it would be better to play it safe.

"It only takes one case to cause a panic," he told the News.

Behrens said his immediate concern is for Colorado's deer. Already CWD, whose epicenter is in northeast Colorado, has been reported in several other states.

Saskatchewan, Canada, has two recently recorded cases of CWD. There, officials are considering killing a herd of 5,000 animals to contain it. More than 3,500 elk have been eradicated in the province after reports of CWD.

Wildlife veterinarian Michael Miller said the goal is to reduce the number of infected deer to 1-2 percent of the total herd. That could take as long as 20 years in the most-infected areas, he told commissioners.

CWD was first detected in the 1960s in an area near Fort Collins, but only with the advent of mad cow disease has widespread public concern been voiced.

The provincial government is planning to kill thousands of deer in a bid to control the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in the wild.
A major deer herd reduction will take place this fall south of Lloydminster in the Manito Sand Hills area, where two animals have tested positive for the fatal disease, Saskatchewan Environment and Resource Management (SERM) policy analyst Kevin Omoth said this week.

SERM is also planning to increase the number of "samples" of deer taken near elk game farms where CWD has existed for some time. And it wants more hunters to turn in the heads of deer for testing. Last fall, 1,400 heads were submitted, a total which exceeded the government's expectations.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) intends to destroy about 900 elk at four Saskatchewan game farms this summer in what it hopes is the final stage of an eradication program, said veterinarian program specialist Ken Stepushyn.

During the last 18 months, 4,600 elk and deer, and a handful of cattle and bison, have been destroyed as part of an effort to eliminate CWD in Saskatchewan - the only province to be hit by the disease. Twenty-nine elk herds across the province have been infected.

CWD is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy that attacks the brains and nervous system of cervid (deer family) animals. While scientists are uncertain how it's transmitted, they believe it doesn't cross the species barrier.

CWD is related to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the variant of mad-cow disease which affects humans. But there's no evidence it can be transmitted to humans.

It's thought the disease first emerged in an elk herd living along the border area of Colorado and Wyoming. Both states have approved a reduction of the deer herd in the affected area, where six per cent of the deer are believed to have CWD.

"We're fine tuning the details in consultation with American experts and local people," Omoth said of the culling in the Manito Sand Hills.

"We don't have an exact number (of deer to be killed) right now. We're looking at the size of the area and determining the population. Then we'll determine a goal."

However, Omoth said it's likely hundreds and possibly thousands of deer will be eliminated in the herd reduction and kill off near the elk farms.

There are about 4,500 whitetail deer and 1,000 mule deer in the wildlife zone that includes the Manito Sand Hills. SERM pegs the provincial population of whitetail deer at more than 300,000 and the mule deer population at more than 80,000.

SERM will announce details of its CWD strategy in September, before hunting season begins. But already landowners living close to Neilburg, near the sand hills, are worried.

"Maybe it's a disease that has to be contained," said Mel McCrea, reeve of the Rural Municipality of Hillsdale.

"But if you take away one thing, you have problems with another. People are losing calves from coyotes already.

"My concern is the coyote problem is going to get worse without the deer."

McCrea said there's also worry an influx of hunters will result in property damage. In addition, local hunters are concerned they will have to go further afield to take a deer once the herd reduction is complete.

Omoth said the government will work with landowners to ensure the hunt is carried out smoothly.

He said hunters will be allowed into a specific area for a one to two-week time period during the season, so the number of people on the land will be limited.

They will be obligated to submit their deer heads for testing and will be advised to eat the meat only after test results come back.

"We're trying to do this as efficiently as possible," said Omoth. "With any luck, we'll take out all the infected animals."

WSJ         Business World

            Moo Over, Mad Cow Cometh

                  By HOLMAN W. JENKINS JR.

                  "Not a single case of mad cow" has been the proud mantra
of the U.S.  beef industry since the disease was discovered in Britain
15 years ago.

                  Not finding a case, though, has been largely a function
of not looking especially hard. Since last fall, events have forced
European countries to start examining every slaughtered cow over a certain age,
a big change from checking for disease only if a wobbly beast ended up on
the evening news. It turns out mad cow gets around.

                  The French, Germans and Swiss
have found 100-plus cases so far. Italy just discovered its 23rd,
Denmark its second, and Sweden and Greece their first. Two have
been found in the Czech Republic. Soon there may be a urine test for
the distorted proteins, or "prions,"thought to cause the disease. That
would mean investigators wouldn't have to rely on dissecting cow brains for late-stage
evidence of the slow-acting disease (often called BSE). Testing would
become easy and cheap for animals that aren't ready for slaughter.

                 Looking is often finding, so this would seem to bode a
consumer panic and economic disaster if mad cow is as widely spread as many
experts believe. The U.S. cattle industry long ago convinced itself that a
single case would  mean curtains for its $3.6 billion in annual beef
exports, not to mention a  bruising domestic whack as consumers defect to chicken,
pork or-horrors-soy burgers.

                  But, lo, the pessimists overlook a phenomenon known as
desensitization or the dog-bites-man effect. In Germany beef consumption
dropped 40% when the first case was announced, but bounced back 20%
by the 101st.

                  Slowly, painfully, the rest of the world is starting to
calm down and accept mad cow as part of reality. Isn't it time we caught up?

                  The British experience has tended to color all thinking
about the disease, but Britain increasingly appears to be sui generis. If the
conventional account of mad cow's rise and spread is right, we should be seeing
rising numbers of  human victims in Britain and beyond. We aren't.

                  Hundreds of tons of British animal feed, the presumed
agent of infection, were exported to 80 countries until 1996, including 12
tons to the U.S. Given its long latency period, mad cow should have
insinuated itself in the cattle food chain under the standard scenario before
anybody noticed. Americans alone consume 45 million pounds a year of
"mechanically recovered meat," which until recently would typically
have contained a  helping of brain and spinal tissues that are considered
infectious agents.

                  Since the beginning, though, some experts have emphasized
a quirkiness of  the British, namely their affection for sheep, which
looms larger in light of recent discoveries.

                  In a territory the size of Oregon, British herders keep
42 million sheep and 10 million cows, a ratio not commonly found in industrial
countries. The U.S., for example, keeps seven million sheep and 100
million cows. Importantly, the British also slaughter their sheep five
times faster, and eat 12 times as much lamb and mutton per capita.

                  As befits a small, densely developed country with a great
many carcasses to dispose of, the British also have leaned heavily on
protein recycling. Greeks raise and eat a great deal of mutton, but most of their
beef is imported from France. The French eat as much lamb as the Brits, but
two-thirds is imported. Only Britain has bolted its sheep and beef
industries firmly together, feeding each on the remains of the other.

                  The final key may be the unexpected laboratory finding
that sheep can get mad cow disease by eating tiny amounts of BSE-tainted
material. That sent investigators digging back through the brains of 3,000
sheep believed to have died of scrapie, a common illness from which mad cow
is theorized to  have descended. These revisitations have yielded strong
indications that some of the sheep actually died of BSE.

                  Most intriguing of all, infectious material was found in
the spleens of  BSE-infected sheep, something not found in BSE cows.
Scrapie in sheep is known to make its way into many organs.

                 This raises the possibility of a more complicated pas de
deux between the  two species. Mad cow may have originated, as the standard
theory suggests, from age-old scrapie after British cows fed on
infected sheep. But the new possibility is that the BSE variant then passed
back into sheep feeding on infected cows, and then to humans who ate
mutton, not beef.

                  Certainly some such scenario is needed to explain the
eccentric cycling up of a British epidemic even as nothing similar has befallen
other BSE-infected countries. Mad cow the disease may turn out to have a
spotty presence almost everywhere. Mad cow the epidemic, along with its
small accompanying retinue of human illness cases, may be a
freak product of British husbandry.

                  The British government has yet to advance an opinion on
whether humans can catch mad cow from eating lamb, let alone whether
sheep were responsible for transmitting a cow-incubated BSE into the
human food chain. But then the idea that humans catch mad cow from
eating beef is purely hypothetical too (though often reported as fact).

                  At this point, it's probably more comforting than alarming
that science knows  much less about mad cow than most of the public suspects.
Steps taken so far have been based on worst-case scenarios and a
political demand to be seen "doing something" rather than well-informed
estimates of risk. The British Medical Journal recently summed up the current
state of ignorance: "There is but one incontestable fact, that bovine
spongiform encephalopathy is the cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease."

                  That's an important and interesting fact, but what does
it mean? The human  version of mad cow is a horrible disease, but no more
horrible than "sporadic" CJD, which kills several thousand people a
year and has been recognized since 1920. As "sporadic" implies, scientists
have no idea how the disease picks its victims. For all we know CJD has
been passing between humans and animals for millennia.

