Tammy, Was that from Delaware STATE or Delaware COUNTY? Send that health dept to THEIR OWN *STATE* Public Health Vet in charge of rabies policies -- who will know better, and to the CDC's rabies division, the National Association of State Public Health Veterinarians, and to the first issue of JAVMA each year since that traditionally carries the latest versions of the "Compendium for Animal Rabies Prevention and Control " It sounds like they quoted one of the human health internet services which changed its tune once it was gotten in touch with the CDC! Seems the people at that med site had thought that ferrets are raccoons. Arrgghhhh! People here on the FML convinced them that they had to learn more and make corrections, so hopefully all have been made. LINKS: <http://www.nasphv.org/Documents/StatePublicHealthVeterinariansByState.pdf> http://www.avma.org/disaster/state_pubhealth_vets.asp but it looks like Delaware may be between experts right now which sure could lead to ERRORS! http://www.dhss.delaware.gov/dph/files/rabiesfaq.txt http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/ including: http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/qanda/general.html#p1 http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/qanda/general.html#p2 http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/kidsrabies/ http://www.nasphv.org/ or directly: http://www.nasphv.org/Documents/RabiesCompendium.pdf In 1990 (or soon after -- I'd have to check for the date of the announcement) IMRAB 3 was officially accepted as effective for preventing rabies in ferrets. It was not the vaccine studied for that use but was the one that worked for at least a year with minimal nasty side effects like allergic reactions. In November of 1997 at the annual meeting of the NASPHV after the CDC finished studying a range of rabies types and how they presented in ferrets it was obvious that enough was known that ferrets could join cats and dogs as being the only mammal species in which rabies is well enough studied to have safer alternatives to destruction. Some of the states changed their policies immediately. Most changed after the January formal announcement. Some states had to introduce and pass legislation so those states took up to 2 years longer (if memory serves). You can find those announcements in the FML Archives (URL is in the header of every day's FML). Sukie (not a vet) Recommended ferret health links: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/ http://ferrethealth.org/archive/ http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/ http://www.ferretcongress.org/ http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html [Posted in FML 5936]
