Because recent research has shown than saliva and blood can transmit chronic wasting disease among deer, Colorado State University researchers are recommending that all elk and deer be tested for the disease before being consumed.

"I would want to know," said professor Edward Hoover, a microbiology professor and principal scientist for the new research. Hoover eats wild venison but doesn't hunt.

He noted that because blood can be found in virtually all organs and tissues, CWD prions can be present in all organs and tissues, albeit at far less concentrations than found in tonsils, brain and nerve tissues or lymph nodes.

Previously, wildlife officials in Colorado and Wyoming have said as long as those specific tissues are avoided, the meat should be safe to eat. State wildlife agencies have also recommended that hunters wear gloves when dressing animals to guard against accidental infection.

Hoover readily acknowledged that no epidemiological studies have found a case where CWD has leaped the species barrier to infect humans, as happened in England when bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) infected people with the variant form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Hoover's research on the transmissibility of CWD is in the most recent issue of the journal Science, co-written with 17 other researchers. Hoover said his warning about eating venison before it is tested was more cautionary than alarmist.

That fits in with the assessment by Terry Kreeger, supervisor of Wyoming's Veterinary Research Service. Kreeger said it is relatively cheap and easy to test harvested elk and deer for CWD.

"It costs $25 to send a tissue sample to our lab in Laramie, and it takes three to four days to get the results back," Kreeger said.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has a program in which it tests harvested animals for CWD, working with hunters in the field. In the Game and Fish program, tissue samples are sent to Laramie and results are mailed back to hunters within two to three weeks. Kreeger said the testing is being done to monitor the density of the disease in specific herds, as well as the spread of the disease geographically.

"If a hunter is concerned, he can get the animal tested," Kreeger said. Anecdotally, reports from field officers indicate that hunters are becoming less rather than more concerned about CWD, he said. "We ask if they want to get a CWD test, and it seems like more hunters are saying 'no" or they don't care."

Wyoming hunters can even monitor test results via the Internet, at {M7http://gf.state.wy.us/services/education/cwd/surveillance/frmlookup.aspx.

Kreeger said that if test results were to come back positive on an animal he'd harvested, he thinks he'd probably go ahead and eat it. But then again, "I don't really know, because I've never been in that position."

Risk assessment is a funny business, he agreed. Actuarial tables developed by insurance companies have the hard, cold data about what's risky and to what degree. The thing is, he said, people don't look at risk in entirely logical or rational ways - risk is almost always processed by people through an emotional, rationalizing prism.