News
Friday, April 23, 2021
NASHVILLE – The Tennessee Department of Agriculture’s (TDA) Kord Animal Health Diagnostic Laboratory has the state’s first Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) testing facility. The CWD testing unit is operational and fully accredited by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the organization that develops and publishes international standards.
“A dozen counties in West Tennessee are CWD positive or high risk,” Commissioner Charlie Hatcher, D.V.M. said. “Kord Lab’s CWD unit produces valuable information to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, captive herd owners, and to hunters. This unit also supports the One Health initiative for greater understanding of health connections among people, animals, and plants.” ...
__________________
Why is this potentially so important for human health consideration?
Answer: Remember when some cases of “Mad Cow Disease” i.e. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) was found to be infecting some humans that ate beef that contained this human brain destroying pathogen called a “prion”? Well, guess what! Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is also caused by one of these prions and COULD potentially (not yet found but COULD happen) evolve/develop into causing a similar disease problem in humans who eat infected wildlife, like venison. So researchers, mostly those with specialized expertise in veterinary medicine like doctors of veterinary medicine (DVMs or VMDs) and epidemiology and/or microbiologists with similar training are best suited to study and recognize early signals that CWD has become a ZOONOSIS that can be transmitted to people from ingesting contaminated animal meat, producing an infection capable of killing humans!! Repeat, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not believe this to be the case yet and it may never happen but ... “an ounce of prevention” to be “better safe than sorry” etc. etc.
You might consider this a preventative “One Health in Action”.
Quick Links
-
Please see MONOGRAPH in Veterinaria Italiana
“One Health – One Medicine”: linking human, animal and environmental health
Read More -
History of the One Health Initiative team and website (April 2006 through September 2015) and the One Health Initiative website since October 1, 2008 … revised to June 2020 and again to date February 2021
Read More -
Vaccines for zoonoses: a One Health paradigm
SciTech Europa Quarterly (March 2018) – Issue 26
Read More -
Pan European Networks SciTech Europa Quarterly
SciTech Europa Vaccines for zoonoses: a one Health paradigm – Pages 227-229 (Read PDF) “One of the One Health Initiative team’s co-founders and leaders is an internationally-recognized eminent physician…
Read More Read PDF