Talking Points

The Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Prevention Act offers measures to avert and contain the spread of CWD by:

• Restricting out-of-state importing and exporting of domestic deer and elk;
• Providing a plan for movement of domestic deer and elk from one premises to another;
• Establishing Mandatory Cervid Chronic Wasting Disease Monitoring Programs and Voluntary Cervid Chronic Wasting Disease Certification Program surveillance procedures;
• Providing for testing and investigation of deer and elk infected with CWD;
• Providing for research coordination and public awareness campaigns; and
• Providing for seizure, removal, and disposal of any unlawfully possessed domestic deer and elk.

Strong efforts to detect and prevent CWD will ensure the economic and biological stability of these animals and the health of our citizens.

• In order to battle CWD in the states, federal money is being extended to help begin addressing the outbreak. With $3.5 million going to Wisconsin, $2.5 million going to Colorado, and $1.7 million going to Kansas, CWD eradication is already costing citizens.
• Wildlife agencies and commerce officials say CWD could cost states billions of dollars if hunters, scared off by infected herds, stay away. Small-town hotels, gas stations, restaurants, and sporting goods shops will suffer.
• In Wisconsin, for example, more people hunt deer in November than are needed to vote for the winning gubernatorial candidate.
• CWD has been diagnosed in free-ranging deer and elk primarily in Northeastern Colorado, Southeastern Wyoming, and adjacent Nebraska, but has also been found in captive elk in Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Saskatchewan, and South Dakota.
• Regulations are needed to protect the industry as well as the public interest in wildlife.
• It may be too late now, but if these regulations had been in place earlier, responsible game farmers might have had a better chance of surviving (to say nothing of the wildlife).

Little is known about how CWD is spread.

• While scientists are working hard to limit the spread of the disease, the agent responsible for CWD is still not fully understood.
• While the cause remains somewhat mysterious, the method of transmission is even more elusive. It is thought that the disease can be passed between animals in close contact with one another and also perhaps from mother to offspring.
• CWD seems more likely to occur in areas where deer or elk are crowded or where they congregate at man-made feed and water stations.
• Although CWD does not appear to be transmitted via contaminated feed, artificial feeding of deer and elk may compound the problem. This may, in part, explain the intensity of infection in some cervid populations housed in farm or research settings.

CWD is not treatable and, inevitably, is fatal.

• At this time there is no known vaccine or cure for CWD; once a deer or elk has been infected, the prognosis is grim.
• Though it may go undetected for several years, CWD attacks the brains of infected deer and elk, causing the animals to become emaciated, display abnormal behavior, lose bodily functions, and die.

With the recent surfacing of CWD in Wisconsin, there is greater concern that the disease may spread nationwide.

• While states in the west have already been grappling with ways to eradicate CWD, the disease’s mysterious jump to Wisconsin has awakened more intensified concerns.
• The importation and exportation of deer and elk among states and game farms has most likely contributed to the spread of the disease. Many of the cases surfacing in the west have been found on game farms. Because transmission of CWD is still so uncertain, the precautionary principle must come into play in order to prevent further infection.
• With new game farm regulations, measures can be taken to reduce the ease of transmission and provide states with programs to manage and track the disease on domestic cervidae farms.
• Tens of thousands of deer and elk have had to be destroyed nationwide in order to contain the outbreak causing ecological disruption, and more depopulation is already planned.

When dealing with unknown diseases, it is “better to be safe than sorry.”

• While there is still no evidence directly linking CWD to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (the disease that affects humans) or its new variant, many scientists still consider it a possibility and advise the less exposure the better.
• In the same vein, there is also no evidence of a direct link between CWD and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease), but scientists are investigating the possibility.
• The disease is caused by an abnormal protein without any genetic material called a prion. Most commonly found in the central nervous system, the abnormal prion “infects” the host by promoting the conversion of normal cellular proteins into the abnormal form.
• After conversion, the nerve cells in the region die away and the holes and lesions left behind give the tissue a sponge-like appearance. The CWD agent is smaller than most viral particles and does not evoke any detectable immune response or inflammatory reaction in the host.
• The CWD protein is not easily killed by environmental factors, heat, or disinfection, so transmission from a contaminated environment may also be possible.