                  Washington and the cattle lobby have spent a decade
praying mad cow doesn't show up here, despite knowing it must sooner or
later. Though 36 million head are slaughtered a year, the Agriculture
Department has examined all of 12,000 brains since 1990. The time has
come to gear up a real hunt for our first case, if only to get it over with.
           http://interactive.wsj.com/documents/search.htm

7. Japan to find more mad cow cases - UK scientist

By Elizabeth Piper
 

LONDON, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Japan's discovery of mad cow disease in a dairy
cow will be the first of many cases in its national herd, and should be a
warning to countries across the world, a UK scientist said on Monday.

Dr Stephen Dealler, a microbiologist who has worked on mad cow disease since
1988, said Japan's first case, confirmed by officials earlier on Monday, may
not lead to a British-style epidemic but would linger for months as more cows
were tested.

"The first case in Japan is not that surprising...Those countries which feed
cows on cheap artificial food rather than grass, they will be the ones to get
mad cow disease -- places like Japan," he told Reuters.

"By the time you see your first case, you've already spread the disease quite
a long way...By the time you've seen your first one, you are going to see a
lot more."

Dealler said exports of potentially risky feed from Britain could be behind
the case, a repeat of the process believed to have spread mad cow disease, or
BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), from UK herds to other European
countries.

Scientists say the deadly disease is caused when cattle eat infected
meat-and-bone meal, or crushed animal carcasses, and cases have been
uncovered across Europe and in the Czech Republic, most of which have been
blamed on Britain.

UK officials first uncovered BSE in 1986 and then linked the disease a decade
later to the human form, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), which has
killed around 100 people in Britain. It has registered almost 180,000 cases.

Japan imported 132,000 kg of animal feedstuffs including meat-and-bone meal
at the peak of the UK mad cow crisis in 1990, much less than other countries
in Asia, including Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan.

Dealler said it was difficult to say whether mad cow disease could reach
epidemic proportions in Japan or in Asia.

Japanese officials had announced that most potentially risky animal feed had
been used as fertiliser.

"It's very difficult to know (how big the outbreak will be)...But honestly
officials often don't know what happens to everything the country brings in,"
Dealler said.

"All countries must assume they have BSE in their cows and therefore take
action as if they had to stop it."

European Union officials, who have been trying to assess the degree of risk
in non-member countries to ensure the disease is not re-imported into the
15-nation bloc, gave Japan a high-risk rating earlier this year.

Japan started in April to check for BSE in cattle that showed abnormal
symptoms before they died.

Dealler said more countries might not be checking herds for BSE and so
re-exporting the disease.

"All I can say is that it appears to be happening, BSE is spreading across
the globe," he said.

Earlier, a U.N. expert said the risk of a major outbreak of mad cow disease
in Japan was low if most of the bonemeal it imported had been used as
fertiliser and not feed.

10:16 09-10-01

Copyright 2001 Reuters Limited.  All rights reserved.  Republication or
redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is
expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.  Reuters
shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any
actions taken in reliance thereon

8. Japan's Cows to be rechecked

TSUKUBA, Ibaraki Pref. (Kyodo) The National Institute of Animal Health
in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, plans to re-examine about 300 cows that
had shown symptoms of mad cow disease but were cleared after inspections
following a suspected case at a Chiba Prefecture farm, institute
officials said.

The institute under the farm ministry decided to recheck the 300 cows,
which cannot stand, using different tests, they said Friday. Inability
to stand is a symptom of the disease.

The decision came after the institute failed in the first and second
inspections to detect abnormal prion proteins in the Chiba cow, but
later found that the animal was actually infected by examining brain
tissue from it.

The institute decided to review prion tests conducted on the 300 since
April.

It plans to use another testing method in the re-examinations and
intends to finish them by the end of September.

The Japan Times: Sept. 16, 2001
(C) All rights reserved

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20010916a5.htm

9. Sweden says strong chance first BSE cases found

STOCKHOLM, Sept 19 (Reuters) - Sweden said on Wednesday there was a serious
chance that two sick dairy cows found on a farm in the northwest were the
country's first cases of mad cow disease.

Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow
disease, has wreaked havoc on farms around Europe in the past year and forced
mass-slaughter of beef livestock herds.

The brain-wasting disorder, which some scientists believe may cause people
who eat meat from infected animals to fall prey to a human variant, has yet
to be found in Sweden.

The board of agriculture said in a statement that the farm had been sealed
off and the cows slaughtered and taken to the national veterinary institute
for tests, which would yield preliminary results on Thursday and final ones
in two weeks.

It noted that several other maladies such as brain tumours or poisoning could
cause similar symptoms to the staggering and impaired movement shown by the
three-year-old cows.

06:11 09-19-01

Copyright 2001 Reuters Limited.  All rights reserved.  Republication or
redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is
expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.  Reuters
shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any
actions taken in reliance thereon.

10. Elks Infected with Brain Ailment (in Colorado)
---------------------------------------
Elk in 3 private, farmed Colorado herds were found to be infected with
a brain ailment called chronic wasting disease and will be destroyed.
One herd is in south-central Colorado, raising concerns the disease
could spread into the state's  renowned Western Slope elk and deer
herds. "We simply can't let it get away," said Russell George, director
of the Colorado Division of Wildlife.

The other 2 herds are in the northern part of the state, where the
disease has been present for decades. Chronic wasting disease is a
degenerative disorder that attacks the brains of deer and elk, causing
unsteadiness, excessive slobbering, confusion, and death. All 1000 elk
will be slaughtered and tested for the disease, said Dr. Wayne
Cunningham, a state veterinarian.

State wildlife officials say the transport of elk between ranches has
spread the disease as far away as Saskatchewan, Montana, and South
Dakota. Elk ranchers say their animals were infected by wild deer and
blame the wildlife agency for not eradicating deer between Fort Collins
and Cheyenne, Wyoming, where the outbreak is believed to have
started. Elk are raised for meat and their velvety spring antlers, which
can fetch as much as $70 per pound as a nutritional supplement.

--
ProMED-mail
promed@promedmail.org>

11. Fawns have wasting disease

4 animals in Neb. youngest infected

By Todd Hartman and Gary Gerhardt, News Staff Writers

Four fawns that tested positive for chronic wasting disease in Nebraska are the youngest animals found to carry the illness.
Scientists and wildlife officials call the development intriguing, though not necessarily surprising. Few, if any, deer in that age range -- 6 to 8 months old -- have been killed and tested before, experts say.

One reason: Hunters submitting samples for chronic wasting testing rarely take fawns.

Still, the information is one more clue in a frightening disease that is vexing agriculture and wildlife officials in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and elsewhere -- all of them desperate to keep it from spreading.

"Every time we pick up information on this disease, it gives us a little more on how to solve it," said Bruce Morrison, assistant administrator for the wildlife division of Nebraska's Game and Parks Commission.

The fawns -- originally reported by Nebraska officials as wild, but actually part of a highly infected captive herd in the northern part of the state's panhandle -- weren't showing outward signs of the disease.

The earliest stage a deer has shown physical symptoms of chronic wasting is 15 months. Those deer were part of an experimental herd given heavy doses of the disease, said Mike Miller, a Colorado Division of Wildlife veterinarian.

How the infected fawns in Nebraska contracted the disease isn't clear, though experts don't believe the illness is passed on in the womb. They believe close physical contact between an infected doe and her fawn after birth is the more likely vehicle.

Chronic wasting disease, which kills elk and deer, is similar to mad cow disease in cattle, scrapie in sheep and "new variant" Creutzfeldt-Jakob in people. The illness causes tiny holes in the brain. There are no verified cases of humans contracting chronic wasting disease.

Until recently, the disease appeared confined to a small swath of Colorado and Wyoming. But in recent years it has cropped up elsewhere, including on private elk ranches.

Wildlife and agricultural officials are scrambling to contain and understand the illness, which has the potential to devastate the hunting economy, tourism and the elk ranching industry.

The infected fawns were discovered among a herd of captive elk and deer in Sioux County in northwestern Nebraska.
 

Contact Todd Hartman at (303) 892-5048 or hartmant@RockyMountainNews.com. Contact Gary Gerhardt at (303) 892-5202 or gerhardtg@RockyMountainNews.com.

January 26, 2002

In a message dated 3/9/02 10:02:45 PM Mountain Standard Time, melsteiger@sisna.com writes:

<< Subj:  [Fwd: PRO/AH> Chronic wasting disease, cervids - USA (Wisconsin)]
 Date: 3/9/02 10:02:45 PM Mountain Standard Time
 From: Mel S

 Chronic Wasting Disease has appeared in Wisconsin, with no idea of how it got there.
It has also been found in the southern edge of South Dakota.
Nebraska has also found several deer with the disease near their northern border.

