The Home Depot Will No Longer Use Glue Traps After PETA Appeal

The Next PETA Push: Get Intensely Cruel Devices Banned From Store Shelves

For Immediate Release:
July 19, 2017

Contact:
Sophia Charchuk 202-483-7382

During discussions between PETA and The Home Depot regarding the company’s sale of glue traps—products that cause immense suffering to small mammals and birds who tear off parts of their faces and limbs trying to escape over hours or days—a Home Depot employee found a mouse suffering in a glue trap inside one of its own stores. After witnessing firsthand how animals suffer as they struggle in the traps’ adhesive, The Home Depot has decided to prohibit the use of glue traps in its more than 2,200 stores nationwide.

“Mice, songbirds, squirrels, and other small animals end up in glue traps, where they tear their flesh and break bones struggling to escape,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Banning the use of these vile devices is a great first step, and PETA now asks that The Home Depot and all companies build a reputation for kindness to animals by ending the sale of glue traps, too.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—notes that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns against using glue traps, because animals who are caught in them lose control of their bodily functions as they struggle to escape. Some chew off their own limbs in an attempt to free themselves. It can take days for trapped animals 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.

Dozens of retailers—including CVS, Dollar Tree, Rite Aid, Walgreens, and many others—have banned the sale of glue traps, and more than 186 well-known companies and institutions have banned their use, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs, Public Storage, U-Haul, the New York City Police Department, and nearly 50 airports, such as Boston Logan International Airport, Indianapolis Metropolitan Airport, and Hollywood Burbank Airport.

PETA has humane solutions to every “pest” problem, from rats to raccoons. For more information, please visit PETA.org.