Florida wildlife officials discover second case of ‘zombie deer disease’ in state

and if it comes back positive they have to discard the meat

This is the part the Floridians aren’t going to do. It’s gonna cross to humans

some important context: this is the 2nd confirmed case in Florida of a disease that is widespread among deer in the rest of North America.

if you only read the headline (which uses “zombie deer” clickbait instead of the actual name of the disease) you might come away with the mistaken impression of this being a wholly new disease (especially with the mention of Florida - there are other examples of diseases migrating north from the tropics due to climate change, but this is not one of them)

from Wikipedia:

The disease was first identified in 1967 in a closed herd of captive mule deer in contiguous portions of northeastern Colorado. In 1980, the disease was determined to be a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. It was first identified in wild elk and mule deer and white-tailed deer in the early 1980s in Colorado and Wyoming, and in farmed elk in 1997. The disease did not affect Canada until 1996.

…

In 2022, it had been recorded that outbreaks of CWD had shown themselves in both the United States and Canada. CWD was present in 29 states, infecting herds of moose, deer and elk in 391 different counties. Alabama (1), Arkansas (19), Colorado (27), Idaho (1), Illinois (19), Iowa (12), Kansas (49), Louisiana (1), Maryland (1), Michigan (9), Minnesota (7), Mississippi (9), Missouri (21), Montana (23), Nebraska (43), New Mexico (3), New York (1), North Carolina (1), North Dakota (7), Ohio (2), Pennsylvania (14), South Dakota (19), Tennessee (14), Texas (7), Utah (7), Virginia (10), West Virginia (5), Wisconsin (37) and Wyoming (22).