Thanks so much for this work! I think it’s high quality and useful. Some thoughts:
I’m curious, why you are not also suggesting corporate campaigns against pet stores that sell feeder mice? Pet owners who shop there probably think of themselves as animal lovers so it might work. Is it because most feeder rodents are ordered online? Also, whether you campaign against pet stores or zoos, there might be a need to include third-party auditing in the commitment, just like it’s included in the Better Chicken Commitment. If campaigns against zoos or pet stores were successful and attracted public attention, perhaps even legislative changes would eventually be feasible.
There might be a market for higher welfare feeder rodents. I was told that my 2019 article on the issue that you mentioned was the 2nd most read on the Rethink Priorities website (that was years ago, probably no longer the case). I received multiple emails about it from non-EA snake owners, despite no outreach. This makes me think that some snake owners might care about feeder rodent welfare and might already feel some guilt about it. Unlike when dealing with processed meat used for food, snake owners have to deal with rodent carcasses, or even live mice, which might make it more difficult to ignore the fact that this was/is a sentient being.
Gosh, the stuff you observed during the breeder visit is just so cruel and sad
I wonder if a significant number of mice are also fed to other pets. E.g., this website claims “Frozen mice are suitable for a wide range of pets, most notably for snakes and other reptiles, as well as cats and birds of prey.”
If you get another chance to speak with feeder rodent industry professionals, I’d be interested in what they’d say is the average age of feeder mice and rats at slaughter. The scale of the problem depends on that quite a lot. The number of rodents killed per year might overstate the scale of the issue a bit because they seem to be slaughtered when they are just a few weeks old, or often even a few days old for pinkies.
Huh, I didn’t know that there was such a large-scale operation in Lithuania, which is where I’m from. I sent your article to someone who runs an animal advocacy org there.
It looks like you weren’t paid by anyone to write this. If that’s the case, I want to thank you even more. I’m amazed at how people in this community do stuff like that.
Hi saulius—thanks for those thoughts (and for your previous work on this issue).
Re pet stores, that could also be an impactful way to go, although a few considerations suggest to me it might not be as impactful. Many of the reptile stores that sell large amounts of mice seem to be small local businesses, not large companies with brands they’d want to protect. There are some international pet companies like PetCo that sell rodents, but I don’t think their volume is that big. Also, many of the smaller pet stores specialize in reptiles, so perhaps people who shop at those stores would have a sense of what’s going on and not be so upset by it, whereas people that go to zoos probably don’t think at all about how the animals are fed. I agree with your point about auditing, I think there’s still more work to do in figuring out exactly what change you’d ask for.
It’s definitely possible that lots of rodents are fed to other types of animals, particularly birds of prey, although it’s not something that came up much in our research. The UK report at the very end talks about this a lot, which I found somewhat surprising. I don’t have a good sense of how much this might change our estimates.
The point about average age is something we indeed thought about a lot and asked a few industry people about this. For example, rodent imports are reported by weight, so we tried to estimate the average size of the rodents to figure out how many rodents were being imported. We ended up estimating that the average mouse was a “fuzzy” or “small” which would make them 5-21 days old. For rats it was “pups” and “weaned” which would make them 14-28 days old. I think these were just gut estimates though, so could be wrong.
I appreciate the kind words, although to avoid taking too much credit I should say that this research was conducted under the umbrella of an existing organization, although we elected to not publish under the name of that organization for various reasons :)
Thanks so much for this work! I think it’s high quality and useful. Some thoughts:
I’m curious, why you are not also suggesting corporate campaigns against pet stores that sell feeder mice? Pet owners who shop there probably think of themselves as animal lovers so it might work. Is it because most feeder rodents are ordered online? Also, whether you campaign against pet stores or zoos, there might be a need to include third-party auditing in the commitment, just like it’s included in the Better Chicken Commitment. If campaigns against zoos or pet stores were successful and attracted public attention, perhaps even legislative changes would eventually be feasible.
There might be a market for higher welfare feeder rodents. I was told that my 2019 article on the issue that you mentioned was the 2nd most read on the Rethink Priorities website (that was years ago, probably no longer the case). I received multiple emails about it from non-EA snake owners, despite no outreach. This makes me think that some snake owners might care about feeder rodent welfare and might already feel some guilt about it. Unlike when dealing with processed meat used for food, snake owners have to deal with rodent carcasses, or even live mice, which might make it more difficult to ignore the fact that this was/is a sentient being.
Gosh, the stuff you observed during the breeder visit is just so cruel and sad
I wonder if a significant number of mice are also fed to other pets. E.g., this website claims “Frozen mice are suitable for a wide range of pets, most notably for snakes and other reptiles, as well as cats and birds of prey.”
If you get another chance to speak with feeder rodent industry professionals, I’d be interested in what they’d say is the average age of feeder mice and rats at slaughter. The scale of the problem depends on that quite a lot. The number of rodents killed per year might overstate the scale of the issue a bit because they seem to be slaughtered when they are just a few weeks old, or often even a few days old for pinkies.
Huh, I didn’t know that there was such a large-scale operation in Lithuania, which is where I’m from. I sent your article to someone who runs an animal advocacy org there.
It looks like you weren’t paid by anyone to write this. If that’s the case, I want to thank you even more. I’m amazed at how people in this community do stuff like that.
Hi saulius—thanks for those thoughts (and for your previous work on this issue).
Re pet stores, that could also be an impactful way to go, although a few considerations suggest to me it might not be as impactful. Many of the reptile stores that sell large amounts of mice seem to be small local businesses, not large companies with brands they’d want to protect. There are some international pet companies like PetCo that sell rodents, but I don’t think their volume is that big. Also, many of the smaller pet stores specialize in reptiles, so perhaps people who shop at those stores would have a sense of what’s going on and not be so upset by it, whereas people that go to zoos probably don’t think at all about how the animals are fed. I agree with your point about auditing, I think there’s still more work to do in figuring out exactly what change you’d ask for.
It’s definitely possible that lots of rodents are fed to other types of animals, particularly birds of prey, although it’s not something that came up much in our research. The UK report at the very end talks about this a lot, which I found somewhat surprising. I don’t have a good sense of how much this might change our estimates.
The point about average age is something we indeed thought about a lot and asked a few industry people about this. For example, rodent imports are reported by weight, so we tried to estimate the average size of the rodents to figure out how many rodents were being imported. We ended up estimating that the average mouse was a “fuzzy” or “small” which would make them 5-21 days old. For rats it was “pups” and “weaned” which would make them 14-28 days old. I think these were just gut estimates though, so could be wrong.
I appreciate the kind words, although to avoid taking too much credit I should say that this research was conducted under the umbrella of an existing organization, although we elected to not publish under the name of that organization for various reasons :)