CWD not found for 12th consecutive year
Department of Natural Resources
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) and the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) announced that testing of Ohio’s deer herd found no evidence of chronic wasting disease (CWD), which is a degenerative brain disease that affects elk, mule deer and white-tailed deer.
State and federal agriculture and wildlife officials collected tissue samples from 753 deer killed on Ohio’s roads from September 2013 through March 2014. An additional 88 hunter-harvested mature bucks and nine deer displaying symptoms consistent with CWD were tested as well. According to the ODNR Division of Wildlife, all samples were negative for CWD for the 12th consecutive year. Since CWD was first discovered in the late 1960s in the western United States, there has been no evidence that the disease can be transmitted to humans.
Since 2002, the ODNR Division of Wildlife, in conjunction with the ODA Division of Animal Health and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife and Veterinary Services, has conducted surveillance throughout the state for CWD. While CWD has never been found in Ohio’s deer herd, it had been diagnosed in wild and captive deer, moose or elk elsewhere in the United States and Canada.
The ODNR Division of Wildlife continues to carefully monitor the health of Ohio’s wild deer herd throughout the year. Visit ohioagriculture.gov or wildohio.gov for the latest information on CWD or the Chronic Wasting Disease Alliance at cwd-info.org. All CWD testing is performed at the ODA Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory.