 Colorado is busy destroying elk from their game farms is order to bring  it under control there.   Colorado is also talking about reducing their  deer herd by approximately 4, 000 deer in order to reduce the spread of  the disease.

 We need more research on how the disease is spread, how to test for it in living animals and humans, and to find an antidote for it.   The  money being paid for the elk that are being destroyed, up to $3,000 per  head, would pay for a lot of research.
  Mel
  >>
Mel
Remember Wisconsin Cheese!
  Wisconsin is a dairy state.  The deer are reasonably getting it from their association with the incorrectly fed cattle. They come in during the hard winter nights and scavenge from the cattle feeders and troughs that have often had rendered slaughterhouse trimmings (animal proteins and fats, including deer and their trimmings) added into the prepared feed mixs as a weight and milk production stimulant.  This make cows, and consequently the deer, which are normally herbivores, into carnivores and worse -- into self-species-consuming cannibals.
Then we sell their flesh and uncooked fluids and its unsterile bacterial hardened product to humanity (or we allow men to hunt, dress, butcher -- handling nerve, lymphus and blood  -- and eat the deer themselves -- with not one ounce of meat inspection or pathology savvy)!

Check the level of CJD and prion neurological disease infections, including Alzheimer's, down the road in all these currently infected states and in their production sale markets later. Watch the animal and human victim infections explosion!
It does not take more research nor another brain surgeon to know the solution!
We simply stop making three natural herbivores eat as carnivores, and worse, forcing them to eat of their own kind!
The cow, the deer, and in culinary stupidity the final biological herbivore, us!
Tom R
10 Mar. 2002

13. More Deer in Colorado found with CWD
- All deer in five mile radius to be killed

CWD outbreak confirmed
DOW must kill all deer and elk within five-mile radius of Motherwell Ranch
By Gary E. Salazar, Staff Reporter
Tuesday, April 16, 2002
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS — Colorado Division of Wildlife biologists will start an effort today to wipe out all deer and elk within a five-mile radius of a Routt County elk ranch where five deer have been found with chronic wasting disease. Over the weekend, a fifth deer tested positive for the fatal brain disease that is found in deer and elk. The deer was killed last week miles away from the Motherwell Ranch, which is in a remote area southwest of Hayden. Because two wild mule deer inside the captive elk ranch and three other deer outside the ranch have tested positive for CWD, the DOW is being aggressive in dealing with the first cases of the disease found on the Western Slope. "Our goal is to do everything we can to eradicate the disease on the Western Slope," DOW Director Russell George said in a released statement. "We believe we have a reasonable chance of success if we move quickly and decisively prior to the major spring migrations." Already 329 deer have been killed around the Motherwell Ranch since the first two deer, which were entrapped with a domestic elk herd inside the facility last summer, tested positive.

Because the two deer that were killed inside the ranch earlier this year tested positive for CWD, officials killed 311 deer in the five-mile radius between April 1-3. From that effort, two additional deer tested positive for CWD. These two deer were killed in the same area miles from the ranch. This prompted wildlife officials to kill 18 more deer last week in the same area, which produced the fifth positive deer. Chronic wasting disease attacks the brains of infected deer and elk causing the animals to starve to death. A mutant protein causes the disease and there is not a vaccine or a cure for it. There is also no way to test a live animal for the disease. The disease has been found in deer and elk herds in five states, which include parts of Wyoming, Nebraska and South Dakota. Cases in Colorado were thought to be confined to the northern part of the state.

Because state officials want to stop the disease from spreading and are concerned CWD may impact the hunting economy in Northwest Colorado and the rest of the Western Slope, all deer and elk found in this area will be killed. "We want to remove as many animals as we can," DOW spokesman Todd Malmsbury said. "We don't know how many will be killed." Because the spring migration is approaching, wildlife officials are acting immediately. "Once the spring migration begins, thousands of animals will move through this area," said Dan Prenzlow, DOW area wildlife manager in Craig. "Our goal is to remove animals that have been exposed to CWD before the migration begins." The disease has been endemic in portions of northeastern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming for more than two decades. The source and the way it is transmitted is unknown. "We consider these three cases in Routt County to be an outbreak of CWD since the positive deer were found 120 miles from the endemic area," said Jeff Ver Steeg, the DOW's terrestrial wildlife manager. Ver Steeg said there is not deer or elk migration between the northeastern Colorado endemic area and Routt County. More than 600 animals in the area between Routt County and the endemic area have been tested.

"We don't know how CWD reached this Western Slope herd, but we know we must act immediately to try and stop it," Ver Steeg said. Malmsbury said the heads of the animals killed this week will be sent to the division's research facility in Fort Collins to be tested. Officials expect to dispose of the carcasses with an incinerator at a nearby wildlife area.

Most of the culling will occur on private land, which the DOW has been granted access to. Officials do not expect the culling efforts to impact the upcoming hunting season even though hundreds of deer and elk could be killed.

Officials claim there are thousands of animals in this portion of the state, however, the culling will be limited to the five-mile radius that surrounds the ranch.

"This is the toughest, most unpleasant job our wildlife field staff has ever been faced with," George said. "Culling hundreds of deer and elk is the last thing they want to do. "But we believe it would be irresponsible to take no action in the hope that chronic wasting disease will somehow disappear on its own. We owe it to all Coloradans to do what we can now, rather than leave this problems for others to solve." The Motherwell Ranch is also being impacted because of the outbreak. The Department of Agriculture is planning to eliminate the 140 elk that the ranch currently houses.

Officials are not sure when the elk will be killed. However, the department has quarantined the facility to ensure none of the elk leave the premises. Once the elk are killed, they also will be tested for CWD

http://www.steamboatpilot.com/section/frontpage_lead/story/12593

Other Steamboat Pilot CWD reports http://www.steamboatpilot.com/section/chronic

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http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_1258706,00.html
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Man who hunted in CWD area dies of brain disease
By Lou Kilzer, Rocky Mountain News
July 11, 2002

A 63-year-old Thornton man who hunted elk and deer in a Colorado area beset with chronic wasting disease died early Wednesday from a similar human brain disease.

Otto Berns first noticed signs of memory loss in early May. Doctors struggled to find the correct diagnosis, first telling his family that he had suffered a stroke.

After his condition worsened, Berns' daughter, Nicki, told doctors her father was an avid venison eater who hunted north of Fort Collins. She said she suspected he was suffering some form of CJD, or Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease. In June, a biopsy confirmed her suspicions.

Like chronic wasting disease affecting deer and elk in northeast Colorado, CJD is caused by mutant proteins called prions.

Scientists say there is no proof that humans can get CJD from eating infected deer or elk. However, research has begun to see how strong the "species barrier" is.

Nicki Berns said she suspects that her father got the disease from eating game, and that a state health worker said she and her family cannot donate blood.

One way to help answer the question would be to have an autopsy. However, Nicki Berns said her mother declined to allow it, citing a promise she made to her husband.

Berns married his wife, Barbara, Feb. 19, 1966. They moved to Thornton in 1995.

He is also survived by four children - Nicki, William and Ronald Berns of Thornton, and Jim Berns of Pelican Lake, Wisc., and two grandchildren.

The family plans private services on Friday.
 
 
 

kilzerl@RockyMountainNews.com or (303) 892-2644.

20. Wisconsin Lab: Three new CWD cases found
From the National Desk
Published 12/20/2002 3:55 PM

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MILWAUKEE, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- A private lab testing deer shot during the state's firearms season has confirmed three new cases of chronic wasting disease -- all outside the 411-square-mile kill zone in south-central Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Viral Research Group said one deer shot in Marathon County and two shot in Grant County tested positive for the disease, which attacks the nervous system and causes spongy pockets in the brain.

The disease is similar to scrapie in sheep, mad cow in cattle and a variant of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease in humans.

A spokesman for the state Department of Natural Resources questioned the lab's results since the latest cases being reported were in areas where state testing failed to turn up evidence of the always-fatal disease.

Wisconsin Viral has tested 800 specimens and reported positive results in three. It sold test kits to hunters through Wildlife Support Services of Hayward, Wis.

As of Friday, the state had confirmed 48 cases in 5,045 samples analyzed so far, all in an area including Dane, Iowa and Sauk counties. The state found one other case at a game farm in Walworth County.

Wisconsin Viral conducts a second round of tests on samples that test positive in its initial examination. The second test looks for a second antibody. Additionally, the Wisconsin Viral tests are conducted on lymph rather than brain tissue, maintaining the disease shows up there first.

The state tests follow guidelines set by the National Veterinary Services Laboratories and officials say the private tests produce too many false-positives.

