Poison-resistant super-rats ‘to invade homes’
RATS are becoming resistant to the poisons frequently used to reduce their numbers, according to pest control experts.
The ongoing bin strikes have sparked fears of a hazardous infestation of rodents on Scotland’s litter-strewn streets. Now a warning has been sounded that rats are evolving resistance to the poisons laid out to kill them.
The genes of the rats are then passed on to the next generation, which means pest controllers are struggling to find chemicals to limit the rat population.
With a boom in food supplies due to the bin strikes, rats may soon invade homes, an expert has warned.
Chris Cagienard, who runs Pest Solutions and is president of the British Pest
Control Association, said last night: ‘There is an increasing amount of chemical resistance to some of the products that are available on the market.
‘Parts of the rat population are becoming immune to the rodenticides we use. It is a challenging time for a pest controller. ‘Considering rats are a public health pest in that they spread disease and there are legal requirements to try and control them, having them come into your home or business is a challenging situation.’
Littering in Glasgow and Edinburgh has also contributed to the rat problem, Mr Cagienard said.
‘As a nation we do seem to have an inability not to drop litter and we do seem to have a problem in not looking after our streets in the way some other countries do.
‘We mismanage things quite a lot and that just allows rats, mice and the like to survive in our cities even when there is not a bin strike. There has been an overflowing of bins quite quickly.
‘In Glasgow and Edinburgh in particular we are starting to see a lot of things like behavioural resistance, so the rats and mice aren’t going near our control measures.
‘When there is an overabundance of food in the streets because of the overflowing bins, it’s really hard to get rats to interact with our [bait] control measures.’