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Outdoor Life now has a piece written about the lawsuit against Tennessee Wildlife Resources. Not going to post its entirety here but some paragraphs interested me.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/deer-biologist-accuses-tennessee-wildlife-agency-of-intentionally-overestimating-chronic-wasting-disease-cases/ar-AA1gstB5?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=1f7e7e3a4f1c4d328956376ebba68d1f&ei=51

At that time, the lawsuit points out, the TWRA’s 2018 Emergency Response Plan called for two separate lab tests to confirm whether a sample was positive for CWD. If the first test came back positive, then the sample was screened using a second type of testing the USDA calls the “gold standard” of CWD tests. This test is more accurate and more costly.

(NDA readers.... the ELISA test is $20 bucks but it is not 100% conclusive. Takes about ten days to get the results. If a suspect is found, they ship it off to NVSL or National Veterinary Services Lab in Ames Iowa. Cost is $40 bucks. But the time frame is more like 30 days to get results. Remember, not all suspects are positives. And the sampling is something else. It consists of the obex or spinal cord attaching to the brain and a lymph node. Much of what is sent in looks like it came from the other end of the deer.)

According to the lawsuit, Kelly’s investigation revealed that in 2020 the agency had begun to stray from the two-test procedure after heeding the advice of TWRA wildlife veterinarian Dr. Dan Grove. And in 2021, the agency began sending off test results to a lab in Mississippi as well as the C.E. Kord Animal Health Diagnostic Lab in Tennessee. This is when many of the data discrepancies that Kelly noticed were recorded, he claims.

(NDA readers... Dr. Dan Grove used to work for North Dakota Game and Fish. Dr. Dan Grove was also one of the thirty highly intelligent wildlife professionals (spoofing) who wrote the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies "Best Management Practices". It's 111 pages of gubment speak no one is going to read. It's criteria how to get money from Senate Bill 4111 Research and Mangement Act of $420 million dollars per year for the next six years. Senate Bill 4111 says States with the most CWD will get the most money. Therefore, it is incumbent upon all Game and Fish Departments to find as much CWD on the landscape as possible to get more of that money.) 

The closer Kelly looked, the lawsuit alleges, the more he saw that the agency’s lab testing protocols seemed inconsistent. Some counties had been deemed “CWD-positive” after the first test came back positive but before the follow-up test was performed. This meant the agency was labeling counties CWD-positive before those results could be confirmed.

“Rather than respond to the discrepancies in CWD testing results by following its rules and protocols,” the lawsuit claims, “the TWRA changed the rules and protocols to avoid having to admit mistakes.”

But if Kelly’s allegations hold any water, then these numbers might be inflated. Ironically, that could also increase the likelihood that hunters have brought CWD into counties where it didn’t previously exist. Since Tennessee allows free transfer of CWD-positive carcasses between CWD-positive counties—in fact, it requires those carcasses be disposed of in positive counties only—there’s a chance prions have traveled into counties that weren’t truly CWD-positive to begin with.