The state has asked Wisconsin Viral to turn over samples so they can be tested independently.

Earlier this week, Illinois officials reported three new cases of chronic wasting disease in northern Illinois, two of them near where the initial case was found.

Chronic wasting disease first was discovered in Colorado in 1967 at a research facility but did not turn up in wild herds until 1981. It first appeared east of the Mississippi River this year in Wisconsin in February and west of the Continental Divide in November.

The disease also has been found in captive deer populations in Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Minnesota in the United States, in Saskatchewan and Alberta in Canada, and in wild populations in South Dakota, Nebraska and New Mexico.

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20021220-033844-1612r

21. Deer Put Under the Knife for Testing

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http://santafenewmexican.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=2144&dept_id=500281&newsid=6472949&PAG=461&rfi=9
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By WES SMALLING | The New Mexican  12/22/2002
For years, the only reliable method of testing deer and elk for chronic wasting disease was to kill them and remove a portion of the brain stem.

But a recent discovery at Colorado State University - that the disease can be detected in the animals' lymph nodes - has given New Mexico wildlife managers the opportunity to test animals by performing tonsillectomies on deer that are captured in the field and then released back into the wild unscathed with the exception of a sore throat.

This week, wildlife officers performed the innovative surgeries on three mule deer that survived the operations. The samples were sent to CSU's chronic wasting disease diagnostic laboratory, where it will take several weeks for results before results are returned.

"We're only the second state in the nation to be doing it," said Martin Frentzel, spokesman for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. "This process is just now hitting the scientific journals. It really is groundbreaking."

The National Park Service has tested live deer in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, but New Mexico's state wildlife agency was the first to put tranquilized deer under the knife and test them for the fatal disease.

Once found only in small areas of Colorado and Wyoming, chronic wasting disease has spread to elk ranches and wild deer herds as far away as Wisconsin. New Mexico's first and only case of the disease was detected in a sick mule deer killed March 28 at White Sands Missile Range.

Little is known about how the disease is spread and how widespread it is. It is related to Europe's mad cow disease and is always fatal to deer and elk that contract it. There has never been a known case of it being transferred to humans or livestock.
 

The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish is conducting the rarely used tests with the U.S. Army WSMR, U.S. Department of Agriculture, other agencies and CSU.

Because it takes more time and personnel to perform the live tests, "it's very costly to do the operation we're doing," said Patrick Morrow, wildlife biologist for WSMR. "Killing is the easier, quicker, more realistic way to get the number of samples you need, but we don't have those numbers down here."

The state of Wisconsin has ordered the deaths of tens of thousands of white-tail deer to control chronic wasting disease.

Larry Bell, director of the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, opted to attempt the groundbreaking live tests rather than eradicate the state's already depleted deer herds.

"Unless we have to, we don't want to go in there and whack a bunch of deer," Frentzel said.

Like many states in the West, New Mexico has a mule-deer population that is currently lower than it has been for decades. Most biologists agree the decline can be blamed on drought, increased predation and poor habitat.

"Maybe CWD is a part of that. We don't have any clue that it is, but we have to investigate all factors," Morrow said.

Trapping deer was especially difficult this week because of cold and windy conditions.

The inclement weather made the deer too skittish, and they could not be lured under the trapping nets by salt licks the officers had set up, Morrow said. So, wildlife officers shot the three deer with tranquiller darts - one each day from Tuesday to Thursday.

Each procedure was performed at an outside operating station and took about 20 minutes.

Blindfolded and hobbled, the tranquilized deer are brought to the station, where they are given an antibiotic. A vise holds the deer's mouth open while a veterinarian reaches down its throat with a device similar to a hemostat and removes small pieces of a tonsil. The deer are also given blood tests and are fitted with radio collars and ear tags.

"The deer is sleeping basically, and we monitor its temperature and its heart rate," Morrow said. "All of the deer that we handled, we didn't have any mortalities, and they all responded just perfectly."

The sedated deer were taken to a secluded place where they slept off the medication for about an hour before they got back on their feet. Officers then tracked and observed the deer for a day or two.

"Within a day, they're ready to eat again," said wildlife health specialist Kerry Mower of the Game and Fish Department. "There will still be some pain in their throats, but it wasn't hindering their eating at all. We were very satisfied with that. The does we handled found their fawns and just went about their business."

If a deer from this week's operations turns up positive for chronic wasting disease, officers will track and kill it. But none of the deer showed any signs of being sick, Morrow said. "All of them appeared very healthy," he said.

Deer and elk suffering from the latter stages of chronic wasting disease often show signs of problems with balance, excessive slobbering and emaciation.

The tonsil biopsies will be tested at CSU.

Testing how widespread the disease is in the state should help wildlife managers better understand how to control it, Morrow said. And having a live test gives the state wildlife agency more options when it comes to managing deer, Frentzel said.

Nuisance deer trapped by the department - and injured or orphaned deer that are brought in for rehabilitation - can be tested and released back into the wild without harm. Up until now, the department had stopped relocating deer to prevent spreading chronic wasting disease.

http://santafenewmexican.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=2144&dept_id=500281&newsid=6472949&PAG=461&rfi=9

22. Congressman Obey rips feds on speed of CWD tests
Congressman says USDA too slow to OK laboratories -- Dec 24 2002

Try this link first: http://www.wisinfo.com/newsherald/mnhlocal/279275113084132.shtml
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By Tom Berger
Marshfield News-Herald
The federal government's failure to certify the Marshfield Clinic to test deer for chronic wasting disease has led to a "nightmare scenario," according to U.S. Rep. Dave Obey, D-Wausau.

Unapproved test kits sold by sporting goods stores and tests conducted by uncertified laboratories have led to unconfirmed positive test results for CWD in Marathon County and other areas outside the state's CWD eradication zone, Obey said.

"Naturally, the result is tremendous anxiety among hunters, the tourist industry and all Wisconsin residents," Obey wrote in a blistering letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman.

"USDA's mishandling of the problem means that the CWD crisis is a far greater problem in Wisconsin than it need have been," Obey said. "However, we know the problem will be with us for some years to come."
"USDA needs to act now," he said.

Marshfield Laboratories, a division of Marshfield Clinic, has spent more than $300,000 remodeling its facilities to be able to test for CWD, a brain disease that makes deer weak and emaciated, and eventually kills them. It has not, however, been certified by the USDA to perform the tests.
Dr. Frances Moore, director of the lab's veterinary division, is frustrated and perplexed. Despite repeated requests for certification criteria, the USDA hasn't responded, Moore said.

"I imagine if there was a certification process, they'd let us know," she said.

And if there were such a process, "I would anticipate that we would exceed the standards of any of the laboratories that are in their network," she said.

The Wisconsin Viral Research Group, based in Wauwatosa, performed four tests on a deer shot by a Schofield hunter in southern Marathon County and said prions, which are abnormal proteins associated with the disease, were detected in three of its tests. The Department of Natural Resources dismissed the results from the lab - not certified by the USDA - as irrelevant.

Samples from up to 50,000 deer will be tested by USDA-certified laboratories chosen by the DNR to screen for the disease. As of Dec. 13, those tests had confirmed CWD in 48 deer, all of them from southwestern Wisconsin, where the illness was first found in February. The DNR has ordered all deer killed in an eradication zone around Mount Horeb.

Obey criticized the USDA for its failure to quickly certify other labs, such as those at Marshfield Clinic, to quell hunters' fears, and the Bush administration for blocking the use of $17 million in emergency funds to enable labs to do testing.

"And, in the past couple of weeks, USDA has created a perfect catch-22 situation for a rapid test," he said. "USDA has approved the test but it has limited authorization to perform the test to only 10 public labs that don't have the necessary staff and equipment, while refusing to provide the needed investment."
"In effect, USDA has said those labs that are willing and capable of performing the test are prohibited from doing so, while only those labs incapable of doing the test are authorized to do it," Obey said.

The Marshfield Laboratories remodeling project set aside space specifically for the rapid tests.

"We'd be ready, willing and able to implement the new tests," Moore said.

http://www.wisinfo.com/newsherald/mnhlocal/279275113084132.shtml

January 5, 2003 5:39pm

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_ffa00002466e4df8
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01/05/2003

Ufa, 5 January: An outbreak of mad cow disease has been registered in
Tatarskiy Uryush, a village of Bashkortostan, as ten cows were suspected
of having contracted the infection. Consumption of the contaminated meat
may be lethal for humans.

"Right after we obtained information about the situation, we placed
checkpoints of the police and sanitary physicians to prevent meat from
reaching marketplaces," Bashkortostan First Deputy Interior Minister
Maj-Gen. Gennadiy Patrikeyev told ITAR-TASS. It will be permitted to
take meat products away from the republic "only after a thorough
analysis", he remarked.

