CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A case of chronic wasting disease has been confirmed in a captive deer herd in North Central West Virginia.
West Virginia Commissioner of Agriculture Kent Leonhardt confirmed the discovery to MetroNews. The first positive test was recorded in September after a number of deer in the captive facility died of epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD). It was a particularly bad year for EHD amid drought conditions in many parts of West Virginia and the captive facility lost a number of deer.
“When an animal dies on a deer farm, the animals are tested immediately. We don’t know what it died of, but we think it did die of EHD, it just happened to have CWD within it,” explained Leonhardt in an interview for West Virginia Outdoors.
EHD and CWD are two very different diseases among cervid animals. EHD is spread by a midge and can often be fatal and spread rapidly among whitetails, but it will be gone with the first frost to kill the midge. CWD is a long term ailment which is impossible to test for unless the animal is dead and rarely shows any physical signs until the very final stages of the animal’s life. There is a lot of research continuing to determine exactly what causes the spread of CWD.
According to Leonhardt several of the whitetails on the property tested positive for CWD. It’s the first detection of the disease in captive deer in the state and the first discovery outside of the containment zone in the Potomac Highlands and Eastern Panhandle where it was discovered in the wild deer population more than a decade ago.
“We found the disease in some of the other animals, but no clinical signs of the disease. It takes years and typically you’ll never see a clinical sign in an animal under 18 months in age because this is so slow going,” he said.
The facility was immediately placed in quarantine and remains frozen today under the authority of the state Department of Agriculture and the USDA. The intention is to humanely depopulate the facility, but the holdup has been the indemnity process.
“Right now we believe it has been contained. The farmer has been very cooperative and we’re trying to get a very humane depopulation done so that it doesn’t continue to spread, but at the same time we’ve got to make sure the farmer is properly compensated,” he explained.
Compensation for the owner is routine any time a herd or flock of livestock has to be destroyed. Captive cervid indemnity is fairly new territory for the USDA and the negotiation process continues.
Leonhardt noted one of the facility’s deer had been transported prior to the CWD discovery to another facility in West Virginia. Since it was prior to the discovery, the transfer was permitted. He added the deer was only at its new home for a couple of days before it was harvested. That particular deer also tested positive for CWD. Leonhardt said however, the disease was only discovered in the lymph nodes of the deer and not in the obex at the stem of the brain.
“Which means it was at a very early stage and very unlikely to have shed any of the pryons,” said Leonhardt.
Therefore, no quarantine was placed on the facility where the deer was killed.
The West Virginia Legislature in 2015 passed legislation which took regulatory authority over captive cervid facilities away from the DNR and put the Department of Agriculture in charge. During the debate a potential outbreak of CWD was one of the key concerns among those who opposed the change.
Leonhardt was a state Senator at the time and supported the measure. He pushed back on criticism of the shift in regulatory power.
“Because we have all these things in place in the deer farming laws and the way we do things, the deer farming is actually safer for the spread of the disease than in the wild. We know it’s in Pennsylvania, we know it’s in Virginia, we know it’s in Ohio and we know it’s in West Virginia and it was in the wild population in West Virginia before it was ever in a deer farm,” he said.
The investigation into the incident continues and monitoring is ongoing of other captive facilities in the state along with the wild deer population in areas in proximity to the deer farm where the discovery was made.
“The Commissioner has been in contact with my office and our wildlife resources section keeping us as up to date as he can. We stand ready to support them,” said DNR Director Brett McMillion. “Our goal is to protect our wild herd. We’ve had CWD in one portion of our state for many years and we’re pleased it has been largely contained to that eastern panhandle region. We don’t want to see any more contamination, that’s our number one goal.”
Leonhardt promised to release more information about the incident in the future, but due to the ongoing investigation was limited in what information he was able to share about what had happened and details of the outbreak.