Our chronic wasting disease project is working to develop better surveillance methods to track and manage the spread of the disease which affects cervids (elk, deer, moose, reindeer, caribou). It is a fatal disease that can take anywhere from 150 to 600 days before it shows itself in an animal and there can only be a definitive diagnosis after the animal has died.
This means that CWD research needs time to test strains of CWD, model its spread, and to fully understand the risk of it infecting other mammals or people.
At this time there is no direct scientific evidence to suggest that CWD may be transmitted to humans. However, people are generally warned not to eat any part of a known CWD-infected animal.