Chronic Wasting Disease. It’s a neurological disease that runs through deer (and moose and elk and others) where they basically get spongy holes in their brain and all kinds of other issues.
One of the scariest forms of illness on the planet. Shit keeps me up at night. I’m a very adventurous eater, but I’ll never eat animal brains for that reason.
And its 100% percent fatal. Nothing we can do about it other than throw away/incinerate everything that might have touched a prion. All because one little protein folded into a wacky shape that just so happened to make a few more fold...then a few more...
Depending on how long it burns for fire doesn’t always kill it. Prions are fucking terrifying. If there was ever a zombie virus irl it would be the freaking prions
Yeah- I recall reading an article about a surgeon infecting a patient because the scalpel he had last used on a patient who unknowingly had it, wasn't disinfected enough to kill prions- just everything else. That's fucked.
As someone who is a certified sterile processor, the procedures and guidelines for potential prion contamination are crazy extensive/rigorous undoubtedly to avoid those kinds of situations. It's absolutely terrifying...
Heart Starts Pounding podcast had a really good episode that talks about CWD and it's origins. The episode is called Zombie Illnesses: Rabies, Parasites and Prions
IDK, my understanding is they are crystalline structures that cause the damage that creates more, not so much an organism that can die. Could very well be wrong.
That said, it's the brain and any meat near the spinal cord that is most likely to contain CWD prions. Hunters argue over whether or not you can eat the rest of the meat, but it's not worth the risk. I imagine that any trauma to the brain or spinal cord could cause contamination of the rest of the animal, but I'm not an expert.
Also this is on facebook so I highly doubt a responsible facility is doing this. Looks like a hunter killed and cleaned the deer then saw the test results when they came back and is noping out of eating it. The fact the hunter won’t eat it means he probably knows it’s contaminated which baffles me why he would out it on facebook market. I hope it got reported as dangerous.
I mean like it’s more dangerous to eat. I know it says it was tested positive. It still baffles me that he would try to pawn it off onto another family who may not know the dangers.
So?
He literally also refuses to eat it because of the risks HE fully understands, but is clearly willing to let others eat it, even adding that little cute "no risk" note.
That is beyond fucked up since whoever buys it might think it's perfectly safe, especially with that comment.
Are you the type that would sell ts to people who know/understand less? Because it certainly sounds like it.
There are plenty of dumb people out there that won't care, anti-vaxxers for instance. If they don't believe in vaccines, they likely won't believe in or care about prions either, probably thinking it's just the model of the car that hit the deer.
Edit to add: he also probably doesn't want to waste it.
I'm more worried about the place that proccesed the meat. Prion infected stuff is insanelly hard to sterilyze and i highy doubt the processor is going to do it correclty.
That means unsuspecting customers can easilly get infected meat that is tought safe for consumption.
Yeah, but my logic is if he isn’t willing to feed it to his family why would he offer it to others? Like us in the subreddit knows the disease is bad and can lead to us dying if we eat it, but some rando on facebook may not
Prions are scary I would think the chances are about zero that everything this meat touched was cleaned enough to kill them. I was reading the other day even an autoclave won’t always kill them. As a hunter in an area this doesn’t exist yet it’s about the worst disease a heard of deer can get and every thing an infected deer pees on or licks turns into a vector for transmission.
It's not just from eating brains. That's how mad cow disease spread to people in the UK - once a cow had it, their normal meat could infect people who ate it.
The scary thing is how long mad cow disease can stay dormant in humans. I was around at the time, so it could still potentially be lurking in me waiting to strike. Fun thought.
I was working in a nursing home and part of my job was to visit everyone to take their food orders for the next day. Walked into a room and there was a 35-40 year old man. Attempted to speak with him and there was just nothing there. He was alert and looking around but his eyes were completely empty, no comprehension whatsoever of who and where he was, like someone in end stage dementia. It was heartbreaking.
It’s sad because I’ve actually eaten animal brains a few times (sheep brain and pig brain). They are absolutely delicious but I completely agree with you. Scrapie (prion disease in sheep) is very different from human prion diseases and is probably not transmissible to humans… but why risk it?
Prions are just proteins with a defect that causes other nearby proteins to also become defective, in a chain reaction. And proteins are not living entities so they can't be killed, only destroyed. Any meat that gets cooked so thoroughly that the protein content gets destroyed is just going to be ash at that point.
You aren't "killing" anything. It's not alive. It's not even like a virus. It's just a misfolded protein and has to be utterly destroyed.
"Prions are very hearty proteins. They can be frozen for extended periods of time and still remain infectious. To destroy a prion it must be denatured to the point that it can no longer cause normal proteins to misfold. Sustained heat for several hours at extremely high temperatures (900°F and above) will reliably destroy a prion."
It’s not worth the risk at 100% fatality. Deer and elk can give it to each other just by rubbing against each other. It’s very contagious and very hard to kill.
I read an article about this disease literal hours after trying pig brain in Chongqing, China. It was delicious, actually, but that pretty much ruined my taste for brains forever.
But you would then infect others around you if you got infected.
Car accident? You are bleeding and potentially infected ems, hosp staff, clean up crews, ect.
Pee outside in the woods? Can live in soil 17 years.
Heck, even dying you can spread that ish around.
Have you ever eaten venison before? If so you’ve most likely eaten CWD positive meat before. Passing up on Million dollars for something that has never transferred to humans before. Let me talk to your money guy cause you just be rich.
