What exactly is chronic wasting disease (CWD)? CWD is a neurological illness that affects members of the deer family (cervids). It is fatal to these creatures. CWD is far more prevalent in deer, but it can also be found in moose and elk. CWD is a type of sickness known as a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). TSEs include mad cow disease, which is found in cattle, scrapie, which is found in sheep and goats, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and variant CJD (vCJD) are both found in h