Category: Deer hunting
Posted by Dave Spratt on Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 2:38 PMCWD news could raise new questions
Let's not muster up a parade just yet, but the news on chronic wasting disease isn't all bad.
Steve Halstead, the Michigan Department of Agriculture's top veterinarian, says he expects tests for the four remaining suspect deer from the Kent County herd to come back negative.
If you've been following the CWD developments, you remember that a Kent County deer tested positive last week and all 50 or so deer from that deer farm were killed and tested.
All negative.
That left the four deer that were shipped off that facility in the previous weeks.
They too have been destroyed, and test results for them are due any minute now.
If they come back negative, the scientists' attention turns toward one single question:
How?
As Halstead said, it's not likely that the single Kent County deer had one-in-a-zillion bad luck and developed CWD spontaneously.
That disease came from somewhere, and it's likely that taxidermy and illegal movement of captive deer will get the microsope next.
For now the trail seems to have gone cold. That's probably better than the alternative.
