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posted by martyb on Monday January 22 2018, @10:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the Bambi's-Revenge dept.

Caught my eye, because venison is rather tasty — the report from Tech Times:

Chronic Wasting Disease was first observed among Colorado deer in 1967. Since then, the neurological disease has spread to 24 U.S. states and Canada.

There have been no reports of human contamination so far, but a recent Canadian study has once again sparked worries that the disease could be contracted by humans.

In a long-term study at the University of Calgary, 18 macaques were exposed to the disease in different ways, including injecting infected material straight to the brain; feeding infected meat; skin contact; and intravenously.

Bottom line:

A report states that to date, three out of the five macaques fed with 5 kilograms (11 lbs.) of infected deer meat over a period of three years tested positive for CWD. In humans, such diet is equivalent to eating a 7-ounce steak each month.

What's even more alarming is that two of the three monkeys fed with deer meat exhibited symptoms of the disease such as anxiety, ataxia, and tremors.

One macaque shed one-third of its body weight over a six-month period, while two animals that had infected matter injected into their brains also developed CWD.

Good advice from a scientist:

"No one should consume animal products with a known prion disease," said Stefanie Czub, a prion researcher at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, who presented the partial findings of the study in Edinburgh, Scotland last May 2017.

Previously: Deer in Multiple U.S. States Test Positive for Chronic Wasting Disease, Leading to Restrictions

Related: Venison: The Luxury Red Meat?


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  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday January 23 2018, @03:35AM (3 children)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 23 2018, @03:35AM (#626409) Journal

    Imagine if millions were spent... before someone realized that it was harmless in humans.

    My imagination is not failing to grasp medical research. It is important to maintain the safety of the food supply, while simultaneously focusing spending on actual threats, and your suggestion otherwise falls wide of the mark.

    What's not quite as important is researching what happens to those who inject diseased animal paté into their brains. I submit that that might be a poor place to pour those millions. In the region where I live, this is not a common (nor uncommon, even) practice, and determining what happens to those who practice it kind of misses the point.

    Why? Because injecting disease into the brains of a test species, and finding them to show no symptoms, doesn't mean the disease can't affect humans. And finding them horrendously infected when brain injected can't show that the disease would ever affect humans--even if you "assume" it does at that point, you're still dealing with the data for those with that brain-injection condition. Again, not a primary concern.

    People here usually cook or jerk deer meat and then eat it, a more common ingestion route. Best practices mean getting the deer to a meatcutter quickly; the meatcutter keeps the deer in frozen conditions while it's processed to minimize the growth of pathogens. Even if, instead, you butcher the deer yourself outdoors on a hot summer day, next door to a sewage processing facility, and lick your fingers the whole time, this does not approximate injecting disease-cultured flesh into your brains.

    If you couldn't get any infections by feeding sick dead deer to your test animals, raw nor cooked, I could see some research along the lines of "Well THIS will get an infection if ANYTHING will; Cletus, hand me that there brain syringe thingy...." But they seem to have a population of test animals that got nice and sick just eating disease sandwiches.

    You, the same person who seems to advocate doing just that,

    If I assume good faith, I will take it that you just perhaps misunderstood what aspect of the research I thought was the least surprising. And that's still why we do the research; to see the result, even if it doesn't always surprise us.

    What might have surprised me would have been a result where the animals that ate the diseased venison got sick, but the ones that had it jacked straight into their brains became immune.

    Surprise meter [-----+----/] for sure.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by tekk on Tuesday January 23 2018, @05:40AM

    by tekk (5704) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 23 2018, @05:40AM (#626425)

    The key there is that they injected the brains at the start (presumably) before the food wasn't affected. Basically an insurance policy: well maybe we won't be able to get results from food in the timespan we have (3 years), but there are probably people who eat venison more than that, so lets give the disease the best possible chance to take hold too just in case.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 23 2018, @07:53AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 23 2018, @07:53AM (#626441)

    requerdanos you don't get it. This used 12 animals. And you think the delivery mechanism was badly chosen?

    12 animals died for this. Do you want 1,000 to be tortured by being rubbed against deer carcasses? And then killed - because you cannot re-use these now for science or food, so incinerated, utterly destroyed. Wasted.

    You're perhaps no buddhist. "Fuck the monkeys" maybe?

    Did you even read the summary? They used several delivery mechanisms. One was eating. It spread to those monkeys.

    Humans DO eat venison and the bodyweight:eaten ratio is well within the freezers of families I know.

    Do you understand how prions work? Because these self-replicate in deer through some form of touch or intercourse, or it wouldn't be spreading so fast. So, yes, we desperately want to find out if these will harm or spread among humans. Is it by touch? By saliva? By sex?

    User number 5997. Disappointing. Maybe we'll turn into /. with comments like yours above. Try to think the other side through before spouting. You sound like a self-important white guy.

    • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday January 23 2018, @04:25PM

      by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 23 2018, @04:25PM (#626608) Journal

      requerdanos you don't get it.

      Perhaps, perhaps not, but I appreciate your contribution to the conversation.