Comment from Roberta Cahill

I am a proud sika farmer and am writing in reference to the approved tests for Bovine Tuberculosis in Cervids. The list of animals that can use the cervid tb-Stat-Pak (superg) and DPP (superg) tests are: elk, red deer, white-tailed deer, fallow deer, and reindeer. What I do not see listed are sika; an animal Roosevelt referred to as “the splendid little elk”. I do not understand why this is so. Elk, red deer and sika are genetically very similar. According to noted cervid expert, D. Bruce Banwell, in his book The Sika, “There have been many reports of natural hybridization between Sika, Red deer and Wapiti (elk) from several countries to which the former have been introduced. Even in China and Siberia, the animals indigenous range, there is evidence of hybridization with the local forms of Wapiti. .There is ample evidence of the influence of Sika in British and Continental park-bred Red deer, undoubtedly the result of unexpected inter-breeding around the turn of the century when both species were left to their own devices within a common enclosure.” (1999, p. 55) According to Ludek Bartos, the renowned European sika expert who wrote Chap.39 Sika Deer in Continental Europe for the text Sika Deer: Biology and Management of Native and Introduced Populations , “Occasionally, sika were interbred with other species, such as red deer, hog deer, and axis. . Eick cited “I myself know of hybrids of sika both with red deer and six-pointers (hog-deer, axis) both as half-blood and three-quarters blood. It can also be assumed that in the case of such crossbreeding infertility does not occur.”(2009, p. 584) These arguments were used by the USDA when they included sika as a susceptible species for CWD. This was pointed out to my husband in the conference room of USDA by Dr. Dean Goldner and by APHIS vet, Dr. Kendra Stauffer ten years ago.Why the sika is excluded from the tb test? If genetic similarity enough to put them on the susceptible species list for CWD, why not tb?