OF MICE AND MEN: Thousands mice being massacred using horrific traps and poisons to protect Australia’s farmers
The animal rights group PETA pleaded with farmers not to kill the mice that are just looking for food to survive, and suggested farmers create humane traps that allow small animals to be caught gently and released unharmed.
ELIZA MCPHEE: Mice have been running rampant through large tracts of inland The New South Wales (NSW), northern Victoria, southern Queensland and South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula, destroying crops and causing significant damage to tonnes of stored hay and grain…
The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)… pleaded with farmers not to kill ‘curious animals’ that are ‘just looking for food to survive’… The organisation suggested farmers create humane traps that ‘allow small animals to be caught gently and released unharmed’ instead of using poisons.
‘They shouldn’t be robbed of that right because of the dangerous notion of human supremacy,’ PETA spokeswoman Aleesha Naxakis said… ‘These mice are going to suffer these horrible deaths they are going to be choking, gasping for air, bleeding internally.’ The activist said the lobby group believes the government is responsible for ‘finding better, more humane, long term solutions for farmers and mice.’ She released the following statement to Daily Mail Australia:
‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and the government’s failure to keep the mouse population in check through a long-term plan of deterrents and contraceptives has left farmers struggling to protect their crops from mice who are simply struggling to eke out an existence.
‘PETA urges everyone to remember that mice feel pain and fear, just as dogs, cats, and farmers do’. ‘If they must be killed, it is only ethical and right to do so as painlessly as possible, not through any gut-wrenching poisons that cause slow, agonising deaths to mice or other animals who may eat the poison or its victims’…
The backlash comes after a farmer desperately trying to rid her property of mice filmed the stomach-churning moment she caught thousands of the pests with a makeshift trap. Sarah Pye, from Dubbo in central New South Wales, set up a ramp inside one of her shipping containers to force the mice to fall into a large tub of water and drown. Sharing the footage of her ‘mouse trap’, thousands of rodents were seen struggling to make it out of the tub. SOURCE…
HUGH HOGAN: The New South Wales (NSW) government has applied for “urgent approval” to use a poison called bromadiolone on farms, as part of a $50 million package to help regional areas deal with the mouse ‘plague’… Bromadiolone can be bought over the counter in Australia for use at home, but is not allowed on farms because of the risk it poses to other animals.
NSW Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall said the state government had sought approval from the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) for farmers to use bromadiolone to control mice on their properties.
“It’ll be the equivalent of napalming mice across rural NSW,” he said last week… When announcing the package, Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall said farmers would be able to get grain treated with poison “absolutely free of charge” to help combat the rodents.
The minister said he was “confident” the APVMA would approve the application to use bromadiolone on farms, “which is currently illegal because it’s so strong”… In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency has said poisons like bromadiolone can only be used by registered pest controllers because of the risk to “off-target” animals…
Ecology academic Dr Maggie Watson, of Charles Sturt University, has warned the $50 million package to control the mouse plague could kill a lot more than just mice… Dr Watson said bromadiolone was a highly lethal second-generation poison that could easily cause secondary poisoning in animals, including farm animals such as cattle and working dogs. SOURCE…
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