Chronic Wasting Disease Update
The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) has initiated a comprehensive monitoring program to ensure that Florida's deer herds are free of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). Monitoring free-ranging deer involves both a "passive" and "active" component.
- passive monitoring tests deer that show symptoms of abnormal behavior like increased drooling, tremors, stumbling, difficulty in swallowing, excessive thirst, or excessive urination.
- active monitoring tests randomly selected hunter-harvested deer.
Deer are received at the FWC where samples of brain stem and lymph node tissue are retrieved and submitted to USDA approved testing laboratories for immunohistochemical analyses. Labs include National Veterinary Services Laboratory, Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, Kissimmee Diagnostic Laboratory, and Colorado State University. It may take 6-7 weeks for the laboratories to process the deer, so some of the samples are "pending". Not all deer submitted for sampling are suitable for testing due to tissue condition or improper collection.
| Deer collected from July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2005 | |||||
| Surveillance type | Number received | Number unsuitable | Number pending | CWD detected | Not detected | Passive | 14 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 13 |
| Active | 554 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 547 |
| Total free-ranging deer | 568 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 560 |
| Deer collected from July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2006 | |||||
| Surveillance type | Number received | Number unsuitable | Number pending | CWD detected | Not detected |
| Passive | 32 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 32 |
| Active | 493 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 483 |
| Total free-ranging deer | 525 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 515 |
| Deer collected from July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2007 | |||||
| Surveillance type | Number received | Number unsuitable | Number pending | CWD detected | Not detected |
| Passive | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| Active | 616 | 1 | 21 | 0 | 594 |
| Total free-ranging deer | 636 | 1 | 21 | 0 | 614 |