And working-class Americans stand to lose.
And working-class Americans stand to lose.
W alk down most city streets, through an alley behind a restaurant, or along the perimeter of a farm, and you’ll likely come across a small black plastic box that contains rodent poison. Rodents can spread disease, damage buildings, and ravage crops, so controlling the population of mice and rats is an urgent public-policy priority. But those little black boxes have become a battleground in a quiet war, as a well-organized set of activists gain ground in a coast-to-coast pressure campaign to ban the most popular form of rodent poison. The war on rodenticide indicates a deeper conflict over quality-of-life policies — and it reveals how the imperatives of the activist class can be in tension with the interests of working families.
Far and away, the most popular kind of rodent poison in use in the United States is what’s called a second-generation anticoagulant rodenticide (SGAR). These poisons interrupt the vitamin K cycle in the rodent that eats them so that, over a matter of days, the affected animal can eventually die of internal bleeding. SGARs are both effective and commonly used: A report authored by researchers at Harvard Law School estimated that 96 percent of the poison used by pest-control professionals in Massachusetts in 2022 were SGARs. However, the prevalence of SGARs has also caused some animal and environmental activists to target them because of the risk of secondary poisoning when a predator (such as a hawk or a bobcat) eats an animal poisoned by an SGAR. Relative to the weights of most predators, the anticoagulant dosage from eating a single poisoned mouse is not lethal. However, that exposure can accumulate over time, and that long-term exposure can sometimes impair the health of an animal. High-profile examples — such as the recent death of Fae the bald eagle in Arlington, Mass. — have powered a concentrated push to get states and municipalities to restrict the use of SGARs, if not ban them outright.
These efforts are highly coordinated. For instance, Mass Audubon has helped organize activist groups in towns across Massachusetts and even published a “lobbying kit” to provide ready-made talking points. Activists have already racked up considerable successes. In 2024, California banned the use of these rodenticides, with limited carve-outs for agriculture, biodiversity-protection efforts, and a few other exceptions. Legislation to limit the use of SGARs to licensed applicators passed Connecticut last year, and the “RAPTORS Act” to limit SGAR usage to professionals is also being considered in New York. In Massachusetts, legislators are contemplating perhaps the most sweeping ban of all — a full-scale prohibition on the use of SGARs with the exceptions of emergency use for public health (limited to 14 days and only indoors), protection of drinking water, combating emergent infectious diseases, and stopping mosquito-borne illnesses. Farms, restaurants, retail, schools, and families would otherwise have no ability to use those rodenticides, even if they hired a licensed exterminator.
It is a laudable goal to protect wildlife, but what distinguishes effective from flawed public policy is often less ideals than details.
Advocates of an SGAR ban at times try to position their cause as the successor of the anti-DDT push from the 1960s, which was catalyzed by Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring. Carson and others argued that the widespread use of DDT was causing the population of many birds to plummet. And it is true that many bird populations began to increase after DDT was banned.
But anticoagulant rodenticides do not fit neatly into the Silent Spring narrative. SGARs have been widely used for decades, but the population of birds of prey has dramatically increased during that period in Massachusetts and elsewhere. According to the Massachusetts Audubon Society (one of the leading advocates for the SGAR ban), red-tailed hawks have “possibly attain[ed] [their] densest ever population” in the Bay State. The bald eagle was removed from the Massachusetts endangered species list in 2012, and the raptor’s population has grown steadily since then. This is far from a “silent spring” of mass extinction.
The welcome growth of these bird populations can create a situation where evidence and anecdote grow increasingly at odds. Precisely because the bird-of-prey population is expanding, it is easier for activists to find tug-at-your-heartstrings anecdotes. As bird populations grow, they are likely to live closer to human habitation, raising the risk of exposure to SGARs. Moreover, the fact that there are more birds means statistically that more individual birds are likely to die from poisoning, even if the bird population is overall growing.
Nor is it at all clear that SGARs are the most pressing threat to bird populations. According to scientists, American wind farms kill hundreds of thousands of birds (including over 80,000 raptors) annually, yet the “Campaign to Rescue Raptors” says nothing about a blanket ban on wind turbines. The incentives of maintaining the environmental coalition — where climate and animal activists can work together — might trump the supposed policy aim of actually rescuing raptors.
Even more pressing, though, would be the effects of an SGAR ban on the day-to-day life of ordinary people. California banned SGARs in many cases by the end of 2024, but the Golden State remains plagued by an acute rodent crisis, which may have worsened after the ban. Barely a year after that ban was enacted, California policymakers may already be trying to weaken it. To the consternation of activists, the state’s department of pesticides has been seeking input on a proposed rule that would dramatically expand the number of places (such as pharmacies and restaurants) that could use SGARs. Colorado had considered implementing its own restrictions on SGARs, but that effort wilted under the light of reality. Farmers rebelled at the increased costs of paying for exterminators, and other stakeholders also complained. As one Democratic legislator lamented, “We don’t want our schools to be overridden with rats — or our barns.”
In Massachusetts, the anti-SGAR campaign has taken two tracks. A provision that would give communities the unilateral right to ban those poisons passed the state senate unanimously in April. In contrast to that localism, another proposal (H.5217) would ban SGARs completely, with very limited exceptions. Supporters of that latter proposal seem to be ignoring California’s lessons. If the Golden State is having second thoughts, Massachusetts would be doubling down. That comprehensive ban would include no carve-outs for agriculture, the food-service industry, or medical facilities — let alone for everyday families.
Despite claiming to be about protecting wildlife, that comprehensive ban could function as a kind of class war against lower-income and urban families. One of the most common reasons that people use rodenticides is because they are cheaper than many other pest-control options. Costing a few hundred dollars, an application of rodenticide is far less expensive than re-siding a house or hiring a trained professional to go around the exterior of a building and locate every crevice to plug (and mice in particular can fit through the smallest spaces). Wealthy suburbanites would have a much easier time paying those costs than working families, particularly in urban areas where rodent populations are that much bigger. That discrepancy might explain why anti-SGAR activism has gained so much traction in deluxe suburbs such as Concord and Belmont.
The city of Boston is already overwhelmed by rodents, and a ban on rodenticide would only compound those challenges. In part because of secular changes in the economy (such as the diminishing pool of college-age Americans), Massachusetts could be facing some choppy economic waters ahead. Those potential economic risks would make it even more important for the commonwealth to keep life affordable. Forcing families to endure rat-infested apartments, restaurants, and workplaces would tilt against basic living standards. It could also have significant economic consequences. Rodent infestations in food-preparation facilities can violate FDA safety guidelines, and those infestations could also cause state and local authorities to shut down restaurants and other businesses. Making it harder for businesses to maintain sanitary conditions only puts another economic burden on their shoulders.
The potential secondary effects of SGARs indicate why it is important to rely on more than poisons for rodent control. Proponents of banning SGARs champion alternative strategies for combating rodents, such as sealing up homes, installing tamper-proof trash bins, and using snap-traps to cull rodent populations. Those are all valuable efforts, but rodenticides remain an important backstop. Instead of imposing a ban, policymakers might be better off investing more in pilot programs to see whether non-SGAR treatment regimes can actually work at scale as well as investing in municipal efforts to secure trash and other waste.
Protecting wildlife does not have to come at the expense of families and small businesses, but sweeping bans on anticoagulant rodenticides could undercut both public health and economic vitality. As with other elite-driven social crusades of recent years (such as “defund the police”), the wealthy could be able to insulate themselves from the price of that dysfunction, but working families might be less fortunate.