slee

As long as you don't come in contact with the brain and spinal cord, even in a CWD positive animal the risk is low. There has NEVER been a case reported in the US of a person acquiring variant CJD from wild game. And the issue is not elk eating elk. Once the prion is ingested in another species, it has then crossed the species barrier. That's why infected cattle are killed immediately. It is transmissible to other cows once one has been infected. And they aren't sure exactly how it is transmitted within a species. I'm not sure why Wisconsin irradicated itsdeer population in certain areas onlyto transport new deer in. You can't kill the prion with burying orburning the animals. It can still potentiallysurvive in the soil in those areas. The prion is not known to live in muscle tissue though. The cases reported in the US as of 2004 were from people who visited or lived inEurope in the 1980s and 90s,and consumed food made withinfectedanimal brains. And if my memory serves me correctly, there were less than 10 of thosecases. You need to pick your sources of information very carefully. Iwrote a research paper in Physician Assistant school lastfall on this topic, and there is actually very little in the medicalliterature about variant CJD in the US. The other thing to consider is many cases of sporadic CJD, which is a naturally occuring disease in the human population,go undiagnosed for many reasons. The symptoms mimic several other neurologic diseases. The increase in incidence of sporadic CJD diagnoses could easily be the increased awareness and better diagnostic testingin recent years. Theprimarydiagnostic testsare a head CT, post-mortem examof the brain, and patient symptoms before death.You are at no more risk now than you were 6 months or a year ago as long as you don't handle or consume the brain and spinal cord.