(Radio Iowa) – The first shotgun deer hunting season is underway and the D-N-R wants hunters to help keep chronic wasting disease from spreading. State Wildlife Veterinarian Rachel Ruden says the disease can be spread to deer who come into contact with an infected carcass. “Be aware of how you’re handling your carcass, your deer carcass, especially if you don’t know the test results or that deer hasn’t been tested, we really don’t want those animal parts to end up on the landscape to, you know, cause a new outbreak location,” she says. If you field dress the deer away from where you shot it, she says dispose of the rest of the deer properly.

“We recommend landfill if that’s an option, otherwise, returning to the location of harvest,” she says. Ruden says , there is no evidence that C-W-D has ever transmitted to people, but the current advice from the C-D-C is to not eat venison that has tested positive. “There’s more studies coming online that are looking at which species can actually acquire the disease by consuming infected venison. That’s a much more kind of biologically relevant route, and kind of the route that, of course, we would be concerned about with people and exposure,” she says. Ruden says hogs are the only animals which are confirmed to get C-W-D from eating infected meat.

“Pigs that were fed infected venison were able to develop this disease, so that you know just kind of adds to that air of taking caution and testing your deer before you consume it, and if you know it’s positive to discard it. But of course, that’s up to the consumer at the end of the day,” Ruden says.

The D-N-R recently held an online public meeting about C-W-D. Ruden says the video of that meeting will be posted on the D-N-R website along with other information.