Pest control operations targeting rats, mice, rabbits, foxes, and other animals cause significant welfare harm through poisoning, trapping, and culling methods that vary widely in humaneness.
Key Facts
Rodenticide poisoning causes prolonged internal bleeding and death over days to weeks in target rodents and secondary poisoning in predators.
Second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs) persist in the food chain and cause widespread raptor and mammalian predator mortality.
Glue traps cause prolonged suffering through immobilization, starvation, dehydration, and self-injury attempts.
Snap traps, when properly set, cause rapid death and are considered one of the more humane lethal rodent control methods.
Integrated pest management approaches that combine exclusion, habitat modification, and minimal targeted use of lethal methods reduce overall welfare harm.
Welfare Considerations
Pest control is one of the largest sources of deliberate animal suffering that is almost entirely invisible to public scrutiny. Poisoning deaths from rodenticides are protracted and painful; glue traps cause suffering that, if inflicted deliberately on other animals, would constitute an offence. More humane alternatives exist for most pest control contexts and can be implemented at similar or lower cost, making the continued use of the most harmful methods difficult to justify.
What You Can Do
Avoid second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides and glue traps and choose snap traps or live capture where control is needed.
Implement exclusion measures — sealing entry points — as the primary pest management strategy before any lethal control.
Support bans on glue traps, which have been enacted in England, Wales, Scotland, and several other jurisdictions.
Choose pest control services that commit to using the most humane effective methods available.