David Michael Miller
A very rough estimate is that, since last November, around 80,000 people in Wisconsin may have been consuming deer that were infected with chronic wasting disease. And the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources doesn’t want you to so much as even think about that.
In an excellent piece, outdoor writer Patrick Durkin calls out the DNR for downplaying a dramatic increase in CWD in the Wisconsin deer herd. Based on limited testing during the 2015 deer season, about 9.5% of the herd is now infected. (That figure was under 2% in 2008.) That would mean that of the 200,000 deer killed in the gun deer season last November, about 20,000 had the disease.
And yet, because the DNR is no longer encouraging testing, only 3,100 deer were tested, and 295 came back positive. That means that it’s reasonable to assume that just under 20,000 hunters are blindly consuming venison that is infected. If, for the sake of argument, those hunters share their venison with three more people (and that’s probably conservative — I shared my harvest with at least 10 people), that would mean that 80,000 individuals are exposed to CWD.
And that, of course, is just from the 2015 harvest. CWD was discovered in Wisconsin in 2000, and its spread has been consistently growing ever since.
It’s important to point out that consuming CWD tainted meat has not been shown to induce similar afflictions in humans. But nobody knows for sure. No one can say conclusively that it cannot happen.
And, in any event, would anyone really want to knowingly consume venison from a sick deer? Why take the risk? And for many of us, just the knowledge that we are consuming a local, natural, healthy food makes it all the more special. Even if I knew for certain that CWD could not jump to humans, I would not want to eat meat from a deer that I knew had been sick.
This gets to the reason for the DNR cover-up. Deer hunting is a $1.5 billion industry here. So, the department, in cahoots with the rest of state government and its political leaders, is willfully pursuing a policy of “out of sight, out of mind.” They’re putting commerce ahead of public health and safety.
And, of course, by ignoring the problem, politicians can also avoid the fallout from their decision to do nothing to stem the spread of CWD. DNR scientists and testing budgets have been slashed, game farms that were likely ground zero for the disease here go on as usual, and Gov. Scott Walker hired a “deer czar” from Texas who knew nothing of Wisconsin’s deer hunting culture, traditions and biology. His recommendations ranged from weak to ridiculous, and he essentially counseled ignoring the disease, a strategy the DNR has pursued with great vigilance.
It’s not as if my fellow hunters are not part of the problem. Though the DNR is not pushing testing, it still does it. And it’s free and fast. In my view, it is senseless not to have your deer tested. But I know something about guys who hunt (we are still overwhelmingly guys, though that is starting to change). My tribe tends to want to downplay and ignore risk. A lot of guys just would rather not know.
But willful ignorance is, well, just ignorant. Hunters could change this. About 600,000 of us buy gun deer licenses each year. That’s a lot of people and a lot of money. If we stood up and demanded that the DNR and the politicians who run it started taking CWD seriously, maybe they would.
