Chronic wasting disease has been eradicated in Canadian farmed elk, or
that is the hope, says the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
George Luterbach of the CFIA said by the first week of December the
agency completed “the last round of (Saskatchewan elk) herd
elimination” for animals that may have been exposed to CWD.
“We went to great lengths to eliminate all traces of the disease. This
will hopefully remove any potential threats to the industry or the
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CWD is a fatal brain disorder believed to be caused by an infectious
particle called a prion. It is similar to scrapie in sheep, bovine
spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, in cows and new variant
Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (vCJD) in humans. These diseases leave the
brain’s cerebral cortex full of holes with a sponge-like appearance.
Although there are suspicions, scientists have not proved a direct link
between human vCJD and CWD or BSE.
In the five years since CWD was detected in Canada, the CFIA spent more
than $30 million dealing with the problem. Luterbach said “a large
portion” of the money was paid to producers whose animals were
destroyed.
So far, 38 Saskatchewan farms have been affected with 7,500 elk and 60
white-tailed deer destroyed. Of that total, 6,500 animals were tested
and 190 elk found to be infected with CWD.
“It all can be traced back to a single point source…. No infection
has been found outside that line (when traced back). So we are
confident that we have eliminated it in farmed herds,” Luterbach said.
That single source was a Colorado born cow that was sold in 1989 from a
South Dakota game farm to a Saskatchewan elk breeder. It carried CWD.
Over the next 10 years, the disease spread to 190 other elk, all in
Saskatchewan.
Five years and millions of dollars later the Canadian elk industry is
in tatters.
But Denise Smith, executive director of the Saskatchewan Elk Breeders
Association, said the industry is recovering.
“Things were looking good for a long time. Very high. It crashed. CWD
did that. But we are in a recovery mode and things are looking more
optimistic.”
Smith said the dramatic fall of elk prices due to the CWD outbreak has
been “very difficult for many breeders.
“Drought has compounded the situation. It has driven hay prices through
the roof and made water scarce. The combination of all three has really
hurt a lot of our members.”
CWD led South Korea to ban imports of North American elk antlers, which
devastated industry prices. Before the ban, antler was bringing as much
as $120 per pound. Today that price is around $20 and the buyers are
nearly all domestic.
According to sale records, a bred female could have sold for as much as
$20,000 two years ago. This fall, premium quality bred females were
selling at auction for $1,250.
One veterinary scientist thinks elk are going through “a type of market
correction that happens in other industries” and “there is a future in
these animals.”
“Korea wants (CWD) cleaned up in Canada and the (United States) before
they will reopen the market,” said Murray Woodbury, a researcher and
teacher at the University of Saskatchewan’s Western College of
Veterinary Medicine. “There are some problems in the U.S. that need to
be dealt with. In Canada the CFIA feels they have it under control.”
