For the first time in Canada, a farm-raised whitetail deer has died from contagious chronic wasting disease north of Edmonton.
Veterinarians with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced the finding on Wednesday and moved quickly to quarantine the farm and its 290 white-tail deer.
Another farm in the area, which has been linked to the infected animal, has also been quarantined.
Dr. George Luterbach, the inspection agency's chief veterinarian for Western Canada, said all of the animals on both farms will likely have to be slaughtered.
"In the most of these cases, the entire herd is subject to destruction," he said. "We plan to test each and every animal to assess the amount of infection."
Chronic wasting disease can be detected only by killing the deer and testing the brain tissue.
Luterbach said he could not reveal the exact location of either quarantined farm due to federal privacy regulations.
Chronic wasting disease attacks the brains and nervous systems of animals in the deer family, including elk. It's similar to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a variant of mad cow disease that affects humans.
While there is no evidence that CWD can be transmitted to humans, many health experts say there are no guarantees.
Health Canada advises against eating meat from suspect elk and deer.
Some scientists also fear that afflicted herds can pass the disease to animals in the wild.
This is Alberta's second confirmed case of CWD. In March, a male elk from a farm northwest of Edmonton tested positive after being slaughtered.