The
Canadian Food Inspection Agency is giving up on its plan to eradicate Chronic
Wasting Disease from wild deer in Western Canada.
It’s a
surprising move, given that the disease appears to be similar to mad cow’s
disease, formally known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) which
triggered a panic in the United Kingdom.
Both
Chronic Wasting Disease and BSE are triggered by prions in the brain or central
nervous system of animals. The human equivalent is Creutzfeldt Jacob disease
and there is evidence that Britons who ate beef from BSE-infected cattle
developed Creutzfeldt Jakob disease.
It could
take many years for any form of these brain-wasting diseases to develop, so it’s not yet clear how great the
fallout of BSE will be on the people of the United Kingdom.
It had a
devastating effect on farmers because thousands of cattle were destroyed to
eradicate the disease and the public lost confidence in the safety of beef, sending prices plunging.
There have
been some cases in Canada and the first cow that died in May, 2002, triggered a
global ban on Canadian beef and cattle that crippled the cattle-ranching and
farming business.
In 2005,
Ottawa announced a national strategy to control chronic wasting disease in the
hope of finding ways to eradicate it, but Penny Greenwood now says “we have to
realize that we may not be able to eradicate this disease currently from
Canada, given that we don't have any effective tools, so we may be looking at
switching from eradication to control."
There is
no reliable test for the disease until after an animal has died and the brain
can be examined. Greenwood is national manager of domestic disease control for
the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The agency
is working with the provinces and the game-ranching industry to come up with a
better plan because “we feel that the current program that we have had in place
for chronic wasting disease ... is not effective in achieving its goals,''
Greenwood said.
The
disease has also shown up in herds of farmed elk, mainly in Saskatchewan. That
has prompted the sacrifice of some large herds.
All of this raises some huge questions. Is CWD similar to BSE? Could it cause Creutzfeldt Jakob disease? Could it spread from not only deer to elk, but also to cattle?
And if we don't know the answers to those questions, why aren't we willing to do whatever it takes to eradicate the disease?
