PETA Warns Target Over Potentially Illegal Glue Traps

For Immediate Release:
August 18, 2021

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Minneapolis –

This morning, PETA fired off a letter to Brian Cornell, chair and CEO of Target, asking him to end the sale of Tomcat brand glue traps, which cause animals severe, prolonged pain and trauma before they die—and as such, appear to violate cruelty-to-animals laws in California and other states.

For example, California law prohibits causing animals unnecessary and unjustifiable pain and suffering, depriving them of necessary food and drink, and causing their cruel deaths—and when used according to their instructions, that’s exactly what Tomcat glue traps do. Panicked animals caught in them can struggle and suffer for hours or even days before finally dying from dehydration, starvation, exhaustion, suffocation, or blood loss. What’s more, the instructions fail to tell users to check traps regularly for caught animals and they direct people to place the used traps—along with trapped animal victims—in the garbage, regardless of whether an animal is still alive.

“By selling Tomcat glue traps, Target sentences small animals to hideously slow and painful deaths and can turn buyers into lawbreakers,” says PETA Foundation Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Animal Law Jared Goodman. “PETA is calling on the company to get these vile traps off its shelves.”

PETA is also asking Ace Hardware and ScottsMiracle-Gro, the owner of the Tomcat brand traps, to stop selling them. The group previously asked the Federal Trade Commission to forbid Scotts from marketing the traps altogether or to require, at the very least, that it instruct users to check the traps every hour at a minimum and that it add a label alerting Californians that the traps may violate state law. The complaint is pending.

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.