Mad cow disease, scrapie in sheep, and chronic wasting disease in north American deer are all prion disorders.
Mad cow disease was famously spread due to sick and dead cows being ground up and fed to healthy cows.
Prions are notoriously hard to destroy. They generally aren't rendered inert or safe by cooking or other processes so even cooked meat can spread the illness to healthy animals.
Chronic Wasting Disease is causing serious problems in the north American deer population as deer shed infectious prions as they feed, rest, or where they die. These prions are extremely hardy and can persist in then environment for months or years. Since natural predators are wiped out across most of the deer's range, and hunting practices are far from sufficient to cull the herd size, the disease is essentially spreading uncontrolled due to high population density bringing infected deer in contact with uninfected deer. The solution, of course, is to un-fence America and restore the wolf population but try to sell that in congress.
Yeah, seriously. Prion diseases are so scary to me, and the thought of Chronic Wasting Disease spreading throughout such a numerous animal as deer is completely terrifying. Wolf reintroduction is clearly the right choice, but I don't have much hope. It's wild the number of diseases that run rampant because humans upset the balance of the ecosystem. Just a couple months ago I was randomly reading about the extinct passengers pigeons that were so numerous that they used to blot out the sky. Turns out there's a theory that the reason why Lyme disease has become so rampant is because the massive population of pigeons used to compete with rodents for the same food, so now the rodent population is much larger than it used to be, and thus Lyme disease flourishes.
Mad cow disease, scrapie in sheep, and chronic wasting disease in north American deer are all prion disorders.
Mad cow disease was famously spread due to sick and dead cows being ground up and fed to healthy cows.
Prions are notoriously hard to destroy. They generally aren't rendered inert or safe by cooking or other processes so even cooked meat can spread the illness to healthy animals.
Chronic Wasting Disease is causing serious problems in the north American deer population as deer shed infectious prions as they feed, rest, or where they die. These prions are extremely hardy and can persist in then environment for months or years. Since natural predators are wiped out across most of the deer's range, and hunting practices are far from sufficient to cull the herd size, the disease is essentially spreading uncontrolled due to high population density bringing infected deer in contact with uninfected deer. The solution, of course, is to un-fence America and restore the wolf population but try to sell that in congress.
Yeah, seriously. Prion diseases are so scary to me, and the thought of Chronic Wasting Disease spreading throughout such a numerous animal as deer is completely terrifying. Wolf reintroduction is clearly the right choice, but I don't have much hope. It's wild the number of diseases that run rampant because humans upset the balance of the ecosystem. Just a couple months ago I was randomly reading about the extinct passengers pigeons that were so numerous that they used to blot out the sky. Turns out there's a theory that the reason why Lyme disease has become so rampant is because the massive population of pigeons used to compete with rodents for the same food, so now the rodent population is much larger than it used to be, and thus Lyme disease flourishes.