Shelby County, TN Public Health Rules: Rodent Control (2026)

Shelby County Code § 26-142 requires every licensed trailer court in the unincorporated county to apply insect and rodent control measures recommended by the county health officer or commissioner. The court must stay free of rubbish and be kept in a satisfactory condition at all times, and the operator must eliminate all harborage places for rodents and hosts of insect vectors, plus all breeding places for flies and mosquitoes, either by removal or effective treatment. This sits inside Article V of Chapter 26 (Planning and Development), which regulates trailer courts as a whole: § 26-140 requires an approved sewage disposal system so waste does not become a rodent food source, and § 26-141 requires refuse to be stored in tightfitting, noncorrosive metal containers of 20 to 30 gallons capacity, collected on a schedule approved by the health department, both of which remove the food and shelter sources that draw rodents in the first place.

The article carries its own cross-reference to the county's animal control chapter (Chapter 4). Enforcement runs through the Memphis and Shelby County Health Department: § 26-144 requires the trailer court owner or manager to promptly report communicable disease cases to the health department, giving the department a direct line into conditions on site. Because § 26-142 folds rodent control into the health officer's general recommendations rather than fixed numeric standards, the specific measures required (bait stations, exclusion work, harborage removal) are set case by case by the health officer for each court, and a court operator who ignores that direction is in violation of the article.