The limit has been raised for compensation to owners of female white-tailed deer and males under 12 months old ordered destroyed for disease control, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced Wednesday.
The maximum compensation available for those animals under the federal Health of Animals Act has been raised from $2,500 to $4,000. CFIA said in a release that the higher figure reflects increases in white-tailed deer market activity and in the prices seen since this compensation level was last reviewed in 2005-06.
The maximum compensation available for male white-tailed deer over one year of age remains at $8,000 per animal, CFIA said.
The increase followed requests from the Canadian Cervid Alliance and Saskatchewan White-tailed and Mule Deer Producers Association, following a positive test result for chronic wasting disease (CWD) in a herd of white-tailed deer in Saskatchewan in October.
CWD is in the transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) family of diseases that includes mad cow disease (BSE) in cattle, scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. There is no reported evidence of people catching CWD from consuming infected animals’ tissues.
