By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent
 
ASHLAND, Wis. — A deer that had tested positive for chronic wasting disease (CWD) has tested negative for the condition in a series of tests run by a national laboratory.

The incident matters not only for Wisconsin, but also for the Upper Peninsula (U.P.) of Michigan, because the deer hunting preserve where the animal was shot was within 50 miles of the Michigan border. That would have triggered a near-immediate ban on deer feeding and baiting in the U.P.

According to a press release issued by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (WDA), a battery of tests run by the National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames, Iowa, came out negative. Pathologists at the NVSL ran what were described as an “exhaustive process using all diagnostic techniques available” and did not detect CWD.

Richard Pershinske, an avid outdoorsman and feed store owner in Engadine, in the U.P., expressed his worries about a possible ban on feeding and baiting. He said the deer food business for him is “huge” between Oct. 1-Dec. 1; “as high as 90 percent during that time-frame.

“It’ll affect me economically, huge,” he said of a possible ban after an initial test showed that the deer was positive for CWD.
A newspaper in northern Wisconsin originally reported the case of CWD on Nov. 14. The initial test was done at the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostics Laboratory, said Donna Gilson, a spokeswoman for the WDA.

“The test is designed to be very sensitive, so sometimes there are false positives,” Gilson said.

The final test results mean the deer did not have CWD, according to the statement. According to National Wildlife Health Center CWD Project Leader Bryan Richards, however, testing for the disease is not a clear-cut matter. “From what I’m hearing, these were questionable test results,” he said of the initial test, not the ones conducted by the NVSL/

He explained none of the tests performed to detect CWD anywhere are “like a pregnancy test, where you get either a plus or a minus. If it’s not positive enough to be called a positive, then they will say it’s not positive.”

The problem, Richards said, is that a result that’s in a gray area doesn’t necessarily mean the animal was never infected with CWD. It could have just been in a very early phase of the disease.
“If you feed an animal CWD material, it can take two to three months for disease to be detectable,” he explained.

If the deer had been confirmed positive for CWD, it would normally have triggered an immediate ban on feeding and baiting in the U.P. because it’s so close to the Michigan border, as per the state’s CWD Surveillance and Response Plan, according to Debbie Munson, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

“It was great to receive the news that the deer in Wisconsin has tested negative for CWD,” she said. “However, Wisconsin already has chronic wasting disease on the landscape in the southern half of the state. So, realistically, it is only a matter of time before we see another case near the Upper Peninsula border.”