Feb 10, 2012 – One Route For Lyme
QUESTION:
I read with interest the armadillo connection to leprosy. I have been curious about eating deer meat that may be infected with Lyme disease. Every deer I've ever seen killed is loaded with ticks. I've never tried to take a specimen to know exactly what kinds of ticks are more prevalent, but as many as they carry I wonder what percent of the population is likely to have the disease. Can they carry Lyme disease and what are the most likely ways to contract it? Processing the deer maybe? I'm assuming if the meat is cooked thoroughly you're fine.
ANSWER:
I think this is natural for us, to at least have that nagging worry in the back of our mind about whether or not we are being exposed to some serious disease when we are in contact with an infected animal. However, in the case of Lyme Disease it appears that the ONLY route of transmission is from the bite of the infected tick. According to CDC (Centers for Disease Control) Lyme cannot be passed from human to human with any normal physical contact, nor contracted by infants through breast milk, nor by casual handling of meat of infected animals nor by eating that meat. CDC does recommend, as you say, thoroughly cooking any animal meat just as a general food safety precaution.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
I read with interest the armadillo connection to leprosy. I have been curious about eating deer meat that may be infected with Lyme disease. Every deer I've ever seen killed is loaded with ticks. I've never tried to take a specimen to know exactly what kinds of ticks are more prevalent, but as many as they carry I wonder what percent of the population is likely to have the disease. Can they carry Lyme disease and what are the most likely ways to contract it? Processing the deer maybe? I'm assuming if the meat is cooked thoroughly you're fine.
ANSWER:
I think this is natural for us, to at least have that nagging worry in the back of our mind about whether or not we are being exposed to some serious disease when we are in contact with an infected animal. However, in the case of Lyme Disease it appears that the ONLY route of transmission is from the bite of the infected tick. According to CDC (Centers for Disease Control) Lyme cannot be passed from human to human with any normal physical contact, nor contracted by infants through breast milk, nor by casual handling of meat of infected animals nor by eating that meat. CDC does recommend, as you say, thoroughly cooking any animal meat just as a general food safety precaution.
What you do when you work with recently killed deer is to bring yourself into close contact with the ticks themselves, and these little buggers can be pretty stealthy and possibly manage to get onto you without your knowing it. But, various university sites as well as CDC tell us that all the evidence to date suggests that a direct bite and feeding by the infected tick is the only route of exposure. It also is known that the Lyme ticks - most in the genus Ixodes - will not pass the bacteria into a host for at least the first 24 hours of attaching, giving us plenty of time to examine ourselves and remove any ticks when we have been in areas where ticks are prevalent.
According to the Lyme Disease Foundation the percentage of ticks infected with Lyme varies greatly across the country. In the western U.S. it is very low, with only 2-4% of Ixodes ticks infected, and thus a lower incidence of the disease in humans. In the upper Northeast it may be as high as 50% of the ticks in some areas, dropping to 5% or less the further south you go. Interestingly, there is some anecdotal evidence in the West that the first instars of the ticks feed commonly on lizards, including fence lizards ("blue belly lizards"), and that in some manner the bacteria may be killed within the system of that lizard. This helps reduce the level of the bacteria in the general animal population, thus reducing the numbers of infected ticks that would acquire the pathogen by feeding on an infected vertebrate host.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
