# Feeding Venison



## Scott Dunmore (May 5, 2006)

Is there any problem feeding venison from areas that have deer with Chronic Wasting Disease (if not sure that's the correct name for it). I always have it frozen for a few weeks, which I thought avoided parasites, but I've only just heard about this disease. 
I guess you're not allowed to bring meat on the bone from NY to Mass, which made me wonder about feeding it to my dogs. Any info is appreciated
Thanks
Scott


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## Connie Sutherland (Mar 27, 2006)

Scott Dunmore said:


> Is there any problem feeding venison from areas that have deer with Chronic Wasting Disease (if not sure that's the correct name for it). I always have it frozen for a few weeks, which I thought avoided parasites, but I've only just heard about this disease.
> I guess you're not allowed to bring meat on the bone from NY to Mass, which made me wonder about feeding it to my dogs. Any info is appreciated
> Thanks
> Scott


It appears to affect only deer, elk, moose, and other herbivores.

Mad Cow Disease and other prion diseases like that so far have not been seen in dogs.

I have not read up on why, but I will. (I mean, is is possible and just highly inlikely? Or is it impossible?)


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## Scott Dunmore (May 5, 2006)

Thanks Connie,
So, you'd just freeze the meat for a couple weeks before feeding it?


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## Kristen Cabe (Mar 27, 2006)

Isn't CWD found in the brain and spine? If so, I'd just avoid feeding those parts of the animal, just to be on the safe side.


Jessie came down with tapeworms after eating venison last year, but I don't know if it was from the meat or if she already had them when I got her.


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## Maren Bell Jones (Jun 7, 2006)

It's caused by a prion (said "pre-on"), an infectious protein somewhat similar to mad cow disease in cattle and scrapie in sheep. From what I can tell, avoid sawing through bone and avoid the brain, lymph nodes, and spinal cord. Unfortunately, from doing my dog dissection, the nerves and ganglia of an animal course all through the body. I don't think freezing would help (except for some parasites, and prions aren't parasites).

http://www.cwd-info.org/index.php/fuseaction/recommendations.precautions
http://www.cwd-info.org/index.php/fuseaction/about.overview


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## Connie Sutherland (Mar 27, 2006)

Maren Bell Jones said:


> It's caused by a prion (said "pre-on"), an infectious protein somewhat similar to mad cow disease in cattle and scrapie in sheep. From what I can tell, avoid sawing through bone and avoid the brain, lymph nodes, and spinal cord. Unfortunately, from doing my dog dissection, the nerves and ganglia of an animal course all through the body. I don't think freezing would help (except for some parasites, and prions aren't parasites).
> 
> http://www.cwd-info.org/index.php/fuseaction/recommendations.precautions
> http://www.cwd-info.org/index.php/fuseaction/about.overview


Right, but apparently this kind of prion disease is not transferred to dogs. That's what I've read, anyway. I think this was on the CDC site.... I'll check.



Connie Sutherland said:


> Mad Cow Disease and other prion diseases like that so far have not been seen in dogs.


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## Connie Sutherland (Mar 27, 2006)

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol12no10/06-0019.htm

It looks like the species barrier makes transmission to dogs very unlikely.

I haven't found the word "impossible" yet.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol10no6/03-0948.htm

UC Davis:

"Dogs appear to be resistant" to Creutzfeldt-Jakob - type prion diseases.


I was wrong about cats. They have contracted Creutzfeldt-Jakob.
http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/special_reports/mad_cow/pedersen.lasso


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## Maren Bell Jones (Jun 7, 2006)

I wouldn't even touch the stuff if at all possible, let alone knowingly feed it to a dog. =; They still know so little about the nature of the prions, it's pretty scary.


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## Anne Vaini (Mar 15, 2007)

I'd be interested in more info about this. I'll be feeding venison this year that is not from a CWD area. We are close to one so always cautious. The meat I will be getting is from a butcher - so meat assumed safe for human consumption. I think we'll skip the backbones :x hmm... that was suppossed to be a gross-face smiley - not an angry one.


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## Ken Thompson (Jun 9, 2006)

What are the best parts of a deer to feed a dog safely. The reason I ask is my father-in-law fed his dog deer years ago and had to take him to the vet because the dog got stopped up.


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## Konnie Hein (Jun 14, 2006)

We don't live in a CWD area, but we're close. I feed deer and, based on what I read about it not being likely for dogs to be affected, I'm not concerned about CWD. Mainly I feed the meat and all organs (minus the stomach) over the course of several weeks (after freezing most of it) and only give the leg bones to my smaller dog. I did feed them the spine once, which they ate entirely and I offered them the head too. They messed around with the head for a day or so before the flies and bees discovered it. At that point I tossed the head into the woods to feed the wildlife.

Wolves and other carnivores eat deer in CWD areas and I haven't heard of them being affected by it.


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## Connie Sutherland (Mar 27, 2006)

Maren Bell Jones said:


> I wouldn't even touch the stuff if at all possible, let alone knowingly feed it to a dog. =; They still know so little about the nature of the prions, it's pretty scary.



That is good enough for me.

Every site says stuff like "so far" and "apparently."


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## Konnie Hein (Jun 14, 2006)

Connie Sutherland said:


> That is good enough for me.
> 
> Every site says stuff like "so far" and "apparently."


So where do we draw the line? Do we stop feeding meat entirely? Reminds me of the "mad cow disease" scare. Did we all stop eating beef?


