Authorities also gave up tracing origins of the second homegrown US mad cow, born on an Alabama ranch, whose identity authorities also protected. The trail went cold after seven weeks of investigation of more than three dozen farms, said news reports.
And now there is also a cloud over deer and elk which get a mad cow like disease called chronic wasting disease (CWD). Like mad cow, CWD is caused by a practically indestructible protein called a prion which is not killed by cooking, alcohol, bleach, formaldehyde or radiation.
State Departments of Natural Resources thought the disease was under control after directing hunters to kill "anterless" deer instead of bucks, thinning the herd. Food pantries were beginning to accept venison "donations" again after refusing them. ("It's perfectly good meat -- for someone else to eat," the hunters seemed to be saying.)
But now the disease is back with a vengeance, causing hunters to fear the other guy's deer at the processor if not his own, until CWD tests come back, and wives to fear husbands' bloody laundry.
It is also taking a toll on deer breeding and hunting lodges, a $4 billion a year industry despite state complaints of deer "overpopulation." Wisconsin alone has hundreds of state sanctioned deer breeding farms.
Earlier this year, a deer with CWD was found at Heartland Wildlife Ranches in Ethel, Mo., 200 miles northwest of St. Louis. Heartland is an 800-acre lodge surrounded by 8-foot fences where hunters "come from across the country to take aim at trophy animals such as whitetail deer, elk and zebra," says the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Think Dick Cheney. A three-day hunt for water buffalo costs $4,000.
In addition to threatening Rob Brasher of Salt Lake City, whose family has owned Heartland for two decades, CWD threatens David Wood, who runs the Linn County deer farm 17 miles from Heartland and can no longer sell his "baby deer" for $4,000 to $8,000.
Luckily, federal and state governments are on the mad cow and CWD case -- protecting industry from consumers' rights to know.
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