Chronic Wasting Disease is now the largest biomass of infectious prions in global history and many experts are concerned that a spillover into humans could cause a nightmarish pandemic. Following the experimental transfer of the chronic wasting disease to macaques, the closest non-human primates allowed in research, Health Canada concluded in 2017 that “CWD has the potential to infect humans.”

Yet Rowledge estimates that as many as 25,000 hunters are eating contaminated venison every year on the continent.

But Rowledge told the Tyee that governments have been watching the spread of the disease for decades and doing nothing. The fact that there still exist game ranches in Alberta and Saskatchewan actively spreading disease, he added, is scandalous.