The announcement that chronic wasting disease has spread to wild deer in Crow Wing County illustrates how important it is for Minnesota to tackle this growing problem right now.
In addition to containment, Minnesota has an opportunity to create early detection tools for CWD. The development of these tools will allow us to more accurately monitor CWD and reduce the spreading of the disease. With these new tools, we can quickly provide better information to wildlife managers, hunters and all Minnesotans.
Current CWD diagnostic tests are time consuming, expensive and typically require the animal to be killed. Our University of Minnesota team is committed to developing a test that is more efficient, easier to use, and can rapidly screen live animals or environmental samples for CWD.
We are working to develop a test that will rapidly detect CWD in biological and environmental samples associated with living deer. At the university, we have the expertise to develop the proposed test and necessary biocontainment facilities to safely handle CWD prions.
We need to have a real-time understanding of how CWD is spreading in Minnesota, but we don't have a test. We need to know if CWD prions move from the soil into plants in areas where CWD-positive deer gather, but we don't have a test. Hunters need to quickly detect CWD in their deer before it is cut up and fed to their family, but we don't have a test.
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Our proposal has the potential to answer many of these questions and is a significant step in the right direction. Developing this test will be difficult. But with the state's support, we are confident we will succeed.
Peter Larsen, assistant professor, Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences
Pamela Skinner, professor, Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences
College of Veterinary Medicine
University of Minnesota