"Urgent measures have been taken. The ten infected cows have been
slaughtered, and the rest of the cattle have been taken under veterinary
control," district administration head Ildar Musin told ITAR-TASS...

Source: ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in English 1916 gmt 5 Jan 03
/© BBC Monitoring Copyright 2002.  All Rights Reserved.
Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Africa Intelligence Wire
Copyright © 2003 Financial Times Limited, All Rights Reserved
http://hoovnews.hoovers.com/fp.asp?layout=displaynews&doc_id=NR20030105670.2
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BY LARRY PORTER
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

LINCOLN - Two mule deer bucks killed by hunters this past fall tested positive for chronic wasting disease, bringing to 17 the number of wild deer in Nebraska that have been confirmed as having the always-fatal disease.

The two deer were both about 21/2 years old and were killed in areas where infected deer were killed earlier. All 17 deer that have tested positive were killed in the Panhandle.

One of the bucks was killed in the southwest corner of Kimball County. The other was killed in northern Sioux County.

They are the first positive tests from a total of 1,844 results that have been processed so far this year by the University of Nebraska's Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. About 2,000 deer from central and western Nebraska remain to be tested.

All of the 846 deer tested from eastern Nebraska were negative, along with 305 deer tested that were killed by hunters in central Nebraska.

"A total of 693 deer have been tested from the Panhandle," said Bruce Morrison, assistant chief of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission's wildlife division.

A total of four infected deer have been killed in Kimball County since the first case of CWD in Nebraska's wild deer was discovered in 2000.

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np=0&u_pg=38&u_sid=620639

Japan Times Online
Wednesday, January 29, 2003

Milk feed linked to sixth mad cow

SAPPORO (Kyodo) The agriculture department of the Hokkaido Prefectural Government confirmed Tuesday that the sixth cow infected with mad cow disease was fed a milk substitute similar to the one given to all five cows previously found suffering from the disease.
A dairy farmer in Shibecha, Hokkaido, raised the Holstein on nine types of feed, including Miru Food A Super, the department said, confirming an announcement by the town's agricultural cooperative Jan. 20.

The milk substitute was produced at a factory in Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture, that manufactured the feed given to the first five cows found with the brain-wasting disease also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

The sixth cow was sold to a Wakayama farmer on Feb. 17, 1999, according to the report by the prefectural agriculture department. The health ministry confirmed on Jan. 19 that the animal was infected with mad cow disease.

Four days later, the ministry confirmed that a seventh cow, also raised in Hokkaido, has been infected with mad cow disease. Hokkaido public health department officials suspect the cow consumed the same type of feed.

The first five cows had been fed either Miru Food A or a similar brand, called Pure Milk, that has nearly identical ingredients. Pure Milk is also made by the Gunma factory.

The feed was found to have included animal fat made in the Netherlands, which has also experienced an outbreak of mad cow disease. The causal relationship between the feed and the infections has not been determined.

The sixth cow produced a female calf in January 1999 that was killed in February 2002 after suffering an injury, according to the report.

The Japan Times: Jan. 29, 2003
(C) All rights reserved
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20030129a9.htm

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World Health Body Warns That Mad Cow Still a Risk
Jan. 30
— By Richard Waddington

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization warned on Thursday that many countries, particularly in eastern Europe and southeast Asia, were at risk from mad cow disease, even though the worst appeared over in Britain.

Although most developed countries had adequate measures in place to fight the deadly infection in cattle, which has been linked to more than 100 human deaths, some other states had not woken up to the dangers, it said.

"Our concern is that there are countries out there which may be developing BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and are not doing anything about it," said Dr Maura Ricketts, of WHO's animal and food-related public health risks division.

BSE was first detected in Britain in the mid-1980s and has since spread to a number of mainly European countries.

Some 130 people, most of them Britons, have died from what is believed to be a human variation of the brain-wasting disease after presumably eating infected meat, triggering global alarm.

The WHO official, presenting a report on the BSE threat, said contaminated meat and bone meal animal feed were known to have been exported to a number of countries where few or no cases of the fatal disease had yet been reported.

Far from being a cause for concern, the reporting of cases could be a reassuring sign the authorities were taking steps to detect infection and to eradicate the problem, she said.

"Central and eastern European countries as a whole were large importers of this material. Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic have reported cases but other countries need to be checking this," she added.

Southeast Asia, along with parts of North Africa, were other areas where significant amounts of contaminated feed had been imported from Western Europe, she said.

RECYCLING FEED

All cases of BSE have been traced to imports of animal feed or cattle from Britain, or later from the European Union.

After peaking at around 40,000 cases in 1993, the incidence of BSE in Britain declined sharply to little over 1,200 in 2001, although this was still more than the total number recorded in the rest of the world that year.

Ricketts said there was still much to learn about BSE and its human form, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, including the maximum incubation period in humans. There had been fears that the human fatalities could soar if the incubation period was very long.

"As time goes on, I do not think many people are predicting huge epidemics anymore," she said.

BSE was clearly linked to the recycling of cattle carcasses to recover meat and bone meal protein which was then fed back to other cattle, WHO said.

The European Union and other countries have banned the use of such feed for cattle and taken numerous other measures including strict slaughterhouse regulations.

The east European and richer Asian countries were of particular concern because they were states which had already developed, or had the potential to develop, their own industries using cattle waste material -- anything not eaten by humans -- and recycling it as animal feed.

The WHO report -- 'Understanding the BSE Threat' -- is intended as an alarm call to governments about what actions they should be taking as well as providing consumers with information about the risks posed by contaminated meat.

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/SciTech/reuters20030130_257.html

Copyright 2003 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Six more CWD cases are confirmed
Associated Press
Jan. 30, 2003

PIERRE, S.D. - Six cases of chronic wasting disease have been confirmed in deer killed by hunters in southwest South Dakota last fall, state wildlife officials said Thursday.

Previously, three cases of the fatal disease had been found since the state began testing in 1997. The disease kills elk and deer by destroying the brain.

South Dakota hunters last fall submitted samples from 1,938 deer and elk for testing. All but 81 samples have been tested and returned, the Game, Fish and Parks Department said.

The latest confirmed cases were in three mule deer in Fall River County, two white-tailed deer in Custer County, and a white-tailed deer from Pennington County.

"We knew we had CWD in South Dakota going into the past hunting seasons, and the information we have gathered through the cooperation of hunters will help shape our approach to this disease," said Steve Griffin, a big-game biologist for the GF&P.

"With the close of hunting seasons we are done with sample collection for this season. We will continue to sample suspicious animals that act sickly."

Public-health officials have found no scientific evidence that the disease can be naturally transmitted to humans or to animals other than deer and elk.

Chronic wasting disease has been found in seven states and is confirmed by testing brain tissue of dead animals. There is no known way to test for the disease in living animals.

http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/5068749.htm

Try this first: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0205wastingdisease-ON.html
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Chronic wasting disease found in 3 more deer at missile range
Associated Press
Feb. 5, 2003 11:20 AM

WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M. - Chronic wasting disease has been confirmed in three mule deer from White Sands Missile Range, the state Department of Game and Fish says.

"Although we appear to have a problem in the White Sands area, overall our testing indicates this disease is not widespread in the state," said Larry Bell, department director.

The disease, always fatal to deer or elk, was confirmed by Colorado State University, said Kerry Mower, a department wildlife disease specialist.

The state has recorded four cases of chronic wasting disease. The first was detected in June 2002 in a mule deer from White Sands in southern New Mexico.

The three mule deer were the only ones that tested positive among 557 animals tested statewide since the fall hunting seasons began in September, Mower said.

An additional 59 samples still need to be examined, and Mower expects the state to collect as many as 100 more by the end of June.

"With an incubation period between 18 months and five years, the prevalence rate we are detecting at White Sands suggests CWD has been present there for a number of years," Mower said.

The four deer that had the disease were among 15 deer from White Sands that were tested.

Samples from seven deer killed during a January hunt in the Organ Mountains, adjacent to the missile range, are among the 59 samples that will be tested.

Chronic wasting disease creates sponge-like holes in a deer's brain, causing the animal to grow thin, act abnormal and die. The disease is similar to mad cow disease, but there never has been a known case of it being transferred to humans or livestock.

Once found only in small areas of Colorado and Wyoming, the disease has spread to elk ranches and wild deer herds as far away as Wisconsin.

New Mexico officials are not sure how the disease arrived at White Sands, Mower said.

Bell has declared an animal health emergency within New Mexico and is not allowing importation of deer or elk.

