New York Rat Plague Debate: Potential Decriminalization of Abortion for Pest Control

Debate about “human” limitation.
Rat plague in New York: Politicians want to decriminalize abortion

April 18, 2024, 1:04 pm

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Millions of rats live in the subway tunnels and parks in New York. Until now, the city has been fighting the plague mainly with poison and traps. Many politicians want to change that. With “humane” methods, the number of animals should decrease in the future.

New York is known for its rodent problem. Rats and other rodents thrive in the cosmopolitan city. New methods could soon be used in the fight against the plague. They would depart from the brutality with which the residents have hitherto defended themselves against their loveless fellow residents. Lawmakers are now proposing regulations at the city and state levels to humanely control rodent populations. They are looking at abortion and preventing seizures as alternatives to a brutal and slow death.

The idea of ​​distributing rat contraceptives in New York City has received new attention from city officials recently. The fate of the owl “Flaco”, who escaped from a zoo and was found dead with traces of rat poison in her system, caused a lot of sympathy recently.

City Council member Shaun Abreu proposed a city ordinance that would create a pilot program to control the millions of rats hanging around subway stations and vacant lots. Birth control should be used instead of toxic chemicals. Abreu, chairman of the Sanitation and Solid Waste Management Committee, said that the contraceptive methods are more ethical and humane than other methods.

The contraceptive option, called ContraPest, is contained in salty, fat pellets that can be used as bait in rat-infested areas. It targets the ovarian function of female rats and the sperm production of male rats, the New York Times reported.

Exterminators poison animals

Exterminators are currently killing New York rats with snap and stick traps. They poison themselves with food that causes internal bleeding. Or they gas them with carbon monoxide, which is piped into the animals’ underground burrows. Some amateur hunters have even trained their dogs to catch the rodents.

Rashad Edwards, a film and television actor who runs a pest control company in New York with his wife, says carbon monoxide is the best method. He tries to use the most humane method. Carbon monoxide slowly kills rats, causing them to fall asleep and die. Edwards avoids using rat poison because it is dangerous and causes the animals to suffer.

In Albany, the capital of New York state, some lawmakers are considering a statewide ban on sticky seizures. These usually consist of cardboard or plastic plates coated with a sticky substance, which can be fatal to other small animals.

Edwards opposes a ban on sticky traps because he uses them on other animals, such as ants, to use less pesticides. When ants invade houses, they use them to determine which routes the animals will take. This allows the pesticide “battle zone” to be better defined “so you don’t have to spray the whole place.”

Transit seizures are prohibited in some cities

You can’t “kill your way out” of the rodent problem, says Jakob Shaw, project manager at the animal protection group PETA. “It is time to adopt these more sensible and humane methods.”

Two California cities have banned sticky traps in recent years. At the federal level, a bill currently being discussed at the committee level could soon bring about such a ban across the US.

“It ends the very inhumane practice of managing rat populations,” said Jabari Brisport, a New York state senator who represents parts of Brooklyn and who sponsored the bill that could regulate to create new ones in his state soon. “There are more effective and more humane ways to deal with rats.”

Until now, every generation of New Yorkers has struggled to control the rat population. Last year, Mayor Eric Adams appointed former teacher Kathleen Corradi as “Rat Czar” and created the new position of “Director of Rodent Abatement” for her. In early March, the city launched the next step in the fight against what Adams once called a “24-hour rat buffet” — and it required all 200,000 companies in the Big Apple to pack the trash bags that were previously piling up on sidewalks into trash cans as has long been used elsewhere in the United States and the world.

There is no end to the campaign against rats, but pest control officer Edwards says there is much to be learned from the animals’ suffering. You can never eliminate them, at most you can manage them. “They’re very smart and they’re very smart,” he says. “It’s very exciting – just not in my house.”