AUGUSTA – Wisconsin is still the easternmost state in which chronic wasting disease has been detected in deer, according to a Maine state report.
Maine and the five other New England states, which were tested this past year for the fatal, brain wasting disease in wild white-tailed deer, were found to be free of the disease.
In a cooperative venture, biologists from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, animal health officials from the Maine Department of Agriculture and officials from U.S. Department of Agriculture sampled 810 brain tissues from deer harvested throughout Maine during the 2003 hunting season.
The tissue samples were sent for testing to a federally approved lab at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Conn. This is the third year, said Fisheries and Wildlife spokesman Mark Latti, that Maine has tested for chronic wasting disease in white-tailed deer.
“Each year, all samples have been free of the disease,” Latti stated in a press release Friday.
The disease has been found in deer herds in several western states and Canadian provinces.
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