"We will continue to monitor this problem to the best of our ability and take every action we possibly can to protect the health of New Mexico citizens and wildlife," he said.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0205wastingdisease-ON.html

First try this: http://www.sltrib.com/2003/feb/02192003/utah/30836.asp
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BY SKIP KNOWLES
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

    Utah is now among the states in which hunters must worry whether deer meat is a loaded weapon.
    Biologists have found the incurable, contagious, deer-killing brain malady known as chronic wasting disease (CWD) in a sample from a mule deer buck taken this fall on Diamond Mountain, north of Vernal in northeast Utah, officials confirmed Tuesday.
    Utah wildlife officials had tested for CWD since 1998, and ramped up testing for CWD this fall after it was discovered nearby in Colorado and Wyoming. Division of Wildlife Resources workers sawed into the skulls of 1,500 deer and elk this year and had cleared 1,400 when a suspect animal sample was sent for final testing in Iowa. It came back Tuesday.
   "I'm not surprised, but a little disappointed," said Jim Karpowitz, DWR big game coordinator. "It'll change the way we do business. If it's a limited area, we'd be happy."
    The disease does not wipe out deer and elk herds. In the most heavily infected areas in Colorado it shows in fewer than 5 percent of deer and 1 percent of elk. However, deer tag sales could drop, hurting wildlife budgets.
    Although it has never been proved to infect humans, fear of the poorly understood disease, and words such as "containment" and "eradication" come up quickly when CWD is mentioned in wildlife circles.
    Meanwhile, Utah officials will aggressively expand testing. Hunters should not be alarmed, Karpowitz said, but should get informed.
    "I killed an elk last year in eastern Utah and my son Dan killed a deer, and we intend to eat both of them," Karpowitz said.
    Discovered in Colorado in the 1960s, CWD creates holes in the brain of deer and elk. Starvation, drooling, erratic behavior and hair loss are culminations of this prion -- or rogue protein -- disease.
    It most recently was found moving west in Wyoming and in Mesa County, Colo., near Grand Junction, 70 miles from the border. Twice, penned elk herds in Utah have been wiped out for testing and to prevent possible CWD spread.
    When deer tested positive last year in Wisconsin, panicked wildlife officials wiped out deer in entire counties -- as many as 40,000 in some areas. Hunters here say they do not want state officials to get trigger happy.
    "Wisconsin's scorched earth policy is wrong," said Don Peay, leader of the hunting group Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife, which has worked to build up Utah mule deer herds.
    Peay suspects the disease may have been here a long time and is only now being found because testing has increased.
    "We're not alarmed, we're concerned," Peay said. "Initially it was a huge scare, but other states are dealing with it. It's been in Colorado for 20 or 30 years, and they've still had hunts over there."
    CWD falls in the family of deadly transmission spongioform encephalopathies (TSE) pathogens. It was mad cow disease -- a "new variant" of Creutzfeldt-Jacob -- that broke the species barrier, leaping from sheep to cattle to humans in the mid-1990s to kill more than 100 people in Europe.
    Because no evidence exists to show that CWD can travel from deer and elk to humans or any other species, many wildlife biologists speak of the species barrier as inviolable, but skeptics say absence of proof that it has infected other species is not proof that it cannot.
    "Consumption of infected tissue could be fatal, as animal laboratories in Hamilton, Mont. have shown in lab tests," said Mel Steiger, a retired rocket engineer from Taylorsville who lost his wife in 1998 to Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease. He has studied the disease for four years.
    Field tests may save hunters from fear of CWD in the future, said Karpowitz.
    Hunters cannot have meat in their freezer tested, but in the future animal heads can be tested at Utah State Diagnostic lab in Logan. The number there is 435-797-1895.
    Karpowitz urges hunters to check out Web sites such as http://www.CWD-info.org to start learning more about CWD.

http://www.sltrib.com/2003/feb/02192003/utah/30836.asp

First try this: http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/5342780.htm
If it fails simple text follows:

Final testing confirms nine cases of chronic wasting disease
Associated Press

PIERRE, S.D. - A final tally shows nine cases of chronic wasting disease in 1,950 samples of deer and elk tested by the state Department of Game, Fish and Parks.

Most of the animals tested since July 1, 2002 were killed during the fall hunting seasons, the GF&P said. About three dozen were animals that died after being hit by vehicles.

Chronic wasting disease attacks the animal's brain and is fatal. It is confirmed by testing brain tissue of dead animals. There is no known way to test for the disease in living animals.

The deer and elk tested were from the Black Hills area and McPherson County in north-central South Dakota.

The nine infected animals were mule deer or white-tailed deer. Four came from Fall River County, two from Custer County, and three from Pennington County, the GF&P said.

The disease also was found in a road-killed elk in Wind Cave National Park last fall.

http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/5342780.htm

http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/local/states/wisconsin/5451993.htm

Pioneer Press      Wisconsin Sunday, Mar 23, 2003

 Posted on Sat, Mar. 22, 2003

CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE: DNR says 16 more deer test positive for disease
Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. — The state Department of Natural Resources has found 16 more deer with chronic wasting disease, and all were killed in the area where the state wants to try to eradicate the disease from the herd, the agency said Friday.

That is the largest weekly increase in the number of deer found with the disease that the DNR has reported as it has been trying to pinpoint how widespread the disease is in the herd.

The results bring the number of deer found with the disease to 80, and they continue to show that about 2 percent of the deer in the Mount Horeb area are inflicted with the incurable disease.

Of the diseased deer found so far, 43 were in Dane County, 35 in Iowa County, one in Richland County and one in Sauk County.

Of the 16 new cases, eight were found in Dane County and eight in Iowa County, the DNR said.

The newest findings indicate more diseased deer are being found where scientists expected, but the prevalence remains unchanged, DNR spokesman Bob Manwell said.

"It is no more widespread," he said. "It is still in that cluster within the eradication zone that has slowly gained in numbers as more deer are tested."

The newest report said all the deer heads — 2,010 of them — that hunters in nine counties donated for disease testing have been analyzed and none were positive. The counties are Calumet, Crawford, Door, Dunn, Green Lake, Kenosha, Monroe, Ozaukee and Pierce.

Manwell said the DNR has not yet declared those counties as free of chronic wasting disease.

Testing of deer killed in several other counties is nearly complete as well. For example, of the 623 deer heads donated in Vilas County, 622 had been tested, and none had the disease, the DNR said.

Laboratory experts analyzed during the last week another 2,574 samples of deer brains for the unprecedented study to learn how widespread the fatal brain disease might be in the state's overpopulated whitetail herd, the agency said.

The DNR said 74 of the deer with the disease were found in the 411-square-mile area near Mount Horeb where the agency wants all deer — an estimated 30,000 — killed to try to eradicate the disease from the herd.

The other six were found in the so-called management zone nearby.

The disease, which jeopardizes the state's $1 billion hunting industry, was discovered in near Mount Horeb in February 2002.

Until it was found in Wisconsin, the disease had never been found east of the Mississippi River.

The disease creates sponge-like holes in the deer's brain, causing the animal to grow thin, act abnormal and die. Although there is no scientific evidence the disease can infect humans, people are advised not to eat an infected deer.

The latest batch of testing means 30,861 of the 39,912 deer samples submitted by hunters, or 71 percent of them, have been analyzed for the disease, the DNR said in its weekly update of the testing.

http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/local/states/wisconsin/5451993.htm

http://hoovnews.hoovers.com/fp.asp?layout=displaynews&doc_id=NR20030327670.2_387e0002a78f4946

Hoovers Online News      March 27, 2003 9:38am

Bratislava, 27 March: A first detected case of bovine disease BSE in Slovakia this year was announced by the State Veterinary Institute in Zvolen on Thursday [27 March].

The result will now be double-checked by the Neuroimmunological Laboratory of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava.

This is the 12th case of BSE, or mad-cow disease, detected in Slovakia since intensive monitoring for the disorder was launched in 2001.

The infected cow belonged to a farm in central Slovakia near Nova Bana. It was slaughtered after showing symptoms of BSE while calving.

Before this case, 17,155 cows had tested negative for BSE this year. In 2002, 66,798 tests were carried out.

Source: TASR web site, Bratislava, in English 1218 gmt 27 Mar 03

http://hoovnews.hoovers.com/fp.asp?layout=displaynews&doc_id=NR20030327670.2_387e0002a78f4946

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/149/letter/Too_little_too_late_on_beef_imports+.shtml

Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2003 11:20 AM
Subject: [CJDVoice] Too little, too late on beef imports

Too little, too late on beef imports  5/29/2003

THE US BAN on Canadian beef and cattle imports, following on the heels of a ''mad cow'' disease case in Canada, represents too little, too late. The USDA claim that there has been no confirmed case in the US rings hollow. Too little, because US authorities test 20,000 animals for mad cow disease each year -- that's only 0.05 percent of the cattle slaughtered -- and Canadians do even less. Europeans test that many animals every day. Moreover, most cattle are slaughtered by the age of 4, before mad cow disease symptoms develop. The afflicted Canadian cow was 8.

