Chronic Wasting Disease… What is it?
Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a fatal disease of the central nervous system that affects mule deer, white-tailed deer, moose and elk. CWD belongs to a group of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). TSEs tend to be species-specific and not naturally transmitted between species. scrapie, identified in domestic sheep and goats for more than 200 years; bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle (BSE or “mad cow disease”); Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, which occurs naturally in one of every million humans; and new variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in humans, which has been linked to the large-scale outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle herds in Great Britain.
