Testing question

[eyedr]

Well I found some relatives in wisconsin with a 30 acre parcel willing to let me hunt over christmas. However I'm noticing I'm in the cwd zone. Question is how many of you near a cwd zone get your meat tested before you eat it?

[John478]

From the Illinois DNR

There is no scientific evidence that CWD is transmissible through consumption of meat from an infected animal. CWD has not been linked to the human TSE disease, Creutzfeldt - Jakob Disease, in the way that bovine spongiform encephalopathy has been in Europe. The prion that causes CWD accumulates in certain parts of infected animals — the brain, eyes, spinal cord, lymph nodes, tonsils and spleen — and, therefore, these tissues should not be eaten. As a precaution, health officials advise that no part of any animal with evidence of CWD should be consumed by humans or other animals. There is no test that your meat processor can perform to ensure your animal does not have CWD. Experts suggest that hunters take simple, common-sense precautions when field dressing deer:

Wear rubber gloves when field dressing carcasses.

Bone out the meat from your animal.

Minimize the handling of brain and spinal tissues.

Wash hands and instruments thoroughly after field dressing is completed.

Avoid consuming brain, spinal cord, eyes, spleen, tonsils and lymph nodes of harvest animals. (Normal field dressing coupled with boning out of a carcass will remove essentially all of these parts.)