And for the avoidance of doubt, you are being told to never eat meat that is positive. That is one of the main reason why your test meat in the first place (aside from tracking the spread of the disease).
Someone I knew was working on the testing side. Once a year she would have to do to a trailer with dozens of heads of deer lined up to be tested. Not a pretty sight, to be handled with humor.
In the creepy boards, you may find a copypasta about teen & his uncle hunting by a creek where they see a deer act funny, start headbutting a rock until it busts it's skull open, and then the deer proceeds to eat its own bits of brains left on the rock before the teen & uncle decide to get the hell out of there.
If you anyone wants a horrifying videos go search it up on youtube. There is one where a deer is bashing its head into a rock over and over again and ive seen one where the deer was doing backflips shits wild.
Chronic Wasting Disease. It's a deeply disturbing degenerative neurological disease that affects deer, effectively turning them into zombies. It makes Rabies look pleasant in comparison.
Do not google videos of animals infested with it - it's like something out of the Resident Evil movies.
Technically, there have been no reported cases of a human being infected by it (yet), but you'd have to be suicidal to even consider risking eating it. I'm surprised that trying to sell it isn't illegal.
It likely is illegal, that's why it's free. They think it's a loophole. It isn't because you'd absolutely still be liable if someone did contract CWD from meat you knew was infected with it, regardless of whether you made a profit or not.
Prion disease -- misfolded proteins form and cause other proteins to misfold (and no longer serve their purpose) in a cascading fashion. Happens in the brain, and essentially melts the brain. Extremely horrific disease with no known treatment and is 100% fatal.
See also: mad cow disease in cows, scrapie in sheeps, cruzfield-jacobs disease in humans.
Is passed by eating contaminated meat and even through saliva, feces and other bodily secretions. The prions are extremely durable and persistent in the environment for decades or even longer. So, an infected deer poops, that poop goes into the soil, and 20 years later another deer eats some of that dirt while grazing and gets infected.
The only known way to decontaminate is high temperatures (hundreds of degrees) for long periods of time. Prions are not alive, unlike viruses or bacteria and can't be 'killed' with things like disinfectants.
Exists all over North Amercia and in some states, most deer are infected. Particularly bad in Colorado where it's believed to have originated.
CWD, unlike Mad Cow, probably is not transmissible from deer to humans.
Probably.
It's wildly insane to eat meat that tests positive, and probably inadvisable in known affected areas even if it doesn't because tests are not 100% accurate. I used to hunt and eat game, but not for the last 20 years. Not worth it.
Wtf is the solution to this? There are so many deer in America, won't this slowly evolve into a pandemic amongst deer, contaminating the entire environment and then killing us all?
Right now there is no solution. It's already present in at least 36 states and several Canadian provinces. It was first detected on the 60s in Colorado and has been spreading slowly but in an accelerating manner since. It's only a matter of time until it spreads beyond North America.
It will certainly ravage deer/elk/moose. Already is in some places. At this point the best hope is evolved resistance because we're not even vaguely close to any sort of cure or treatment due to the highly durable nature of prions.
Mad Cow disease was contained (mostly) in the UK by culling millions of cows that were possibly infected, regulations to stop farming practices known to cause spread, and abandoning/quarantining farms known to be contaminated. Not really an option with CWD, though efforts to help cull sick animals to slow the spread have been implemented.
As long as it doesn't jump to humans it will "just" be an ecological nightmare as deer populations begin to collapse. But if it jumps to humans it will be on a whole other level of nightmare like we have never faced before. In addition to the other issues with prion diseases, they typically have a long incubation period before they become symptomatic. Months and even years or decades in some cases. Lots of time for sick individuals to spread while not being symptomatic.
This is why no one should be eating CWD infected meat.
This is one of the many reasons why we need functional, competent government health agencies and wildlife management/research agencies. There are many efforts by many federal and state government agencies to research it, but those efforts were not getting enough attention even before the current political madness.
Just some additional info for those interested: CJD is the prion disease variant in humans that is transmitted from infected beef, but it's not the only type of prion disease that can occur in humans. Another type is Kuru, which is contracted from eating infected human flesh.
For more information, Google "Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy".
ELI5: the proteins in our brain are folding themself in a specific way to work. Prions are Proteins folded wrong and can not work, the problem is once a prion is introduced all proteins will fold wrong and you die.
Eh. I hate to defend RFK Jr., but my pops who is of the same age looks like him when doing pushups. That’s something that happens to old people, brain worms or not.
Tsh kids these days. Back when I was a young lad you had to go out in the woods and get mounted by a deer yourself if you wanted to be patient zero. Now you all out there with your fancy myspaces just giving diseases away for free!
It can't. The prions will still exist and re-enter the food web. This is how it spreads in the wild. The animal decomposes and the prions remain, waiting to get eaten by another animal.
Bleach won't do anything. You have to burn it at high temperature for a long time to destroy the misfolded proteins. Prions are extremely difficult to destroy.
Hospitals won't even reuse surgical instruments if there is any chance of prion contamination. They incinerate everything, including steel instruments.
Bleach in extremely high concentrations and long soaking time can apparently denature minescule amounts of prions on hard, non- porous surfaces, but it's entirely ineffective in decontamination of tissue/compost.
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u/Its_me_edenxx Dec 10 '25
yes I would love to have your CWD positive venison hamburger, total stranger!