Two new cases of chronic wasting disease have been confirmed in farmed elk near Swift Current, Sask.
Krista Howden of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said both animals had been slaughtered and their heads sent for testing, as required under Saskatchewan’s mandatory CWD surveillance program.
“The producer had noticed an animal not doing well and euthanized it,” she said of the two-year-old elk bull most recently destroyed.
A second animal was also slaughtered the first week of November for similar reasons.
Neither animal entered the food chain, said Howden, who added that it was the first positive CWD for the producer.
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The remaining 35 elk were quarantined before being destroyed.
“We depopulated the herd and tested for CWD last week (week of Dec. 4)” she said.
Results are expected by Dec. 18.
She said the area has one previous CWD case in a farmed animal and has seen CWD cases in the wild.
CWD was first diagnosed in captive deer and elk in Colorado in the 1970s and found in wild populations in the 1980s.
It has also been found in farmed and wild elk and deer populations in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
