A pest can be defined as an organism that causes, or is perceived to cause, or is likely to cause economic or aesthetic damage to humans or their property. Some usual pests can be rats or gophers and aphids or leafhoppers. Vertebrate pests include any vertebrate, native or introduced, domestic or wild, which affects human health, well-being, or conflicts in some way with human activities, for example rats, rabbits, and gophers.

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It’s estimated that 42% of the world’s foods supply is wasted due to pests destroying agricultural crops. The assessment of what is and what is not a cruel or inhumane way to treat animals is a contentious issue. Many animal rights activists are very vocal in their belief that animals are more valuable or at least equally important as and to humans. There is little to no compromise in their overall view that the use of animals for food, fiber, teaching, research and testing does not result in improvements for other animals or societal needs.

When killing is involved in vertebrate pest control, these activities can elicit strong emotional responses from people concerned with animal suffering. Today’s activists are well very well prepared and very articulate in getting their views across to the public using the media, press and television. What most activists don’t know is that there are other issues that are involved in this “hot topic”, other than animal rights.

Zoonoses are diseases that can be spread from animals to humans, for example malaria through mosquitos or Lyme disease through ticks; these risks run high when vertebrate pests are involved in agriculture commodities. For example, wild dogs pose a hydatid tapeworm risk, which can give rise to hydatid disease in both cattle and humans. Feral pigs can transmit leptospirosis, salmonella, brucellosis, and Q-fever, and have the potential to host diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease; all these diseases affecting humans as well as other animals.

Vertebrate pests, which are the targets, can die a slow painful death with current extermination methods, however; once populations are controlled, or brought down to manageable number, they are easier to maintain. Sometimes, only a few animals have to be killed to set an example for other pests; birds for instance will quickly abandon a feeding area when they notice deaths happening in there flock. From the pests’ point of view they are the stakeholders, all they see is the food source and do not realize that they can be vectors of disease, or cause detrimental damage to the crop, they don’t see themselves as the pest.

From the other side of the coin, the farmer is the stakeholder, it’s his money going into the growing of the specific crop(s), when action is taken against the pest, risk of disease contamination is reduced, the farmer’s saves the costs from having to repair or fix damaged equipment, and therefore the farmer doesn’t have to raise prices for the distributor, the distributor doesn’t have to raise prices for the market and the market doesn’t have to raise prices for the consumer, all stakeholders, they all a mutually have interest in keeping things at a low cost.

However, there are some harmful risks that can associate with some lethal extermination methods, such as poisons and baits; it can be consumed by a non-target animal, such as pets and wildlife. If applied correctly, the chances of non-targeted animal ingestion declines, therefore the efficacy of the treatments out-weigh the risks of accidental ingestion, and therefore the economic threshold is not being threatened. The primary objective of vertebrate pest management is to alleviate a problem caused by an animal and not destroy the animal, since technically the land was there’s first.

Many vertebrate pest problems can be solved at this time by applying preventive controls such as sanitation, exclusion, and habitat modification. If we can control these factors early, especially food and shelter, we can manipulate the population density. More and more emphasis is now put on relocating pests and preventative measures, rather than extermination with lethal methods. For example, a few lethal methods of control involve shooting, trapping and poisoning, these methods are often labor intensive, opportunistic and may be of limited value in an overall management plan.

There are several issues in agriculture ethics, especially in the animal ethic’s portion. The most compatible theory is the Utilitarian theory. Utilitarianism is a “consequentialist” theory, which means that right and wrong are determined not by appeal to some absolute limit, but by taking into account all the consequences of the action. There are different interpretations of what counts as a good or bad consequence, but in its most general sense, utilitarianism holds that persons should always act to maximize beneficial consequences and minimize harmful consequences.

Utilitarian ethics demands that farmers and ranchers attempt to achieve a balance of humans and animals benefit and harms while applying methods of vertebrate pest management. A tenet of utilitarian philosophers suggests that, in some cases, inflicting pain can be an ethical choice if it reduces the total amount of pain and suffering, resulting in a general good. The label of vertebrate pest is subjective and confusing, and frequently reflects a particular perception, bias or expectation, that may not be universally accepted.

It is possible to try and reach adequate pest control with a non-lethal approach, but is it cost effective or time effective? Probably not, the longer it takes to control a pest, the longer it has to cause damage and spread disease. As human activity encroaches on wildlife habitats and natural food sources become increasingly scarce, it is just a matter of time until all wildlife are considered pest when they turn to our crop fields for food. These populations of potential and current pests need to be controlled properly.

We now realize that to control an animal population, of whatever size, is to alter those aspects of its ecology such as, their time and space relationship, food and cover relationships, or competitor and predator relationships, so as to reduce the population. When manipulated, the unstable population becomes more vulnerable to its limiting factors. So when activist suggest that we relocate vertebrate pest, what they don’t realize that it could be detrimental to the ecology of the new location where the animals are relocated and may be a poor choice in an integrated pest management plan.

Personally I always saw gophers, rabbits and rats as a problem, as rodents, but I was always ignorant at what else was going on. I didn’t realize that these animals were pests that caused detrimental damage to crops; I never saw it from the farmers/growers point of view. Now as a plant science major have realized these, along with other pests (i. e. Weeds and Diseases) need to be controlled, to protect our investment as a consumer and of the farmer/grower, and distributor of the product.

Additionally, public health is also a concern; certain vertebrate pests also bring the risk of disease to humans as well as livestock or working animals. Some bird pests carry additional potential health risks, particularly those that nest in buildings and storage areas where contamination from bird feces can occur. Mice can carry a number of diseases, including salmonella. Birds are currently the biggest contributors to damage and financial loss on rops; it is unsettling to know that there is little economic research being done on economic thresholds of birds. Since avian behavior and population dynamics make controlling bird damage particularly challenging, the problem continues to grow. We as a society cannot get past the brutal, upsetting, and controversial side of vertebrate pest management if research is not being conducted to develop alternative methods, the lethal extermination of these pests will continue.

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