Press release from the Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use (CRRU), 12th June 2023:
ENDING USE OF SECOND-GENERATION ANTICOAGULANT RODENTICIDES BROMADIOLONE AND DIFENACOUM AWAY FROM BUILDINGS
Legal authorisation is being withdrawn for open area and waste dump use for the only two second generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs) currently allowed to be used that way, bromadiolone and difenacoum. This will take effect in July next year.
The change was instigated voluntarily by the Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use UK, with support to make the necessary amendments from UK biocides regulator, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). CRRU Chairman Dr Alan Buckle states that the change was a unanimous decision by all CRRU Directors to help meet rodenticide stewardship’s environmental targets.
“A primary factor leading to this is the stubbornly static incidence of rodenticide residues in around 80 per cent of barn owls, the HSE-nominated sentinel species for annual surveillance,” he explains. “This change will enable a single clear message about SGAR use: None of these products can be applied away from buildings.”
Sales of products containing bromadiolone and difenacoum for use in open areas and at waste dumps will cease on 4 July 2024. These products purchased on or before that date will be authorised for use in open areas and waste dumps until 31 December 2024. After that, it will be illegal to use any SGAR product to treat a rodent infestation not associated with a building.
Manufacturers will change product label instructions accordingly and will continue to promote the application of integrated pest management practices among all rodenticide users. The CRRU Code of Best Practice offers a range of effective methods for rodent management away from buildings, including elimination of harbourage, food and water; lethal non-anticoagulant baits; and trapping, shooting and dogs.
At the beginning of the UK Rodenticide Stewardship Regime the CRRU UK Board of Directors decided that manufacturers would not apply for authorisations for products containing the active substances brodifacoum, difethialone and flocoumafen to be used in ‘open areas’ and at ‘waste dumps’. This was because it considered that these high-potency anticoagulants were most likely to result in risk to wildlife when used in these scenarios. The CRRU board has now unanimously decided to extend this policy to products containing bromadiolone and difenacoum, thereby applying a consistent approach to all second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs).
There are two reasons for this. The first is that the previously excluded SGARs bromadiolone and difenacoum contribute significantly to the total burden of SGAR residues found in UK wildlife, and at the initiation of the regime it was a critical requirement set upon CRRU UK by the regulatory agency, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), to reduce all SGAR residues in wildlife. The second reason is that there has been a recent and sudden increase in exposure of wildlife to products containing brodifacoum. It is considered that such an apparently recent and widespread increase can only be explained by use of this substance, contrary to label instructions, in the open countryside.
The new CRRU policy will permit a clear message to be put out to all UK SGAR users: none of them can be used anywhere away from buildings and such use is illegal and may be subject to prosecution.
The CRRU Board took this decision after carefully considering the availability of alternatives and finding that options exist for those needing to control rodents in open areas and at waste dumps. These include chemical and non-chemical methods, as well as lethal and non-lethal techniques, so that unavailability of SGARs for use away from buildings need not be detrimental either to human and animal health or the rural economy.
ENDS
Raptor Persecution UK 
I was talking to an old farmer I was visiting with a relative of his and he was upset because the Owls had gone from his barn . It was littered with dead rats “the dogs had killed” when she told me I said he’s lucky not to have lost a dog she said oh no he wouldn’t use poison but asked him and he had which of course killed the Owls he was even more upset when told of this. I was amazed he knew no better.
the sooner people need to pass serious exams to become a farmer, the better. I find that they are far too keen to kill our wildlife and pay people to go out at night to shoot our foxes. they re too often an ignorant bunch of people who seem to have it in for our wildlife.
Not before time. Delighted to see this.
Thank you CRRU Directors and HSE. It won’t be only Barn owls that will benefit from this decision.
As ever, enforcement will be the issue. We all know how well the laws are obeyed / observed by significant numbers of the rural industries!
Dead barn owls and dead rats were a common sight in rural Moray farm buildings recently.
A few months ago I was having a talk with a police officer who’s been involved in fighting wildlife crime about the massive amount of feed, the product of intensive agriculture and all its ills, that’s put out for released birds to supplement their diet. They told me of an estate where the result of this is a massive rat problem and loads of rodenticide is put out to deal with them – in their words a local ecology put entirely out of whack. I remember someone else commenting here about the number of rats this practice brings in so very likely to be a common issue.
The latest figures I have for the cereal used to raise pheasants/red legged partridge and for supplementary feeding in the ‘wild’ is 282,000 of wheat per annum which is nearly 2% of the UK’s production of it. There’s an additional 94,000 thousand tons of other types of feed used according to the Labour Animal Welfare Group. I would imagine some of this will be soymeal – probably from cleared rainforest in South America – and fish protein from industrial fishing. Even driven grouse shooting doesn’t manage to drive rainforest loss and over fishing.
