This is the third report in a sequence of reports on reducing the use of rodenticide poisons. It is not necessary to have read the previous reports to read this one, although this report will take for granted conclusions that were discussed and weighed in depth in the previous reports. Part 1 describes why rodenticides are crueler to rodents and more dangerous for human children, pets, and wildlife than most alternative methods for removing rodents from homes, businesses, and farms. Part 2 explains why both consumers and businesses have strong incentives to continue relying on rodenticides. This report describes and ranks interventions to reduce rodenticide use in the U.S. according to their expected impact, neglectedness, and tractability. We leave aside how the interventions we discuss might change attitudes toward pest populations in the long term due to a lack of relevant evidence. The report is grouped into sections by the class of intervention: Legislative interventions, Information campaigns, Technological disruption, and Funding research. We are pessimistic about the legislative interventions that severely restrict legal rodenticide use. For example, California's recent ban on second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs) is riddled with exemptions and may increase the use of alternatives that are even crueler to rodents. However, there are less controversial reforms, such as sanitation reform, that would reduce some rodenticide use, especially at the local level. Our top recommended intervention is investing in improved rodent birth control. [part 1] of this sequence was enthusiastic about existing EPA-approved rodent birth control ContraPest, but in part 2 we reported additional findings that led us to conclude that ContraPest is too expensive and cumbersome to replace the role that rodenticides currently play. Birth control baits that are cheaper and more versatile than Contrapest could replace rodenticide in many (though probably not all) situations. Our runner-up recommendation is to run digital information campaigns to educate the public on the costs and dangers of rodenticides. Digital advertising is cheap, and can quickly reach millions of people without having to first develop personal relationships with voters. Although the relatively grassroots approach of extant anti-rodenticide activism may be a sign that more impersonal approaches would not work, there is value in testing how much can be accomplished through mass communication alone. We acknowledge that some interventions that do not look promising on their own may increase the tractability of more promising interventions. For example, obtaining local- and state-level bans may be a hassle and the results may be imperfect, but legal pressure to find alternatives may spur investment in new technology that is both more effective and humane than rodenticides. Readers may also have a personal advantage in implementing certain interventions and therefore may want to prioritize implementing those even if other interventions are more highly ranked in this report.
Motivation: To understand the current practices in rodent pest control and identify levers to improve the welfare of the rodents.Scope: This paper describes the past and current rodent pest control landscape with a particular focus on harms of rodenticidal poisons and the possibilities for rodent birth control as a cruelty-minimizing alternative. Because rodent birth control is most available in the United States, the focus of this paper is primarily on the U.S.Welfare harms: Rodenticides, and in particular the anticoagulant rodenticides, are cruel to the rodents they are meant to kill as well as dangerous to humans, such as children, who accidentally ingest them and to predators who secondarily ingest the poisons their rodent prey have ingested.Ideal solutions: Controlling a “pest” population can also be achieved through reducing births, greatly reducing the need for lethal control means. Methods for reducing births include:Resource reduction (by e.g. containing food waste)Habitat reduction (by e.g. filling in abandoned burrows or filling in cracks that give access to the interior spaces of walls)Effective birth control agents (such as EPA-approved ContraPest)Practical solutions: Rodent birth control can be used in concert with lethal control methods that are more humane than rodenticides, such as traps and asphyxiants that provide quick deaths. These methods and their relative humaneness and effectiveness are discussed.Ineffective solutions:Most of the known chemicals that reduce rodent fertility have not been developed to be sufficiently effective, cost-effective, or safe to be competitive with lethal control agents.Single-dose sterilants, which would completely abolish fertility in one dose, would come with a higher risk of overdose, bioaccumulation, and the evolution of resistance. Future directions: A follow-up post will focus on opportunities for impact via advocating the use of rodent birth control and the displacement of cruel pest control methods.
Rodenticide poisons are cruel and reducing their use would likely represent an improvement in wild animal welfare. This report explores the reasons why rodenticides are used, under what circumstances they could be replaced, and whether they are replaceable with currently available alternatives. As summarized in the table below, agricultural use of rodenticides is well-protected by state and federal laws and that seems unlikely to change, but the use of rodenticides in food processing and conservation would likely be reduced if there were an adequate alternative such as solid form rodent birth control. Continued innovation of reactive tools to eliminate rodent infestations should reduce the use cases where rodenticides are the most cost-effective option for residential customers or public health officials, but will not eliminate their availability to handle major infestations.
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