Sec. 1102. Findings
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/bill/116/hr/1326/ih/section-1102·A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
Congress makes the following findings: Chronic wasting disease continues to spread in wild, free-ranging cervid herds and in captive cervid herds across the United States and Canada, and as of December 2018, is in 26 States and three Canadian provinces. From December 2017 to December 2018 alone, the disease was detected for the first time in free-ranging cervid herds in Mississippi, Montana, and Tennessee, and there were new positive detections of the disease in 13 captive cervid herds from Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Quebec, Canada.
Six of such herds are being monitored by the National Chronic Wasting Disease Herd Certification Program of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and therefore are considered to be at low risk for chronic wasting disease. From June 2017 to September 2018, 10 States, including Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, are already fighting to control the transmission and spread of chronic wasting disease and found positive detections for the disease in additional wild, free-ranging cervid herds.
New positive detections in captive cervid herds were found in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. There is no known cure for chronic wasting disease, no reliable live animal test to detect the disease, and only a post-mortem test that provides some measure of reliable detection of the disease. Chronic wasting disease is 100 percent fatal and is arguably the most important disease threatening North American cervid resources. The spread of chronic wasting disease continues to increasingly and adversely affect the economic well-being of rural communities, the hunting public, farmed cervid producers, and State wildlife and agricultural agencies, because the only known measure for reducing the spread of chronic wasting disease is the complete depopulation of herds that test positive for the disease, a drastic measure which comes with great costs for all.
The long-term environmental persistence of chronic wasting disease’s causative agent means that State wildlife management agencies, State departments of agriculture, and private cervid farmers have relatively few options to mitigate the effects of such disease. There are ongoing debates about the predominant transmission pathways that are causing the new detections and continued spread of chronic wasting disease in cervids across the United States and Canada.