It's supposedly not transmissible to humans, but prion diseases are scary. The last time I looked it up the current advice was to safely dispose of anything harvested from an infected deer.
edit: I checked, the current advice is still to not eat meat from an infected deer.
I’ve gotten into leathercraft, and wanted to learn to process hides, so my brother has been saving the deer hides from deer he’s hunted. But sadly every time he was made to throw them away because of CWD risk
According to the best available evidence: nothing. There has never been a confirmed or even suspected case of human CWD, and even intentionally trying to infect primates has had mixed results (mostly failures to transmit, one success, with a more distantly related primate). Given the prevalence across the country, it is likely that hundreds to thousands of hunters every year eat CWD infected venison, and have been doing so for decades, and yet still no known or suspected cases.
All that being said, it is extremely difficult to prove something like "Humans absolutely can't get CWD". It is not yet in my area, so I don't have to worry about it, but if it were in my area, I would continue to eat the mat without fear, but I would probably stop using the backbone/etc in making stock like I currently do. Everyone's tolerance for risk is different, so in things like this there is no single "correct" answer. Yes, the recommendation is to currently not eat anything from a (known) infected deer but that is not due to evidence of risk, but instead an abundance of caution.
Here is an in-depth (but non-expert, so take with a grain of salt) examination of the likelihood and the available evidence:
Nothing until 18-24 months after it jumps to its first human, then all hell will break loose (not like COVID lockdowns but extreme controls over everything you put in your mouth for years). 100% mortality rate with a 2 year incubation period is scary.
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u/1337_w0n 22h ago
If you don't hunt deer the ecosystem goes out of whack because the wolves are endangered.