UW to test for deer disease

The Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory has hired three employees and begun renovations on a dedicated testing lab for Chronic Wasting Disease.

The lab is preparing this fall to test thousands of deer tissue samples for the fatal disease detected last February in Wisconsin’s whitetail deer.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources plans to collect more than 50,000 tissue samples taken from deer killed throughout the state this fall and winter, and the WVDL will receive the majority of these samples to test for CWD.

Due to the anticipated high volume of samples, the WVDL will have 10 veterinary pathologists working on the CWD project as part of their responsibilities within the lab and the UW–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine.

A 400 square-foot room at the WVDL is being renovated to accommodate all the equipment required for testing and to enable the investigation of newer tests that may allow higher testing capacity. The renovations and new equipment, which together cost about $400,000, are important components of the state’s CWD plan made possible by emergency funding passed recently by the state Legislature, says Robert Shull, WVDL director.

“Performing this volume of testing at the WVDL represents a significant effort for the state of Wisconsin,” says Shull, who adds that last year the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, tested only about 15,000 samples. But even with these changes, Shull anticipates that the lab can test at most 35,000 samples each year.

“The CWD testing required for disease surveillance alone in south central Wisconsin and throughout the state,” he says, “will surpass the capacity of the WVDL unless new testing methods are approved.” To complete the anticipated CWD tests, Shull says that other state diagnostic labs that belong to the recently expanded national prion disease testing network will need to participate along with the WVDL.

Currently, the WVDL is working closely with the NVSL, along with the Center for Veterinary Biologics in Ames, to help validate new techniques and equipment that can expedite the CWD testing process. Whether these tests will be validated and licensed by this year’s hunting season is currently unknown.