Raccoon Rabies Vaccine is "Garbage"

KINGSPORT, Tenn. -- The onset of autumn brings with it increased concern for public health. Autumn is often the season of vaccinations: from flu shots to routine school-required inoculations, teachers and students, infants and elders everywhere are getting vaccinated.

This year at Holston Army Ammunition Plant, even the raccoons participate in the effort for disease prevention.

HSAAP is a federal agency cooperator in the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service oral rabies vaccination (ORV) program. As a result, the site's raccoon population must receive ORV doses in support of public health.

However, unlike humans, wild animals do not line up outside a pharmacy or doctor's office to receive their vaccines. So how does HSAAP's natural resources program entice an unruly raccoon to take his medicine?

Garbage.

"This is part of a large program conducted by USDA APHIS to try and vaccinate raccoons in several states to minimize the potential of spreading rabies," explains Bruce Cole, HSAAP's natural resources specialist. "As part of my effort, I am baiting some of the trash dumpsters where we have had issues with raccoons in the past so that any raccoons currently utilizing these areas have a high probability of finding the bait and being vaccinated for rabies."

According to the USDA's website, the oral rabies vaccine, administered in the form of pellets, camouflaged to appear natural for the area of administration, is consumed by foraging raccoons as a part of the mammal's normal diet.

"The objective of the program is to get enough raccoons in a population vaccinated so that if an unvaccinated raccoon becomes rabid, it has a probability of biting a vaccinated animal, at which time the disease would stop spreading once the initial rabid animal dies," Cole explains. "In a group made up entirely of unvaccinated animals, each bite of a rabid raccoon to another unvaccinated animal would allow the disease to continue to spread."

As USDA.gov states, "Rabies is one of the oldest known viral diseases, yet today it remains a significant wildlife-management and public-health challenge. It is almost always transmitted through the bite of a rabid animal."

Tennessee is one of 16 states participating in the oral rabies vaccination of the raccoon, a common carrier of the virus.

Holston Army Ammunition Plant is a government-owned, contractor- operated facility located in Kingsport, Tenn. Since 1942, HSAAP has produced chemical explosives in support of our warfighters and currently produces explosive fills for every type of ordnance used by the United States Department of Defense.

HSAAP is a subordinate installation of the Joint Munitions Command. From its headquarters at the Rock Island Arsenal, JMC operates a nationwide network of conventional ammunition manufacturing plants and storage depots, and provides on-site ammunition experts to U.S. combat units wherever they are stationed or deployed. JMC's customers are U.S. forces of all military services, other U.S. government agencies and allied nations.