The House Committee on Culture, Recreation and Tourism met on January 26 to take up all interim charges. The report below covers the discussion on the Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Response.
Carter Smith, Executive Director, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD)
- CWD most challenging and contentious wildlife disease related issue they have had to contend with during his career
- Since meeting in Hondo TPWD has
- Entered into herd plan agreement
- Proceeded with necessary steps of depopulating the herd inside breeder facility Texas Mountain Ranch
- Interim rules were issued
- Will revisit those rules in March
- Will launch a heightened surveillance effort
- Will do what they can to integrate live animal testing, just held a large symposium on the issue
- Launching stakeholder process to get a diverse amount of input on rules
- In regards to rulemaking – hope they can come up with a revised set of proposals that will be longer term but have heard regulatory certainty and predictability is paramount
- Chair Guillen – believes rules should be able to address multiple reactions from TPWD so they can adapt to future situations
- Guillen – concerned with representation of small time breeder who may have less exposure
- Need to initially get feedback from many perspectives – and will ask if small deer breeder perspective is being taken into consideration as well
Dr. T.R. Lansford, Assistant Executive Director, Animal Health Programs, Texas Animal Health Commission
- Gave background on CWD
Clayton Wolf, Director, Wildlife Division TPWD
- In response to a question from committee member, Wolf interrupts Lansford’s testimony to give details on how many samples have been tested
- Under herd plans or breeder facilities (non-TPWD)- 6,600
- TPWD samples (part of normal surveillance program which is voluntary) – 10, 189
- In response to Guillen question on effectiveness of live test
- There has been work on CWD positive herds
- Need blood from positive animal to detect and need controls
- Need to benchmark against a positive sample
- The other challenge is that there is a period of time in the live animal tests – that disease is not being detected
Dr. T.R. Lansford, Assistant Executive Director, Animal Health Programs, Texas Animal Health Commission (resumes presentation)
- In terms of treatment there is none, there is no vaccine
- June 30th was day this was started with confirmed case
- Texas Animal Health Commission and TPWD sat down together with other experts
- Priority to develop and manage the herd plans for tier 1 facility as well – those who supplied or received deer from index premises
- Updates were also provided on herds and numbers on hold orders
- Next steps in Lavaca county – working on plan to remove highest risk deer and plan to move forward is being finalized in that facility
- Facilities under herd plans are continuing to do testing and submit samples
- Rep. Larson – how many have been euthanized?
- Does not know exact answer but breeder does submit numbers on animals that are culled for testing, if they select the correct box
- Expects vast majority of 6,600 samples are some that were euthanized and some were natural mortality
- Larson – are they compensated?
- Only compensation so far was Texas Mountain Ranch but just now have agreements for Lavaca facility
- Larson – deer dying of similar traits to CWD but different diseases, what is point of departure on how we treat various diseases?
- Do testing in other diseases but they do send other animals to slaughter and then make decisions from that point including how it would impact the population
- Model for CWD is similar to what they have done with other diseases
- Relating to viral diseases – they are characterized by different pathogen so it would be difficult to compare to those and those viral diseases have been around for a long time and they are not always fatal, plus know how the disease is spread
- Larson asked about protocols in place –
- Herd plan negotiation is protocol in place
- TPWD staff said he is not claiming a large group stakeholders should be involved in site specific negotiations, but there is a value in having a broad range in perspectives since rules and regulations govern a number of different permits
- Larson asked about statistically significant sample size – if one off for statistical significance then it does not mean anything – how many tested in Medina county?
- In 5 mile radius about at 75 animals (goal was 300) and sampling strategy based on 34 resource management units
- Larson said if property owners turn it the deer and it test positive – perception is property value will drop and agency will come in and depopulate and does not see a lot of takers who want to participate in the testing voluntarily
- Carter said Larson has a great point and has heard that perception before but not sure if it is the “prevalent” perspective
- Has had a lot of cooperation from landowners around the counties
- TPWD staff said they are sampling road kill as well
Clayton Wolf, Director, Wildlife Division TPWD
- Strategies include early detection and detainment
- Working to bolster sample size, to increase probability of containing it
- Every deer that is harvested must go to a check station
- Goal this year was for 8k samples but have surpassed with 10k
- Will be reviewing sample sizes with stakeholder group and CWD task force
- Larson – have plans already been drawn up on how to address finding CWD deer in Medina – will the same thing as West Texas?
- Areas different – but will look at model in containment zones
- Larson asked if TPWD will do emergency rules again – we have states all around us that have it and asked about consistencies in planning treating high fence and low fence the same way
- There are some fundamental differences but agrees need to provide some consistency and predictability
- Larson – property devalued and marked if a case is found on individuals property – but gave example of another state after all their depopulation efforts, they still had cases
- Larson – everyone should know what plan is – treating captive herds one day but now searching in wild and if we find one, what is the plan?
- Carter agrees with sentiment and will work with landowner if or when they find it but acknowledge the highly variable nature of private land and not sure if there will be a one size fits all solution but agree wants more clarity
- Larson – Other states went in and depopulated, wrecked private property rights – that is the prevailing through right now for landowners and they saw huge economic loss in other states
- Larson asked TPWD more questions on plans and more discussions on private property concerns
- Goals for TPWD
- Develop rules that have resiliency that allow predictability
- Be adaptive, change with science
- Minimize complexity
- CWD Symposium happened on 12th and heard experts and will take science and data and rollout next week – post mortem testing strategies compared to ante-mortem testing strategies
- Lansford with Animal Control said there are groups working on testing strategies, there is a progression of CWD through body that determines location of testing (time factor should be taken into consideration) also make up of animals genetics will determine testing
- Larson inquired on another disease and the protocols in place
- Genetic component tied to sheep to determines which ones are susceptible so there is the ability to breed ones that are resistant to the disease
- Larson asked about temporary rules TPWD put in place – rules not coming back to legislature so would like more details on the genesis of the new rules
- Science behind probability of detection – choose 20% to get started but never choose parameters on probability of detection
- Open to any form and expects some herd monitoring concepts will carry forward
- Larson – will you set down with producers and come up with rules collaboratively?
- Staff will let them know objectives and then will solicit feedback from producers and as they progress may need to take down size of group a bit
- Larson – any idea on economic cost to industry with CWD
- Looked at number of bucks released and saw a 10% reduction in numbers but do not know if it is attributable to the rules or CWD in the network or some combination
- In regards to question on number of deer breeder permits – not aware they have seen a reduction but they will check
- Rep. Murr asked about discussion on an indemnification program and that it may be considered as they continue discussions with a stakeholder group
- Larson – asked Carter to consider administrative hearings, sit down with impacted parties and they go through negotiated rule making process
- Carter asked about clarification on negotiated rulemaking with SOAH – individual permittee or body of permittees? Will follow up with Larson’s office
- Probability of detection is based on prevalence – these variables will be part of discussion
- Larson does not see “prevalence” and “detection” as interchangeable
- Would urge use of SOAH process for TPWD
- Guillen says sound like SOAD process may be good for herd plans but not sure how it would work with more general rules
- Larson – gave TCEQ example and said these discussions would be appropriate for SOAH
- Guillen to recap – urges TPWD to look at rules from global perspective to set at least rule templates for something to go by under different scenarios; be sensitive to lower risk operations and not make them adhere to same things as higher risk operations; and increase the antemortem testing