This public food pantry offers venison donated by Wisconsin hunters through the Deer Donation Program. This program is administered by counties with the cooperation of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the United States Department of Agriculture. Because chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been found in a small percentage of Wisconsin deer, we are providing some basic information about CWD to ensure that you, the consumer, can make an informed choice in your selection of meat at the food pantry.

• CWD is a fatal disease that affects the nervous system of deer and elk. It has never been known to affect any other species of animal under natural conditions. The disease is caused by an abnormal protein called a prion, which can survive heat which would typically destroy disease-causing bacteria and viruses. Prions concentrate in certain tissues, such as brain, spinal cord, lymph nodes, and spleen.
  
• CWD has never been shown to cause illness in humans. However in Europe, a similar disease of cattle called bovine spongiform encephalopathy (also known as "mad cow disease") is the probable cause of a fatal nervous system disease in some humans who have eaten tissues from infected cattle. Because we know that, at least in this one instance, an animal prion disease has been able to infect humans, no one can predict with absolute certainty that CWD will never cause human disease.
  
• Based on extensive testing, CWD appears to be confined to a relatively small area in south-central Wisconsin. Within this area, 1-2 % of the deer were found to be infected. Deer from this area are NOT accepted for the Deer Donation Program, and so none of the venison at food pantries come from deer in this area. In the remainder of Wisconsin outside of this CWD zone as it is now defined, approximately 29,000 deer have been tested, and none were found to have CWD. This does not guarantee that there are no infected deer outside the CWD zone, but it is very unlikely that a particular deer from outside of this zone would have CWD.
  
• Meat processors who are associated with the venison donation program are using boned-out meat from which most fat, connective tissue, and nerve tissue has been removed. In this way, the tissues where the prions concentrate are not included in the processed venison.
  

If you would like more information about CWD and its implications for human health, you can call the Wisconsin Division of Public Health at (608)267-9003 or go to the following internet sites:

http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/wildlife/whealth/issues/CWD/cwdbook.pdf or

http://www.dhfs.state.wi.us/healthtips/BCD/creutzfeldt.htm

Prepared by the Wisconsin Division of Public Health July, 2003

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