Veterinary officials in Colorado are anxiously trying to curtail an outbreak of chronic wasting disease (CWD), a fatal condition that afflicts deer and elk and is related to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or "mad cow" disease. After the alarming finding that elk from an infected farm have been shipped to more than a dozen states, some fear that the disease may spread across the United States.
Chronic wasting disease leaves deer and elk listless, emaciated, and eventually dead. The cause is thought to be an aberrant protein called a prion, which may spread through direct contact between animals or through soil contamination with the prion protein. There's no evidence that the condition can spread to humans--like BSE, which can cause variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease--or to cattle (Science, 1 June, p. 1641). However, that possibility has not been excluded.
The disease has been endemic for decades in wild deer and elk populations in northeastern Colorado, southeastern Wyoming, and a small part of neighboring Nebraska. Since 1997, however, it has popped up at 15 elk farms in five states. And since August alone, Colorado officials have found six infected elk, five of which originated at a single elk ranch in Stoneham. The farm, one of the biggest in the country, has shipped some 160 animals to other parts of Colorado and more than 200 to elk farms in 15 states as far east as Pennsylvania, says Colorado state veterinarian Wayne Cunningham.
Now there is concern that these elk could infect wild deer and elk across the United States. That would deal a blow to the hunting industry, especially in Eastern states, which have huge populations of white-tailed deer, says Michael Miller, a veterinarian with the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. CWD could also ruin the elk industry, which raises the animals for their meat and velvety antlers, a popular ingredient in dietary supplements. "If this is not dealt with, the industry is doomed," says Cunningham.
In late September, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman declared the situation an emergency, a measure that enabled her department to spend $2.6 million to kick-start an aggressive eradication campaign. Currently, farmers often aren't fully reimbursed when their herds are confiscated, leaving them little incentive to report sick animals. The new campaign would implement active surveillance, pay farmers a fair price for their animals, and also pay for destruction of the carcasses and decontamination of their farms.
Related sites
Information about
CWD from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, including Declaration
of Emergency
Information
from the Colorado Division of Wildlife
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