Ingenious and Bizarre Way the US Government Prevents a Rabies Outbreak: Planes Drop Bait Laced with Vaccines for Raccoons to Enjoy

U.S. health officials are preventing a rabies outbreak by dropping vaccines from planes as part of a half-billion-dollar federal program.

More than 9 million ketchup-packet-sized pieces of food containing vaccines have been distributed across the eastern United States to suppress the deadly neurological virus in raccoons and prevent it from killing people.

The packets come in two flavors specifically designed to appeal to the waste-diving mammal – vanilla and fishmeal – but ‘packet thieves’ who don’t need the rabies vaccine, such as gray squirrels and opossums, may make off with a few pieces .

The annual airdrop, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture since 1997, has stopped the spread of rabies westward across the U.S. but now hopes to eradicate the disease from raccoons in the East as well.

The news comes amid warnings from scientists that rabies-infected vampire bats are sneaking into North America via Mexico as habitats change due to climate change.

“What we weren’t able to do,” said Charles Rupprecht, former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rabies program. “is to eliminate the virus from every state where raccoon rabies currently occurs.”

The USDA this year renewed testing of a newer vaccine with a new flavor in an effort to attract more raccoons: marshmallow with powdered sugar, vegetable oil and a dark green food coloring.

“Our feelings are definitely not hurt when skunks, foxes or coyotes pick them up. And it is,” says wildlife biologist Jordona Kirby, field coordinator for the USDA’s National Rabies Management Program.

“So even though raccoons are the reservoir and spread rabies mainly in the east,” Kirby said NPR‘These other animals, just like any mammal, can contract rabies.’

Last year, researchers worked with the The University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory found that “competition with opossums” at least didn’t stop raccoons from getting their doses of the vaccine.

The researchers have proposed two solutions to get more raccoons vaccinated, as published this year in the Journal of Wildlife Managementless focused on the competition and more on the raccoons.

The first suggestion was “changing the bait matrix to make it more attractive to raccoons,” which meant even more design and flavor experimentation.

Their second new proposal: drop the oral vaccine packages in the winter months, when food is scarcer.to promote acceptance of bait by raccoons.”

Until now, the USDA’s oral vaccine drops have typically occurred between the months of July and October.

As of last July, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) began the next phase of their marshmallow trials – whichabout 3.5 million of the new oral vaccine bait, called ONRAB ORV, in parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

However, one other area will be the focus of their data collection for this field test.

“APHIS will conduct the final year of a small-scale project in Chattanooga this October,” USDA officials announced, “to evaluate the effectiveness of ONRAB’s distribution methods.”

Wildlife biologists working for APHIS in Chattanooga, Tennessee, will capture and test a random sample of raccoons and skunks after this year’s bait distribution to monitor their vaccination rates.

In rural areas, low-flying aircraft are used to distribute these oral vaccines from the air, equipped with an on-plane conveyor belt to automate and evenly distribute the vaccines at approximately 75 baits per square kilometer (29 per square mile).

In truly remote areas where raccoons are less common, including the spruce forests of northeastern Vermont, the USDA drops only about 37 baits per square kilometer (14 per square mile).

But in more urban areas, the USDA distribution hopes to reach as many as 150 oral vaccines per square kilometer (58 per square mile), dropped by helicopter in the suburbs and thrown into the backs of vans in the cities.

Bushes, sewer pipes under roads and bridges, and strip mall restaurant dumpsters are all prime locations.

“Any area that looks like raccoon habitat, we put it there,” wildlife biologist Kathy Nelson, who oversees the USDA’s National Rabies Management Program, told me. Wired.

Nelson said the USDA estimates that only 30 percent of raccoons in a region need to be vaccinated to stop the spread of the disease, and that a 60 percent vaccination rate could eliminate rabies from an entire area.

She hopes that new techniques can entice more beings to do this.

Rabies is a neurological virus transmitted through saliva that kills about 59,000 people a year worldwide, but only two to three deaths a year in the U.S. — thanks to the USDA’s multimillion-dollar program and other national efforts.

In the first half of the 20th century, the majority of rabid animals in the US were dogs, both pets and strays, until vaccine efforts against the disease in puppies succeeded in reducing these numbers in the 1950s and 1960s.

Today, the most common carriers are raccoons, skunks, foxes and bats, with the winged creatures increasingly becoming the leading cause of rabies deaths in the US.

As the vaccine bait decline continues, a statement from the USDA advises: ‘People and pets cannot contract rabies from contact with the bait, but are asked to leave the bait alone if they come into contact with it.’

“An intact bait is harmless, but it is difficult to know whether the bait leaked vaccine while on the ground,” department officials said. ‘If contact with bait occurs, the contact area should be rinsed immediately with warm water and soap.’

“Each bait has a toll-free number that people can call if they have additional questions about a bait contact.”