The Insanity of Protecting Rats

By Alan Caruba

Going back to the 1980s I have worked professionally with elements of the pest control industry providing public relations services  The process of educating the public is necessary because new generations must be informed of the threats pests pose to health and property.

Back when it was still known as the National Pest Control Association, I even received a beautiful certificate of appreciation that hangs in my office. At some point several years ago, it and state organizations changed their name to “Pest Management” presumably to divest themselves of the image of actually killing the creatures that annually spread disease and do millions in property damage.

In past years environmental organizations devoted a lot of time and money to convince the public that the real problem was the pest controllers, not the pests. If they all changed their profession next Monday, the entire nation would be totally over-run with roaches, termites, rats and mice in a month. The work is not glamorous, but it is utterly essential to society.

A case in point is bed bugs that have emerged in a few short years into a full-fledged pest problem from coast to coast. Thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency, the lack of pesticides registered to exterminate them has facilitated this new plague. There is, I believe, only one.

I have watched as the EPA has, since its founding, insanely strip pest control professionals and consumers of access to pesticides that formerly had protected their parents and grandparents, as well as their homes and businesses.

When you take away the pesticides, all you have left are the pests.

The modern pest control industry had its beginnings in the Middle Ages with the emergence of “rat catchers”, men who had developed a variety of poisons to rid homes and other properties of the ubiquitous rodent. Even the kings and queens of England had a royal rat catcher.

They were such a part of life in those times that the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin has been passed down to us. It was, of course, the combination of rats and fleas that spread the Black Plague in the Middle Ages, killing a third or more of the population of Europe.

So why, one must ask, have the burgers of Washington, D.C., responsible for passing the laws, passed the truly insane one titled the “Wildlife Protection Act” that requires pest control operators to not only capture rats in a fashion that does not harm them in any way, but to transport them twenty-five miles away to be set free?

As Dr. Don Boys noted in a recent Canada Free Press article, “Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia’s Attorney General, said D.C.’s new rat law is ‘crazier than fiction’ because it requires vermin not be killed but rather captured, preferably in "families", and transferred to a ‘wildlife rehabilitator’”, presumably living in Virginia!

Here are a few facts about rats:

# Rats have a life span of approximately nine months.

# Rats are ready to breed within three months. Their gestation period is 22 days and they have an average litter of eight. An average female rat will provide 20 offspring.

# A single pair of rats has the potential, mathematically, of producing 359 million descendents in three year’s time.

# The average overall length of a rat is l6 inches, with a body measuring 9 inches and a tail of 7 inches. The average weight of a rat is l ¼ pounds. Their color can range from reddish brown to black.

# A rat’s sense of smell is excellent, as is its sense of taste. They are particularly suspicious of food. This results often in “bait shyness.” Rats will leave a poisoned bait untouched for almost a week. Other members of the pack will avoid food not eaten by other members and often warn other rats away by sprinkling it with their urine or feces.

# Rats can gain access to virtually any structure. They can climb 15 feet up a rough, surfaced vertical wall. They can jump vertically one foot from a flat surface and they can easily traverse telephone wires and ropes. They are, in addition, good swimmers.

Virginia and other states contiguous to Washington, D.C. do not want the District’s rats. They have plenty of their own. They also have a complete host of other rodents and wildlife that require the ministrations of pest control professionals.

There are a host of very good reasons why every American city and town has extensive laws regarding the control of insect and rodent pests, as well as wildlife that, in my home state of New Jersey, includes raccoons, opossum, squirrels, turkeys, coyotes, deer, and bears!

Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that rats must be killed to protect people and property, but not the idiots on the Washington, D.C. city council who were more intent on protecting the rats than their constituents.

A lot of Americans have concluded they need protection from Washington, D.C. and its incessant and insane production of laws and regulations that pose the greatest threat of all to our personal freedoms and to the nation’s economy, security, and future.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The PETA Thanksgiving Kill-Joys

By Alan Caruba

The folks at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, otherwise known as PETA, are back again trying to take the joy out of Thanksgiving and by that I mean trying to convince people that eating turkey is not only bad for you, but a gross violation of turkey rights.

They have offered their “Top Ten Reasons Not to Eat Turkeys” among which is the claim that turkeys “are smart animals with personality and character”, but this does not explain why not one single turkey has ever written a sonnet, composed an opera, or been elected to Congress—despite the fact that many of its members are frequently referred to as turkeys.

PETA goes on to claim that “turkey flesh is brimming with fat” and that unidentified “experts are warning that a virulent new strain of bird flu could spread to human beings and kill millions of Americans.” That’s right, we will either put on weight on Thanksgiving Day or we will die.

This kind of scare campaign is precisely why I founded The National Anxiety Center in 1990 as a clearinghouse for information about this and the countless other scare campaigns with which Americans are assailed on a daily basis.

The worst part of these campaigns is the way they too often become the law of the land. For example, there is a growing body of scientific evidence that points to the fact that we are into a global cooling cycle, but that is not likely to keep the Obama administration from trying to impose cap-and-trade restrictions on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. The costs of such restrictions would finish off what’s left of our tattered economy.

PETA is utterly shameless in its quest to get Americans to give up eating meat, using or wearing anything made of leather, wearing fur of any kind, drinking milk, eating cheese or eggs, hunting, fishing, owning pets, going to the circus or rodeo, and generally enjoying life for any reason.

Meanwhile, according to government documents, PETA employees have killed more than 19,200 dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens since 1998. The Center for Consumer Freedom keeps a close eye on PETA for the rest of us and what they reveal is, well, very revealing.

