Although the Minnesota House Environment and Natural Resources Finance Division heard an update on research and outreach related to Chronic Wasting Disease being conducted by University of Minnesota on February 18, 2020 (minutes here and audio here), a west central state senator appears to have missed that progress.
And the sources of funding for that progress.
On February 22, West Central Tribune staffer Tom Cherveny reported in Legislation targets variety of outdoor issues:
State Sen. Andrew Lang [R, Olivia] is a member of the senate's Environment and Natural Resources Policy and Legacy Finance committee, which will be considering a variety of bills related to outdoor topics. The senator discusses some of the issues he anticipates hearing. . . .
Chronic Wasting Disease
There are a number of proposals to ramp up the state’s efforts against Chronic Wasting Disease. The DNR is funding much of the work today using proceeds from hunting license sales. The bills would provide funding from general taxpayer dollars. They include funding for the University of Minnesota to develop a diagnostic test to identify infected deer.
Lang said the DNR has been good about compromising with legislators in also protecting the economic interests of deer farmers. Some deer farmers in the district have been hurt by the 30-day moratorium on transporting deer farm whitetails, he said.
That's not what we heard while listening to the audio livestreaming of the February 18 House hearing--or read in the hearing documents that are now part of the minutes for that day.
As the documents embedded below show, the "funding for the University of Minnesota to develop a diagnostic test to identify infected deer" has already been allocated by the legislature--and it's not coming from the general fund or from hunting license sales (though "86% of $8.4 million of [DNR] expenditures [are] from license fees, according to a September tweet by Representative Rick Hansen, the South St. Paul DFLer who chairs the House Environment Division).
The University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine reported in MN provides $1.8 million for CWD research and test development back on June 12:
With Governor Walz’s signature, just over $1.8 million will flow from the Minnesota Environmental Trust Fund to support the development of a rapid and reliable diagnostic test for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). If successful, the two-year effort will lead to a portable device capable of field testing a variety of samples for the presence of CWD. This rapid, field-based test would revolutionize efforts to control the contagious and deadly neurodegenerative disease that is spreading through Minnesota’s white-tailed deer population. . . .
At its core, the project hopes to create a test that can reliably identify the presence of CWD prions in samples from hunter-harvested deer, living deer, and the environment. Current gold-standard tests largely require tissues from deceased animals, and can take several days to complete.
“We will leverage emerging biosensor technology to develop a prototype for rapid CWD diagnostics ,” says Peter Larsen, PhD, “creating a relatively simple-to-use test that can identify CWD prions in a variety of samples. This would be an enormous leap forward in the battle against this emerging disease. We envision a diagnostic test that delivers results within minutes or hours rather than days.”
Larsen was recently hired as part of the Agricultural Research, Education, Extension and Technology Transfer Program (AGREETT) and is part of a team of University of Minnesota faculty working on the project. . . .
So, since the legislature funded the research out of the Minnesota Environmental Trust Fund in 2019, what "bills [that] would provide funding from general taxpayer dollars" does Lang have in mind?
When it comes to the University of Minnesota's research, we suspect he's thinking of SF1258, a bill of which he's a co-sponsor, that was introduced on Valentine's Day, 2019. The five senate authors are all Republicans, as are the authors of the House companion bill, HF966.
One might imagine the Republican lawmaker wants his party to get credit for acting on Chronic Wasting Disease.
But there's a note at the end of the Chronological Actions tab for the Senate bill:
| Final Actions | |
|---|---|
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See SF2201
See First Special Session 2019, SF7, Art. 2, Sec. 2, Sub. 3 (t)
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SF2201 was the Environmental and natural resources trust fund bill, a bipartisan effort, as was the House companion bill, HF2032.
Jeepers. It looks like that deer jumped the fence and ate the Swiss chard and beets.
The University's research has been funded, and with the Senate Republicans carrying on about the budget surplus with posts like Get your billion back, Minnesota!, we think Lang slept through the end of 2019's regular session and the special session.
Or maybe he just jumped message and is foraging for hunters and deer farmers' votes.
Supporting documents
Here's the pdf of Dr. Larsen's slideshow from the House Environment Finance Division minutes. Earlier in that day on February 18, the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Finance Committee met and heard from Larsen--video here. Lang is not a member of this Senate committee.
University of Minnesota Dr. Larsen Presentation on CWD research uploaded by Sally Jo Sorensen on Scribd
Here's the two-page handout about the January breakthrough:
University of Minnesota CWD Handout uploaded by Sally Jo Sorensen on Scribd
The Star Tribune reported last weekend that University of Minnesota achieves milestone for CWD testing of wild and tame deer.
Photo: A whitetail deer in snow.
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