Too late, because last year the US imported 1.7 million head of cattle and more than a billion pounds of beef from Canada. This accounts for 7 percent of US beef consumption, and NAFTA regulations make sure that we don't know which 7 percent. Consumption of infected beef can lead to development of the fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob dementia in humans.

It's getting harder to trust the judgment of USDA officials to tell fact from fiction. If I were a meat eater, I would try some of the great new meatless food products widely available today.

BRAD GABLE

Boston

This story ran on page A100 of the Boston Globe on 5/29/2003.
© Copyright <http://www.boston.com/globe/search/copyright.html> 2003
Globe Newspaper Company.

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/149/letter/Too_little_too_late_on_beef_imports+.shtml

TSS

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=410476

Copyright 2003 Newspaper Publishing PLC
The Independent (London)

May 29, 2003, Thursday

SECTION:
NEWS; Pg. 3

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles

HEADLINE:
BSE -  THE THREE LETTERS THAT TERRIFY THE CATTLE RANCHERS OF AMERICA;
THE DISCOVERY OF MAD COW DISEASE IN CANADA PROVOKES ALARM IN US - the world's biggest beef market, PLUS CONCERN OVER MEAT INDUSTRY PRACTICES.

BYLINE:
Any reforms that President Bush might be persuaded to make to the US's $ 80bn beef industry would come up against cattle owners' well- known resistance to oversight

THE LAND of rib-eye steaks and hamburgers is in trouble. Mad cow disease has hit the American continent, and that means every cattle rancher from Texas to New England is asking just how long it will be before the disease hits the biggest beef market in the world, in the United States.

The discovery of a single BSE-infected carcass in Canada hasn't triggered panic or a diminution in beef consumption south of the border - yet. Government officials and meat industry spokesmen insist the temporary ban on Canadian imports is enough to protect domestic consumers.

But critics who have been predicting for years that it is just a matter of time before cattle in the US become infected have gone into overdrive, demanding a complete rethink of the way cows in the country are fed, inspected and traced from their point of origin to their destination on the dinner plates of an unabashedly carnivorous nation.

The discovery of mad cow disease in Canada is a very significant development. It means no beef-producing nation can believe that it is and can remain BSE-free, said Steve Bjerklie, editor of the trade magazine Meat Processing.

Others have gone even further. Bruno Oesch of Zurich University told the BBC yesterday that American consumers could well have been eating contaminated beef for some time because of the close relationship between the Canadian and US meat industries. That remains to be proven - several other experts said they wanted to see more data before assuming any spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy beyond the one cow diagnosed - but the danger clearly exists.

More than 70 per cent of Canadian beef and veal exports went south of the border last year, according to the Canadian Beef Export Federation, accounting for a $1.67bn (£1bn) bite out of an $80bn industry in the US.

Particularly worrying is the fact the dead cow in Alberta was initially misdiagnosed with bovine pneumonia, leading to a four-month delay between the animal's death and the announcement that it had BSE. If there was a more widespread contamination - the Canadians are now busy testing several herds - the potential for BSE's entry into the human food chain is considerable.

At the same time, US government regulators have been upbraided for years for their unwillingness to institute blanket-testing of all dead cattle, and for numerous loopholes in the rules supposedly intended to keep cattle products from being fed back to live herds. There is some evidence that at least three mink that contracted a spongiform degenerative disease in the US might have been become infected by eating BSE-infected cattle meat. A chronic wasting disease in the same family of pathogens as BSE has turned up in deer in Wisconsin and Colorado, and although it is not known if this is linked to any incidence of mad cow disease, some experts have their suspicions.

The US Beef Industry began taking steps to counter this chorus of criticism yesterday. "Let's take a deep breath and look at everything in a rational way," Chandler Keys of the US Beef Association told USA Today, the first US newspaper to pick up on the story. He argued that one case of BSE in Canada was no reason for panic, and that US testing standards were fine given that the country was officially BSE-free.

Last year, the US Department of Agriculture conducted tests on the brains of 19,990 dead cattle - out of an estimated 100 million animals across the country - and issued a completely clean bill of health. Ever since the BSE scare in Britain hit the international headlines in 1996, the official attitude on this side of the Atlantic has been one of zero tolerance towards imports from suspect foreign countries, as well as a relatively relaxed attitude to the domestic industry.

For the moment, Mr Keys has got public opinion on his side. Monday was the Memorial Day holiday in the US, traditionally the opening day of summer and an invitation to American families everywhere to pull out the barbecue and roast some steaks and burgers. And all indications are that this year's holiday had as much sizzle as ever.

But some critics suggest the US attitude is dangerously isolationist. "I think we have the sense that Canada is this far-off country somewhere. I don't think people realise how integrated our cattle system is," Dr Michael Greger, a physician with the Organic Consumers of America, said. "We have the same kind of inadequate surveillance in both countries, inadequate feed-ban loopholes. We've really got to act as if this happened in Texas."

In response to the British BSE crisis, the US Food and Drug Administration issued a ban in 1997 that stopped the widespread practice of feeding the rendered remains of dead sheep and cattle to cow herds. The ban also extended to dead cats and dogs from animal shelters. The FDA, however, has come under heavy criticism for what the ban left out.

Dead horses, pigs and poultry continue to be included in cattle feed, as do blood products from all animals including cows. It is fine for a farmer to feed dead cattle to poultry, and it is fine for the same farmer to feed dead poultry to cattle, so there is considerable risk of cross-contamination.

The continued use of blood products seems particularly illogical, since the FDA has strict rules in place - inspired by the BSE scare - preventing would-be donors from giving blood if they have spent time in Britain.

Industry critics, as well as producers of organic meat, believe it is in everybody's interests to stop feeding cows animal products of all kinds - something that is done largely for financial reasons, not because it is good either for the cows or for the people who end up eating them. "I have not heard a good case yet for feeding ruminants the ground-up remains of other animals," Mr Bjerklie said. "Yeah, it's protein-rich feed but there are a lot of other protein-rich feeds." There are also calls for a rigorous traceback system, already in operation among organic producers, some of whom use global positioning systems to track their cattle.

The chances of implementing such reforms without a big political imperative such as a health scare seem rather slim, however. True to their image as the descendants of ruggedly individualistic Wild West cowboys, American livestock owners are notoriously resistant to government oversight of any kind. Successive US governments, always more receptive to industry lobbying than they are to public interest groups, have generally stayed off their backs.

That helps explain why no action was taken after a government report revealed two years ago that animal feed was being improperly labelled, and that inadequate steps were being taken to prevent cross-contamination. If the BSE scare grows, that might be an issue worth revisiting.

Where's the beef?

* The US produces 12 billion kilograms of beef each year, or 25 per cent of the world's supply

* Americans spend $65bn (£40bn) a year on beef

* The average American eats 29kg (63lbs) of beef a year, the equivalent of a pound of beef a week

* Beef is consumed in 77.6 million meals across the US every day

* Steak is eaten by the average American more than once a month

* 88 per cent of American households (or 251 million consumers) will serve beef in the next two weeks

* 50 per cent of all beef bought in the US is minced

* There are 96.1 million cattle in the US

* 36 million cattle are slaughtered in the US every year

* The US imports 1.7 million head of cattle a year from Canada

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=410476

By MATT GOURAS
.c The Associated Press

HELENA, Mont. (AP) - Five bulls from a Canadian herd that included a cow with mad-cow disease were shipped to Montana six years ago and have since been slaughtered, state officials said Wednesday.

None of the animals showed clinical signs of the disease, said Karen Cooper, spokeswoman for the Montana Department of Livestock. What became of the carcasses after slaughter was unclear.

Ron DeHaven, a spokesman for the U.S. Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said the USDA believes it unlikely any of the bulls were infected with the disease, though he did not explain why. He said his agency is trying to find out what happened to the carcasses.

The slaughter would have occurred after the Food and Drug Administration had banned the use of animal parts in livestock feed. Given that fact, DeHaven said it is unlikely the meat would have been fed to other cattle.

He added that the chance of someone getting the human form of the disease from the five bulls is ``immeasurably small.''

This is the first indication that the Canadian investigation into the disease known as BSE, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, has reached into the United States.

Two weeks ago, Canadian officials disclosed that a cow in Alberta had been identified as having the disease. The United States immediately banned all imports of Canadian beef and cattle.

Canada has since ordered the slaughter of more than 1,700 cattle in its effort to determine the disease's source. So far, 800 animals have tested negative, including animals that had been in the same herd as the infected cow.

