Concerns Grow That Infections From 'Zombie Deer' Meat Can Jump To Humans
Would you eat venison if there was a chance it could slowly eat away at your brain?
If there's a slight possibility, it doesn't bother Patrick States. On the menu this evening for his wife and two daughters at their Northglenn, Colo., home are pan-seared venison steaks with mashed potatoes and a whiskey cream sauce.
"We each have our specialty, actually," says States as the steak sizzles. "The girls made elk tamales this morning, but we use [venison or elk] in spaghetti, chili, soup, whatever."
The States take pride in skipping the butcher counter at the grocery store. The red meat on their table almost always comes from wild game hunted in Colorado, a source they see as more organic than anything wrapped in Styrofoam and plastic.
Tonight's deer came from outside the northwestern town of Craig. The area has a low-prevalence of Chronic Wasting Disease , a deadly neurological disorder similar to Mad Cow that's found in deer, elk and moose.
First observed among captive mule deer in Fort Collins in 1967, CWD has since infected wild herds in 24 states and Canada. It has also been found in South Korea and Norway. In that time, there's been no report of human illness due to CWD exposure, but a recent Canadian study has renewed concerns that the disease could make the jump.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife asks hunters to test kills from certain areas affected by CWD. If an animal comes back positive, they recommend hunters avoid any risk by tossing out the meat before it's eaten.
Patrick States tested a sickly-looking elk in the past and threw out the meat when it came back positive. But he opted not to test the deer now on his dinner plate.
"The deer was a big healthy animal and there was a really low percentage [of CWD] in the area," he says. "It's just not something I worry about."
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The reason has to do with the speed of the disease. A CWD-infected animal can live for two years before showing signs, like a vacant stare or exposed ribs. Predators or car accidents tend to remove infected animals first, according to Dunfee.
What's trickier is explaining why hunters should worry at all. As Dunfee acknowledges, scientists have found no conclusive proof that infected meat has harmed people.
That evidence, or lack of it, suggests a strong "species barrier" between deer and humans.
CWD passes from animal to animal through prions , misfolded proteins that cause other proteins to misfold around them. Different prion diseases tend to only harm certain species, but can evolve to overcome those limitations.
For instance, Mad Cow emerged in the UK in the mid-1980s after cattle ate the bone meal of sheep infected with scrapie, a similar brain-wasting disease. The disease then made the jump to people through infected beef products, causing a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease .
Such a change has yet to happen with CWD. So far, its path of destruction appears to have stopped at the human body.
A new study has heightened concerns. Canadian researchers found that macaque monkeys contracted CWD after eating infected deer. The results mark the first time the disease has been shown to spread to a primate through meat, rather than through a direct injection of CWD prions into the nervous system.
"While most research shows there's a robust species barrier, this recent study showed that barrier might not be quite as robust as we once thought," Dunfee says.
Does cooking the meat destroy the prions? The macaque monkeys no doubt didn't take the time to cook the venison. I have heard that prions can withstand high temperatures, but just how high. I will eat beef at medium rare, but venison always well done.