Culling Deer Herds, Research, Food Labels Among Strategies
Editor’s note: This week we conclude our series – for now anyway – on alpha-gal syndrome with a look at possible future solutions, as well as its current impact on agriculture.
The first thing Mary Hamby did after being diagnosed with alpha-gal syndrome (AGS) was empty her wellstocked freezer of all her beef and pork and give it away.
For the 74-year-old Rockbridge Baths grandmother, it wasn’t worth it to risk another scary bout with anaphylaxis. Hamby suffered the most extreme reaction to AGS, a tick-borne allergy to mammal meat, after getting bitten by a lone star tick earlier this summer. AGS patients can face a range of difficult symptoms, from gastrointestinal and breathing issues to hives and rashes. The syndrome can be fatal if it leads to anaphylactic shock.
AGS was discovered by allergist Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills at the University of Virginia in 2007, primarily in patients from rural areas. In 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported only 34,000 people with AGS nationwide. The CDC now estimates that AGS has ballooned to around half-a-million cases across the U.S.
Reporting AGS cases to county health departments only became mandatory for Virginia doctors in late 2025, so there is no official data yet on how many cases of AGS have been identified in Rockbridge County. But the News-Gazette has spoken to dozens of people across the county who have been diagnosed with the allergy in just the past few years and now have to avoid mammal products altogether.
It’s not lost on Hamby that she lives just yards away from where beef cattle graze in an idyllic field near her home and only a half-mile from a local dairy farm.
“Here I am in a place where I can buy fresh, farm-to-table meat right around the corner, and I can’t eat it anymore,” Hamby said.
Hamby is just one of many local residents who are no longer able to buy local products from county markets and farms, many of which rely on consumers right in their own backyards.
In some ways, Rockbridge County represents a microcosm of what could happen as AGS cases continue to spread: What happens if a large portion of the U.S. population can’t eat one of the nation’s most popular foods and agricultural exports?
Brandon Reeves, executive director at Virginia Cattlemen’s Association, said people in the state’s cattle industry are acutely aware of the spread of AGS and the effect it could have on farmers’ livelihoods. He said the VCA is working with the National Cattleman’s Association to encourage the USDA and other federal entities to research and educate people on AGS.
“It’s a growing problem, and we want to do all we can to help combat it,” he said. “It’s important that we do research and invest the money where we need to as an industry to make sure we can get out ahead of this as much as possible.”
Tom Stanley, the agricultural Extension agent in Rockbridge County, said that he hasn’t seen direct economic impacts on the local beef industry due to AGS – at least, not yet. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any in the future.
“You know, if you get 10% of the meat-eating population that suddenly can’t eat red meat, it’s just one more one more strike against us in terms of trying to be competitive in the marketplace,” Stanley said.
‘Coming At Us From All Angles’ Several local farmers told The News-Gazette that the exploding tick population in the region is damaging to cows as well as people.
Rosalea Potter’s family farm near Collierstown lost 13 cows and about as many calves over the past two years to what she describes as a devastating tick-borne disease called theileriosis. The illness can not only kill cows; it also impacts their reproduction and fertility, including their ability to bring calves to term.
Potter, general manager of The Cattleman’s Market, said the overabundance of ticks is hitting the livestock industry from both sides, affecting whether people can consume red meat as well as making a direct hit on the animals.
“We see a huge ambush on animal agriculture on all spectrums with the tick,” Potter said. “We’re looking at this coming at us from all angles.”
Each loss of a cow, Potter explained, is a huge loss in revenue for local farmers – around $3,000 per head. Each female has the potential to give birth to about 10 calves in a lifetime. By Potter’s calculations, the loss of just 13 cows and their potential offspring is financially staggering over time. “You’re looking at close to a million dollars in losses in the span of a 10-year time frame,” she said.
The VCA’s Reeves said that for now, the only thing farmers can do about theileriosis is wait for herds to develop immunity, because the ticks aren’t going anywhere any time soon.
“Suffice it to say that ticks are really nasty creatures in a lot of regards, and they create problems for cattle and consumers alike,” Reeves said.
Culling The Deer?
Some Rockbridge area residents think the solution is to tackle the tick problem headon by diminishing a major factor in their life cycle: the white-tailed deer, a critical feeding and breeding ground for ticks.
At the Lexington City Council’s August meeting, resident Debbie Funkhouser asked the city to address the overabundance of deer. “In the 10 years I have lived here, I have watched the local herd increase in size and boldness,” she said. “The pickings are good and the predators are few.”
Funkhouser said that, as a former New England resident, she was well aware of the threats of Lyme disease, but she is just beginning to learn about AGS, in part because of this series in The News-Gazette.
“I personally would choose the risk of supervised culling over the risk that the deer carry ticks themselves,” Funkhouser said. “The cost to the city might pale in comparison to the cost absorbed by individuals facing life-long, potentially lifethreatening consequences, the burden on our strained medical system, and the impact on our local agricultural community.”
