Public health considerations in human consumption of wild game.

The role of a few microorganisms, like Brucella and Mycobacterium and certain parasites of food animals, in causing human disease has been recognized for a hundred years. By the 1990s, other microorganisms derived from food animals were recognized as contributing to human illness. Handling and/or consumption of wild game may result in human exposure to novel microorganisms; these unrecognized or unknown agents or diseases in wild species may cross into humans and cause "new" diseases with which we are not familiar.