According to the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA), nothing found as of yet proves that CWD (Chronic Wasting Disease), a Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSE) from cervids and which is highly contagious and fatal to animals, can be transmitted to human beings. According to EFSA experts writing in an opinion published on Wednesday 18 January, however, the European Union must take measures to prevent TSE, from which it has so far been spared, reaching its territory, following the detection of the first of cases detected in Europe.
It was thought that CWD was a prion disease and restricted to deer, elk and moose in North America and South Korea, but last spring the first cases were detected in Europe with a wild reindeer (April 2016) and a wild elk in Norway (May 2016).
The EFSA’s Panel on Biological Hazards (BIOHAZ Group), which drew up this opinion, notes that humans may consume infected meat in areas where the disease is present and concluded that there is no current scientific evidence that humans can get the disease through eating meat from infected animals.
According to this opinion, there is a high probability that CWD could get into the EU by way of living animals transported or straying from Norway into Sweden and Finland. For the time being, the EFSA proposes a three-year monitoring system across eight countries to detect if the disease is present. It is also suggesting that the Commission and member states provide risk managers with a set of possible measures for prevention and control aiming to reduce contact between animals, lowering cervid population densities, and increasing awareness of the disease.
A European programme for monitoring prion diseases in wild fauna already exists but given the reduced number of animals affected, it was a Norwegian monitoring program that enabled the first cases of CWD to be detected. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)