Currently there are only two avenues to culling the deer population in the city of Lexington: the urban archery program and the Deer Population Reduction Program (DPRP), a Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources program that allows hunters to shoot deer off-season. At present, the urban archery program only has one permitted archer. Stanley, the county Extension agent, said that while culling the deer herd may reduce ticks, it’s a complicated problem to tackle. Using guns is a very labor-intensive process that may or may not make a significant dent in deer populations, he said. In his view, it’s unrealistic to try to kill a large number of deer, but it is important for communities to figure out how to manage and live in harmony with the natural environment.
“I think we, as a community, probably need to think seriously about addressing our deer population,” Stanley said. “But it’s a pretty fraught topic once you once you get into it. I think it can be done, but are we as a society prepared to do that?”
The Spread Of AGS
Virginia has long been a hotspot for the lone star tick, but factors like a warming climate and changes to the landscape have expanded the tick’s habitat in recent years to Northern and Midwestern states.
A CDC study published in 2023 showed the secondhighest number of AGS cases were in Bedford County, but at the top of the list was Long Island, in Suffolk County, New York, only about an hour’s drive from New York City.
Dr. Jeff Wilson, an allergist with the University of Virginia, said the fact that cases of AGS are cropping up in more populated areas has put a spotlight on the syndrome nationwide.
“It’s been covered by the New York Times, The New Yorker magazine, and the Wall Street Journal just this past year,” Wilson said. “I think it’s because alpha-gal has crept north. When it’s really crept into the major media markets and into places where there’s rich, well-connected people, I think that’s helped with the coverage.”
Wilson said he hopes that the recent attention on AGS will spark more funding for research on potential drugs to address the syndrome. At the moment, the only mainstream treatment for the allergy is for patients to avoid all mammal products and carry an Epi-Pen for emergencies.
UVA is currently conducting bloodwork studies on people with AGS, but these studies are not formal clinical trials to find a cure. Instead, they are baseline studies to help researchers understand the syndrome. According to Wilson, any drug to treat AGS would likely have to be developed by a large pharmaceutical company, a process that requires major funding as well as more interest at the national level.
“It takes a big enterprise to make drugs,” Wilson said. “Historically, there just hasn’t been a ton of interest from pharma in alpha-gal specifically, but I think that is changing a little bit.”
Meanwhile, the cattle industry is looking into several avenues to make beef tolerable for AGS sufferers, says the VCA’s Reeves. “Is there something that those folks can take, some type of supplement, that would allow them to digest (beef) without having the meat allergy?” Reeves asked. “Is there a way that we can have a genetic line that would be available for folks with alpha-gal?”
As featured in last week’s series installment, a Blacksburg- based biotechnology company called Revivicor has managed to breed alphagal- free pigs, both for medical transplant use and for human consumption. However, Revivicor officials confirm that they have not tried to breed genetically modified, alpha-gal-free cows.
But Reeves said the VCA is very aware of how one person in a family with AGS can affect how an entire family eats – and how that could impact his industry. “It’s very concerning from a producer standpoint,” Reeves said, “because if you’ve got four or five people in a family and one can’t eat beef, then you either have to provide an alternative or it may be easier to just fix something different. We want to do all we can do to make sure there’s alternatives and options.”
Future Legislation
Back in 2010, U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith told his doctor he felt like he had a “little touch of the flu” a few hours later whenever he ate red meat. That was the same year he was elected as U.S. representative for Virginia’s 9th congressional district, which covers most of rural Southwest Virginia. Griffith was soon diagnosed with AGS.
“My reaction is mild compared to some people, so I count myself very lucky,” Griffith said in an interview with The News-Gazette.
Still, Griffith’s status as an AGS patient has made him an advocate for federal legislation on tick-borne illnesses.
The meteoric rise in cases of AGS up and down the East Coast and the Midwest – as well as the scourge of other debilitating tick-borne conditions like Lyme disease – has prompted some new bills on Capitol Hill in just the past few years.
As the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee chairman, Griffith is smack in the middle of the national conversation.
In the past few years, Griffith has met with Health and Human Service Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in round table discussions about tick-borne illnesses. He’s also one of a bi-partisan group of legislators, including Rockbridge County Rep. Ben Cline, who supported two different bills currently working their way through Congress: the renewal of the Kay Hagan Tick Act and the Alpha-gal Allergen Inclusion Act.
The Tick Act, initially passed in 2019, honors North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan, who died from the tick-borne Powassan virus that same year. The renewal bill, which passed in the House unanimously in July but awaits Senate approval, aims to reauthorize funding for research on tick- and mosquito-borne illnesses through 2030.
The Alpha-gal Allergen Inclusion Act (H.R. 1178), introduced in 2025, is slowly working its way through Congress. The bill, co-sponsored by both Rep. Griffith and Rep. Cline, aims to add alpha-gal to the list of major food allergens and put a warning label on things made with mammal products, in the same way other allergens like shellfish or peanuts are labeled.
Griffith is optimistic that the renewal of the Kay Hagan Tick Act will pass this year, but he expects the Alpha-gal Allergen Inclusion Act to be more difficult, especially in an election year. “If you suddenly threw this on the floor (for a vote), even though you’ve got bipartisan support, a lot of people will ask why we are making labeling more expensive and making it harder on the food manufacturers,” Griffith said. “That slows it down, so it’s going take a little bit longer – but I’m hopeful.”
