Agricultural pesticides kill and harm hundreds of millions of non-target animals annually, from birds and mammals to insects and aquatic life, creating a vast and largely unacknowledged welfare problem.
The welfare impacts of agricultural pesticide use on wildlife are enormous but dispersed across vast landscapes in ways that make individual animal suffering invisible. A barn owl dying from rodenticide poisoning, or a bee colony collapsing from neonicotinoid exposure, represents real animal suffering caused by deliberate human choices in agricultural management. These are not inevitable costs of food production but consequences of specific chemical choices that have alternatives. Regulatory reform banning the most harmful pesticides, combined with transition support for integrated pest management, can significantly reduce this source of animal suffering without compromising food security.