Chronic Wasting Disease Found in Quebec

 A deer in Quebec has tested positive for chronic wasting disease, the closest that the equivalent of “mad cow disease” for deer and moose has been found to New Hampshire and Vermont, increasing concern from wildlife officials about keeping the fatal ailment out of the state. According to New Hampshire Fish and Game, a red deer from a captive facility in the Laurentides region of Quebec, north of Montreal, recently tested positive for chronic wasting disease, the province’s first confirmed case. This finding represents the closest confirmed case of CWD to date, which “poses a much greater threat to the state’s deer and moose populations than past cases of the disease elsewhere in North America,” according to a statement from Fish and Game.Chronic wasting disease is an ailment of the brain and spinal column roughly similar to “mad cow disease.”Quebec now is legally classified as a CWD-positive jurisdiction, meaning that hunters cannot bring whole carcasses of cervids (members of the deer family including moose, deer, elk and caribou, as well as any species of captive deer) killed in Quebec back to the states.