PETA is against all forms of medical research that requires the use of test animals even if it will find a cure for AIDS, cancer or any other disease or condition.

PETA has given tens of thousands of dollars to convicted arsonists and other violent criminals, some of whom the FBI identifies as “domestic terrorists.” These include the North American Earth Liberation Front.

PETA regularly targets children with their anti-milk and anti-meat propaganda. One piece of PETA literature tells them “Your Mommy Kills Animals!”

This is the kind of shameless and vile behavior that PETA engages in all the time.

It is, however, just one part of a far greater mosaic of “warnings” being slapped on everything we eat or use (a) to avoid litigation and (b) to influence our purchasing decisions. Do we really need caloric information when we visit a restaurant? Must we be forced to forego smoking by the imposition of appalling high taxes which go to state governments that either wastes the money or gives it to someone else?

Isn’t anyone angry about having to pay for an ethanol additive to every gallon of gasoline when it reduces its mileage while increasing not only its price, but the price of everything in the local supermarket by driving up the cost of corn and soybeans that are fed to the livestock whose meat we enjoy?

When the family gathers around the dinner table on Thanksgiving Day, whether the main course is turkey or a ham, give a thought to the many farmers and ranchers who have produced such an abundance of safe, delicious food.

Hating Progress with a Passion

By Alan Caruba

The same day, January 15th, that the Food and Drug Administration announced its finding that food derived from cloned cattle, pigs and goats is safe to consume, Friends of the Earth issued a statement that it would gather signatures on a petition to put a stop to it.

“Tell grocers you aren’t buying it! Tell them you’ll stop shopping at stores that can’t promise not to sell such products.” Since food labels will not identify meat from a cloned animal, this is simply an impossible request. There simply is no need to do so.

It is also typical of the scare mongering that is the bread and butter (no pun intended) of groups like FOA. The Consumer Federation of America opposed it as did the Humane Society of the United States.

“We found nothing in the food that could potentially be hazardous. The food in every respect is indistinguishable from food from any other animal,” said FDA food safety chief, Dr. Stephen Sundlof. “It is beyond our imagination to even find a theory that would cause the food to be unsafe.”

The FDA spent six years tracking the safety of cloning. European regulators issued a draft report the previous week that reached the same conclusion. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences found no cause for concern.

This did not deter the FOA from claiming that “Cloned animals have a much higher rate of genetic abnormalities than animals that reproduce naturally.” If this was true it is doubtful the FDA would have issued its statement. An international group of scientists will issue guidelines later this year on how to clone safely and with minimal risk to the animals.

This is not about science, however. It is about the relentless war on progress that is common to environmental groups and others seeking to fatten their coffers by scaring people who will not take the time to learn the facts.

As the Associated Press story on the FDA announcement noted, “By its very definition, a successfully cloned animal should be no different from the original animal whose DNA was used to create it.” Indeed, the FDA concluded that cloned animals that are born healthy are no different than their non-cloned counterparts and go on to reproduce normally as well.

The same motivation that drives this latest opposition to cloned food stocks was seen earlier in the opposition to irradiation, probably the best way to kill any bacteria in meat products ever invented. The term may scare some people, but the process protects them.

The FDA and international approval means future generations will have sufficient meat products to eat thanks to the remarkable technology of cloning. After the mysteries of DNA were ultimately decoded, it was a natural next step to take.

Americans have to literally train themselves to resist the claims of environmental groups and, of course, those made by animal rights loonies. According to the Center for Consumer Freedom, the Virginia-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recently disclosed that its employees killed more than 97 percent of the dogs, cats, and other pets they took in during 2006. The Center has asked the State of Virginia to declare PETA to be a slaughterhouse.

The environmental and animal rights groups routinely engage in misinformation and disinformation.

Their ultimate motivation is a hatred for humanity and for any progress that serves it.

The Triumph of Animal Testing

There are a lot of loons around who want to end the testing of new pharmaceuticals and medical technologies on animals. Below is an excerpt from Americans for Medical Progress that neatly sums up why such testing is preserving lives:

"Today’s announcement regarding the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine underscores the importance of laboratory animals in health research. Americans for Medical Progress congratulates Mario R. Capecchi, Martin J. Evans, and Oliver Smithies as they are honored by the Karolinska Institute for their animal-based research that pioneered gene targeting, technology now being used to develop treatments and cures for countless serious ailments.

“The Nobel Assembly's announcement stands in bold counterpoint to the dangerous agenda of animal rights leaders who are actively lobbying to stop scientists from conducting animal studies in disease research," said Jacquie Calnan, president of Americans for Medical Progress, a nonprofit organization that stands in support of biomedical research. “An end to animal-based research would be a critical blow to the health and well-being of people, pets, livestock and wildlife.”

Ms. Calnan noted that the three scientists who share this year’s Nobel Prize created the toolkit by which scientists are able to use mice to study heart disease, cancer, cystic fibrosis, hypertension and many other diseases. Already, several treatments have been developed and many more medicines are in the pipeline.

The citation by the Nobel Assembly stated: “Gene targeting has pervaded all fields of biomedicine. Its impact on the understanding of gene function and its benefits to mankind will continue to increase over many years to come.”

Well over two-thirds of the Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine have been awarded for research that has relied, at least in part, on animal studies. A survey of living Nobel laureates conducted to commemorate the centenary of Alfred Nobel’s death found virtually unanimous agreement that animal research remains necessary if new treatments and cures are to be developed."

Know someone who beat cancer? Thank a mouse!