Myxomatosis causes prolonged and severe suffering in wild rabbits and raises welfare questions about disease management, vaccination of wild populations and the ethics of introduced biological control.
Myxomatosis causes one of the most prolonged and distressing deaths of any common wildlife disease. Infected rabbits suffer progressive suffering over nearly two weeks, becoming blind, unable to feed and increasingly debilitated before death. The deliberate introduction of this disease as biological control represents a deliberately inflicted welfare harm on an enormous scale — billions of individual animals experiencing prolonged suffering for agricultural benefit. The ethics of this historical decision continue to be relevant as new biological control proposals emerge for invasive species. For individual wild rabbits found in advanced disease states, humane killing is the most welfare-positive intervention available, as treatment offers minimal realistic benefit.