USDA Rabies Program Starts Monday

The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office has been notified by the USDA that beginning on Monday, September 26, through October 22, they will be performing rabies vaccination throughout Hamilton County and the surrounding counties for raccoons.

The United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health inspection Service, Wildlife Services (USDA-APHIS-Wildlife Services), and the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH), supported by other state and federal agencies, are continuing to implement a program to immunize wild raccoons for rabies with a goal to stop the spread of raccoon rabies in Tennessee.

The oral rabies vaccine is Raboral V-RG is placed inside a fishmeal block or coated with fish meal. The block and or the coating is made with fishmeal and oil that is known to attract raccoons. Fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft will distribute the vaccine. Raccoons that eat the vaccine-laced bait will become immune to rabies.

The process will last 26 days.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.

About Dick Cook

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