Fearing Liability, Waste Management Won’t Pick Up Deer Carcasses

The waste disposal company had contracted with the state of Minnesota to pick up designated dumpsters which the state had situated in counties where there was some fear of chronic wasting disease showing up in deer. The plan was to provide a safe way to dispose of deer carcasses in those areas, even though actual occurrences of the disease, which is always fatal to deer, had been extremely rare. In one county that is considered to be on the CWD map, a single case was found in over 9000 tests over two years, according to a report from Minnesota Public Radio. CWD does not affect humans, but there is some fear it could mutate so that it would. As explained in another MPR article, the mechanism of CWD infection is similar to that of mad cow disease, a variant of which has infected humans as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Both involve prions, proteins that can persist in the environment even after the infected organism has decomposed. According to state officials, the company canceled the contract because it didn’t want to be held liable.