A rágcsálóirtás állatvédelmi szempontú megítélése a magyar lakosság körében

Abstract

SUMMARY Background: The protection of pest rodents often receives less attention compared to other animal welfare issues. Currently, in Hungary there is no specific legal act, which aims to improve the welfare of pest rodents. Objectives: The aim of the study was to assess the Hungarian population’s attitude towards rodent control. Respondents were asked about their rodent control preferences and asked to rate several rodent control methods based on humaneness, effectiveness, and specificity. Furthermore, the goal was to assess whether there is a need to tighten the animal protection regulations for rodent control, placing great emphasis on the use of rodent glue. Material and Methods: The survey was conducted by using online questionnaire, which was distributed using social media platforms between August 2 and September 1, 2022. We tried to reach broad social groups, including those who actively use rodent control methods. The answers were converted into and processed in Microsoft Excel™ . Results and Discussion: The 227 participants of the survey were mostly women, between the age of 26-55 and had university degree. They preferred the rodent control methods considered to be more humane. When evaluating the effectiveness of rodent control methods, it can be observed that the respondents who did not use any rodent control considered the effectiveness of less humane methods to be lower. Comparing the evaluations of the rodenticide users and non-users, the biggest difference in the evaluations was in the case of rodent glue and rodenticide poisons. During the evaluation of humaneness, rodent control users and non-users put the same order, starting from the least humane to the most humane: rodent glue, rodent poison, spring trap, live trap, ultrasonic rodent repeller. According to majority of the respondents, stricter animal protection regulation for rodent control activities would be necessary. Furthermore, a significant proportion of participants agree with restricting or completely banning the use of rodent glue