PETA to ‘Rat Czar’: Clean Up City Trash—Don’t Kick-Start Killing Spree!

For Immediate Release:
April 17, 2023

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

In response to New York City’s appointment of Kathleen Corradi—who answered the call for a “bloodthirsty rat hater”—as its first-ever citywide director of rodent mitigation, PETA President Ingrid Newkirk has contacted Mayor Eric Adams’ office, asking that it direct Corradi to attack the root of the problem by clearing New York’s dirty streets and parks of food bags and scraps discarded by human slobs—rather than skirting the problem, wasting time and money counting carcasses:

Better trash pick-up procedures and implementation of rat birth control are the keys to truly solving this situation, which has been caused by human misbehavior. PETA is urging the city to steer clear of cruel, ineffective killing methods, such as poisons or drowning, not only because rats feel pain and fear as much as any dog or cat or the “rat czar” herself but also because killing these resilient little animals would simply cause others to fill the void, creating an endless cycle—and job security for Corradi.

For information on humane rodent control, please click here.

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, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.