The disease was at one time only found west of the Mississippi river. It was deer propagators that brought it east of the Mississippi. I never heard the government released it but the government didn't invent it. CWD is in the same family of diseases as Scabies in sheep and mad cow disease in cattle all spread by prions that are almost impossible if not impossible to destroy. They live in the soil and are taken up by the grasses and plants and are also in them as well in contaminated areas. The states east of the Mississippi had ample opportunity to stop the disease from spreading by banning the raising of captive bred cervids. a few did but the rest fiddled around while the fires of burning Rome moved towards them and then it is was too late. This is one of nature's solution to over population, nature doesn't differentiate between animals in the wild and animals in an enclosure in a situation that would be over population in the wild. Over population for a long enough period of time results in various diseases to cut back the numbers. The so called experts are saying that eating the diseased meat will not hurt you. I wonder how many of them have eaten any as a control experiment! These prion diseases have the scary habit of mutating to cross species lines, that is what happened in mad cow disease and it kills people in a horrible way and you can't cook the meat hot enough or long enough to kill the prions. I will not knowingly eat any meat from venison taken from an area known to have CWD nor will I hunt close to those ares or close to an area that had a deer or elk farming operation.