Canadian authorities said Wednesday some of the bulls from Alberta apparently were subsequently resold in South Dakota and Montana.

Mad cow disease was first diagnosed in Britain in 1986. The human form of BSE is the fatal brain-wasting illness variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Scientists believe people get it by eating some meat products from infected animals.

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MAD_COW_MONTANA?SITE=MTGRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Family wonders if death is related to mad cow disease
By David Levinsky and Janet Skarbek
 

Anna-Mae Trievel remembers her sister Carol as two different people.

There was the meticulous, fussy Carol who was a whiz at organizing at home and at work. Then, suddenly, there was the sick Carol, with frequent memory loss, outbursts of laughter and sudden loss of balance.

Her doctor believes the cause of her transformation was a rare, untreatable brain disorder known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Her family, however, wonders if she might have been the victim of the new variant CJD disease linked to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly called mad cow disease.

"The disease literally transformed her into almost a different person," Trievel said about her sister, Carol Olive, 56, a lifelong Cinnaminson resident who died last month from what her doctors suspect was CJD.

After six months of watching Olive waste away, Trievel and her family won’t know the truth until after post-mortem testing is completed at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.

Only then will doctors be able to say with some certainty if Olive contracted CJD, the variant CJD linked to mad cow, or some other neurological disorder with symptoms similar to the two diseases.

Classic CJD and the variant version are different diseases, but both are untreatable and fatal. Doctors believe the variant form is caused by ingesting beef infected with mad cow disease. The cause of classic CJD is mostly unknown, although a small number of cases are inherited or transmitted from organ or tissue transplants.

CJD cases are extremely rare. Only one person in a million develops the disease, according to the national Centers for Disease Con-trol. Doctors aren’t sure of the length of the incubation period, but the CDC says the symptoms may not appear for years.

When symptoms develop, however, paralysis and death follow quickly, usually within six months to a year, doctors said.

Trievel can attest to that lethal efficiency. She said her sister was diagnosed with suspected CJD in late January. By February, she was bedridden. By late spring, she was incapacitated, Trievel said. Olive spent the last months of her life at Alterra House at Claire Bridge in Westampton, where she died in May, her sister said.

"It takes over so rapidly," said Trievel. "She was a healthy, vi-brant woman who walked all the time. Then her brain just shut down."

Although medical officials won’t know for sure until testing is completed, Dr. Robert Aiken, the Thomas Jefferson University neurologist who diagnosed Olive, said her case does not fit the profile of variant CJD patients. He said those patients generally live longer than in Olive’s case.

"Usually, the variant version (linked to mad cow) develops at a much slower pace," Aiken said.

CDS epidemiologist Ermias Belay also cited Olive’s age as another factor. He said almost all of the approximately 150 known cases of variant CJD involved patients younger than 40 who spent long periods of time in countries known to have cattle infected with mad cow.

There has never been a known incident of a cow contracting mad cow disease in the United States, federal health officials said. Last month, a cow in Alberta, Canada, tested positive for the disease, prompting the United States and other nations to ban imports of Canadian beef.

Despite efforts to safeguard the domestic cattle industry, Olive’s family still believes it is possible the cattle disease may have penetrated the United States.

"Carol was a beef hound," Trievel said. "She always ate it. Hamburger, fries and coleslaw was her standard meal."

The family also worries about two other suspected CJD deaths with links to Olive’s longtime workplace at Garden State Park in Cherry Hill.

Olive worked as a media representative at the track for 16 years until it closed in 2001. During seven of those years, Camden resident Carrie Mahan Robinson was employed at the track as an accountant for the restaurants and concession stands there. Robinson died of suspected CJD in 2000 at the age of 29, according to her brother Allen Mahan.

The same year, Pennsauken resident John Paul Webber, 83, also died of CJD, according to his brother William Webber.

William Webber said his late brother had a season pass to the track and would go there "at least once a week, sometimes more" until he began showing symptoms of the disease. He died soon after the symptoms developed, Webber said.

Belay said CDC officials are gathering information, but infected beef is not suspected in any of the three cases. He admitted that even two cases involving people who worked together would be unusual, but said the CDC does not view these three cases as cause for alarm.

"Statistically speaking, the possibility exists that cases like these can happen by chance," he said. "We won’t know anything until after the tests (on Olive)."

Meanwhile, Olive’s family members are growing steadily more impatient. While they wait, Trievel and her brother have made it their mission to learn more about the disease. They’ve traveled to conferences, questioned experts and gathered piles of news stories and medical articles discussing the disease.

"We’ve talked to countless doctors across the United States and in England," said Carol Olive’s brother, Louis Olive Jr. "The truth is that not a lot of people know about this disease. The medical community is simply mystified."

June 23, 2003 12:34 PM

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/112-06232003-112425.html

Deer Tests Positive for Chronic Wasting Disease
Sep. 10, 2004
MOAB, Utah (AP) -- A mature buck deer in the La Sal Mountains east of Moab has tested positive for chronic wasting disease, the Division of Wildlife Resources said Friday.

Biologists believe the buck was killed by a mountain lion.

"This is the first deer to test positive for CWD in Utah this year," said Leslie McFarlane, a division wildlife biologist.

Last year, six of the 244 deer sampled in the La Sal Mountains tested positive for the disease.

The DWR has collected samples from 207 animals across the state for testing this year, and wants to collect more than 2,700 samples.

"We'll be taking samples from deer in specific units and from elk in the Uintah Basin and southeastern Utah," McFarlane said.

A map of the units that will be sampled this year can be viewed at the DWR's Web site http://www.wildlife.utah.gov

Results from samples that have been submitted, and information about chronic wasting disease, are also available at the site.

Chronic wasting disease attacks the brains of infected animals, causing them to display abnormal behavior and eventually become emaciated and die. There is no evidence the disease can spread to people.

Once thought to exist only in the wild in northeastern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming, the ailment has been found in wild and captive deer and elk in Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and two Canadian provinces.

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

http://tv.ksl.com/index.php?nid=5&sid=118740

OTTAWA — Get used to it: mad cow disease is here to stay.

Government officials would never put it so bluntly, but that's the message implicit in their low-key response to the latest suspected case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

Even if the new case is confirmed, it's not expected to delay the announced reopening of the U.S. border to Canadian cattle. That reflects a big change in thinking since May 2003 when the discovery of a single case closed the border.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration was given advance warning of the suspected case and proceeded with the reopening announcement anyway, said Gary Little, a veterinarian with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

"I think it's always been recognized that . . . there would be a small number of additional cases identified,'' Little said in an interview Friday.

But government comments in the past left the impression that the risk was virtually nil.

"Risk assessments have consistently determined that the possible presence of BSE could not be excluded, but is negligible,'' Former Agriculture Minister Bob Speller said last December.

Prime Minister Paul Martin spoke to U.S. President George W. Bush early Friday about the suspected case coming just as the border re-opening was announced.

Martin sought assurances that the new potential case in Alberta would not mean a re-closure of the U.S. border to Canadian beef imports.

Bush assured Martin that his administration is committed to keeping the border open, a Canadian official said.

Michael Hansen, a scientist with the U.S. Consumers Union, says it appears the United States and Canada have made a common decision that a small number of BSE cases are acceptable.

"Normally when any country reports a single case of BSE the U.S. would stop all imports. That's what the global rules of the game are. You would think they would take more precautions not less.''

Hansen said the U.S. commitment to label Canada a "minimal risk'' country even if another case is confirmed does not reflect the criteria of the World Organization for Animal Health commonly known by its French acronym OIE.

"They (U.S. officials) do not have a scientific rationale for opening the border.''

It appears that the U.S. and Canada may have given up on gaining access to overseas markets, he suggested.

Little strongly denied this, saying talks are underway with Japan, an important market that remains closed.

Hansen said there are still major loopholes in the U.S. and Canadian precautions with respect to mad cow disease.

An internal CFIA study recently obtained by The Vancouver Sun found that 59 per cent of cattle feed samples labelled as vegetable-only were found to contain "undeclared animal materials.

That raises questions about the effectiveness of the current ban on feeding cattle remains to other cattle, considered one of the most likely routes of disease transmission.

Hansen also noted that Canadian regulations permit calves to be weaned on whole blood even though it has been demonstrated the disease can be spread through blood.

Little of the CFIA said no cases of blood transmission have been reported.

The news release on the new suspected case was issued at 2:30 a.m. on Thursday morning. Officials say there was no intention to bury the story, the release was simply delayed.

Definitive word on test results is expected within days.

Meat from cattle infected with mad cow disease is considered the prime route of transmission for variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal neurological disorder.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1104529356723_12/?hub=Canada

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20041231.wmadcow31/BNStory/Front/