Officials monitoring chronic wasting disease, a deadly and severely contagious neurological disorder found in nationwide deer populations, said the illness has now spread to at least 26 states...

The director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, added: “The key issue here is that unlike the mad cow disease, here we see [chronic wasting disease] in the muscle as well, so it’s actually much more present in the meat that you’re eating. Cooking doesn’t do anything to destroy it."

Dr Osterholm said that it took nearly 10 years to detect human transmissions of the so-called mad cow disease, otherwise known as the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

[link to www.independent.co.uk (secure)]