The Pennsylvania Game
Commission’s veterinary consultant this week recommended the statewide
prohibition of scents and attractants utilizing deer urine in an effort to
prevent the spread of chronic wasting disease into The Keystone State.
Walt Cottrell, PGC
chief veterinarian, told the Pennsylvania Game Commission during its regular
October meeting Monday that nine states are presently considering banning deer
urine use by hunters because of its potential to spread chronic wasting
disease.
Recent scientific findings indicate that CWD can be spread by excreted prions (proteins) found in the waste of infected animals, long before the disease is manifested in cervids like deer and elk.
First identified in Colorado in 1967, CWD has been found in Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, South Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Utah, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Wyoming and the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. No cases of CWD have been identified in Pennsylvania.
in his report to the Commission, Cottrell described how the disease is spread from deer-to-deer through saliva and other bodily fluids, along with plants grown in CWD-contaminated soil. Infected prions are excreted in both feces and urine, and become 700 times more infectious in soil, reported outdoor writer Gary R. Blockus in the Allentown Morning Call.
In his presentation to the Commission, Cottrell said he would recommend and support an immediate ban on the use of deer urine, as well as the feeding of deer with food that may have been grown in CWD-contaminated soil from other states.
The Commission did not act upon Cottrell’s recommendations.
Comments