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## Maren Bell Jones (Jun 7, 2006)

I suspect if they tested more cattle than they did, a lot more would turn up due to poor husbandry decisions (feeding cattle cow by products). The holes that the prion makes in the brain pretty much turns it into Swiss cheese. Very nasty stuff. If you feed grass fed beef, that's apparently not nearly as much of a risk. Of course, the nature of CWD in cervids is still not well understood.

http://www.eatwild.com/foodsafety.html


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## Pauline Michels (Sep 1, 2006)

This from Wikipedia: All known prion diseases affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissue, and all are currently untreatable and fatal. 

And this: http://cdmrp.army.mil/nprp/ would make me avoid venison from or near CWD areas since I have other choices of food for my dogs. However there certainly seems to be a very, very minor risk of infection.


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## Konnie Hein (Jun 14, 2006)

Maren Bell Jones said:


> I suspect if they tested more cattle than they did, a lot more would turn up due to poor husbandry decisions (feeding cattle cow by products). The holes that the prion makes in the brain pretty much turns it into Swiss cheese. Very nasty stuff. If you feed grass fed beef, that's apparently not nearly as much of a risk. Of course, the nature of CWD in cervids is still not well understood.
> 
> http://www.eatwild.com/foodsafety.html


Quotes like this one from the above website really bother me (bold emphasis added by me):
QUOTE: 
1/4/04. Ann Veneman, Agriculture Secretary, made the following statement in a recent news conference: "scientific evidence shows that only nervous tissue like brain and spinal cord can carry the infectious agent" for mad cow disease. 

Not so, according to Dr. Stanley Prusiner, the neurologist who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1997 for first describing prions, the misshapen proteins believed to cause the devastating disease. "We don't know where and how prions move through the [cow's] body before they show up in its brain," he told a _New York Times_ reporter. 

*This means that the disease may be transmitted by eating other parts of a cow besides the nervous tissue—including the meat.* Dr. Prusiner has devised a test to find out exactly where prions are located, but according to the _New York Times_ article, "That experiment has not been done..." The USDA's new safeguards requiring that "specified risk material" be removed from the food supply do not appear to be broad enough. 
END QUOTE

Here, conclusions are being drawn from Dr. Prusiner's statements that are not based on research. Prusiner says, "We don't know where and how prions move through the cow's body..." and the authors of the website conclude that the disease may be transmitted by eating other parts of the cow including the meat??? How did they come to this conclusion? To me, that's a pretty broad jump. And, there are no facts cited to back this statement up. No research has been conducted to prove or disprove this. 

Certainly much isn't known on how prions move through the body, but I don't think scare tactics should take the place of peer-reviewed research.


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## Maren Bell Jones (Jun 7, 2006)

I don't think "may be transported" is definitive by any means, but it's very likely not out of the range of possibility. We've really only known about prions for little over a decade or so, so definitive conclusions either way are probably iffy. I do know that it does make sense to me that grass fed animals are going to have a much less likelihood of getting it than the animals that were grain fed with a mix of their own brethren's nervous tissue.


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## ann schnerre (Aug 24, 2006)

let's not forget that there has been a ban on using meat/bone meal products in livestock feed since 1992 or 93, so the likelihood of beef/dairy cattle getting feed contaminated with those products is pretty much nil at this point. the feed industry is very regulated, mills are regularly inspected, and it isn't worth the possible consequences for any manufacturer to knowingly mix those by-products into animal feed.

i know, i know, i can hear it now "but what about the pet food recalls" . i don't know anything about pet food manufacturing, but i do know a little about the livestock industry and the feed regulations that go along with it. and i, for one, will continue to eat beef, pork, chicken, lamb, etc. even venison!


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## Lindsay Janes (Aug 9, 2007)

Connie Sutherland said:


> Right, but apparently this kind of prion disease is not transferred to dogs. That's what I've read, anyway. I think this was on the CDC site.... I'll check.


 I remember watching a documentary about Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in class and an island had a long history of cannbalism. The leader would eat the brain of a dead person, and he would get very sick. Also, I took biochemistry class. My professor talked about different kinds of neurogenerative disorders. I highly* DO NOT* suggest people or dogs to eat vension because there are several cases that animals do get prion diseases such as sheeps, pigs, deers, mooses, cows, humans, and others. 

I'm pretty sure dogs can get prion diseases; however, I would not take a risk to find it out. If animals that are not cousin to humans get it, I'm pretty sure that dogs and cats can get it too. I know a ton of researchers who work in the lab on prion diseases became vegeterians because they kept telling me how scary it is. 

Nothing can kill transmissible spongiform encephalophaties (TSE), not even cooking in 4,000 F. There is no way to get rid of it.


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## Lindsay Janes (Aug 9, 2007)

Maren Bell Jones said:


> I wouldn't even touch the stuff if at all possible, let alone knowingly feed it to a dog. =; They still know so little about the nature of the prions, it's pretty scary.


 I totally agree with you. I know the basic thing that general researchers know about prion diseses is that it affects the structure of polypeptide chains on animo acids sequence. A healthy person or animal will have a nomral amino acids sequence tend to start with an alpha amino group at one end and an alpha carboxyl group at other end. When a person has some kind of prion diseases such as parkinson or althzimer, the popypeptide chains will flip in the wrong way, scatter, or change its conformation. 

Chaperones are proteins that keep your polypeptide chains of amino acids sequence in line. When they find a wrong conformation sequence, their job is to remove the wrong sequence and replace it with the right one. They couldn't keep up with their jobs fast enough to prevent a prion disease from infecting many sequences. No one knows how to remove a prion disease. 

Here is a rich informationon prion disease

http://www.stanford.edu/group/virus/prion/prion2.html


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## Pauline Michels (Sep 1, 2006)

Wow....and I always thought the virus was alien-like from college biology and microbiology MANY years ago. This prion stuff is fascinating...scary but fascinating.


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