Tampa Airports Ban Cruel Sticky Glue Traps After PETA Appeal

For Immediate Release:
November 15, 2021

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

A box of mouse-shaped vegan chocolates is on the way from PETA to the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority, which has banned all glue traps from the city’s four airports after learning from PETA that animals caught in the adhesive may struggle for days, tearing flesh, breaking bones, and becoming increasingly entangled. Some people toss the live animals into the garbage to die of dehydration and starvation while mired in the muck.

“By banning glue traps, Tampa’s airports are putting cruelty to mice, birds, and other small animals on the no-fly list,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA urges everyone to say something if they see something like glue traps in use or for sale and encourages all airports to follow Tampa’s example.”

Glue traps are pieces of plastic or cardboard that are coated with a strong adhesive. Some trapped animals chew off their own limbs to try to free themselves, and others get their nose, mouth, or beak stuck in the glue. The more the animals struggle, the more they stick to the traps, only to die from exhaustion, injury, shock, dehydration, asphyxiation, or blood loss. Glue traps also fail to address the source of the problem: More mice simply move in to take the place of those who’ve been killed.

Tampa International, Plant City, Peter O. Knight, and Tampa Executive airports join a growing list of over 110 airports across the country—as well as hundreds of schools, retailers, banks, self-storage companies, and other facilities—that have banned glue traps following talks with PETA.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.