From the moment he stepped through the gates of the deer farm, Elliot Chubak knew exactly what had happened. He could smell it.'
'It smelled like rotten, rotten flesh,'' he said. ''It was just horrible, just sickening.''
In the middle of August, the fenced woodlot was thick with buzzing flies. Deer carcasses covered the ground. The emaciated animals looked as if they had starved to death.
Animal-rights activists say that such discoveries are becoming all too common on farms that breed wild animals such as deer, elk and bison. Raising such specialty meat became a fast-growing industry over the past decade, but one plagued with problems. Many herds were killed or quarantined after they became breeding grounds for tuberculosis and chronic wasting disease, which is similar to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (also known as mad-cow disease). Worse, activists say, many of the operations are run by inexperienced farmers who abandon their animals when they turn out to be unprofitable.
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