As products of the agricultural system all those pheasants and partridges that end up as fox fodder, road kill, carcases in black bags dumped in laybys or incinerated by embarrassed shooting estates should count as food waste as much as if millions of frozen chickens were taken directly from supermarkets to landfill sites. The only difference is that the pheasants and partridge in their lifetime will probably consume far more feed than a typical growth hormone induced broiler chicken. At a time when intensive agriculture is causing so much ecological damage and there’s a cost of living crisis along with foodbanks of course this is a double scandal – the disgusting situation itself and the virtual invisibility of this subject within the conservation and environmental sectors or the government departments dealing with food security and waste.
Hi Les, all feed put out esp during hard weather draws in rats. And – it is only fair to note, also draws in rooks, jackdaws, pigeons & a spectrum of “little birds”* for a free feed. The cost vs benefits of this from estate to estate will vary greatly I would bet. As a boy to youth to young man I helped on a lot of winter feeding of pheasants and ducks. I can’t recall how big the rat problem was around the pheasant feeders or feed scattered on straw in the woods, but on the duck ponds it was significant. Every third or fourth day of daily or twice daily feeding of these ponds (some hoppers but mainly loose feed in the pond margins) of several hundred duck on each, we would put out rat poison. This was in little bags we threw under tin sheets (corrugated roofing), half a dozen bags per tin sheet, three or four tin sheets spread around the pond. Thinking about it that was s lot of poison over the winter for a lot of rats! Can’t recall if we ever had any dead owls or buzzards, I can recall that back then I wouldn’t have given a shit anyway!
* “little birds” being shooting world parlance for a range of passerines they often can’t immediately bring a name to.
Thanks for that SM, incredibly useful! If it hadn’t been for talking to a couple of people who’d taken part in grouse beating when they were teenagers I wouldn’t have known that beaters were sometimes bussed in from other areas too – not a practice that bolsters the case for DGS creating local employment which I suspect is why I’ve never seen it mentioned anywhere in their social media accounts. Gamekeepers frequently being bastards to their dogs is another snippet I’ve picked up from former beaters. Is there scope for a book/booklet one day that’s a compilation of stories and info from former insiders?
I wonder how much land could be returned to wildlife habitat if it wasn’t being used to feed up future fox fodder, road kill or ash at the bottom of an incinerator. Even the small birds that benefit from cadging feed in the winter will mostly need invertebrate food for their chicks in the breeding season – there’s no substitute for having more wildlife habitat and in kindred ways from burning heather, to planting out non native invasives like cherry laurel for game cover to all the intensive farming and even fishing to provide feed – shooting destroys not creates. We need to do a better job of getting that out to the public to counter crap from its apologists like Alan Titchmarsh. Thanks for your insight!
I am pleasantly surprised to learn that anti-coagulant residues are monitored in barn owls (and, indeed, that they are designated as an official sentinel species by the HSE, through the CRRU).
It was the (almost certain) misuse of brodifacoum which killed the White-Tailed Eagle in Dorset.
The shooting establishment will not welcome this change.
Why wait till 2024 let’s stop using rodenticide in certain areas now instead of waiting, iam a pest controller and totally agree with this decision? Am sick and tired of going to call outs and customer has already purchased rodenticide and put it everywhere not knowing what they are doing let’s do it now straight away thanks
Absolutely spot on!
Rodenticides present major ongoing problems for scavenging species such as Barn Owls and Red Kites. It is useful that the CRRU has been looking into inconsistencies in the rules for the use of some of the more commonly used substances.
It is interesting to note the CRRU inference – that bringing the restrictions in the usage of bromadiolone and difenacoum into line with those already in place for other SGARs such as brodifacoum – will resolve the problem they have highlighted. Brodifacoum has always been prescribed as being for use indoors only. To a casual observer this might imply that it should be safe, as victims of its usage would be contained in an enclosed space, which could be regularly checked and carcasses removed for safe disposal by approved means.
However, this is clearly not the case. The discovery of traces of brodifacoum in non-target species is nothing new. Red Kites, as scavengers, are particularly susceptible. Since 2006 there have been at least 22 recorded instances of Yorkshire Red Kites testing positive for brodifacoum, usually accompanied by bromadiolone and difenacoum. This is undoubtedly much lower than the true figure, records not being complete due to the somewhat haphazard means of distribution of the reports on pme findings on poisoning victims and them not being formally distributed to volunteer fieldworkers whose efforts had resulted in the recovery of at least some of the victims.
It is not being claimed that brodifacoum was the cause of death in the 22 cases referred to above. Rather, the point being made is that the figures show that the methods of application of this substance are clearly not effective in preventing it getting into the food chain. No doubt the effects would be just the same with bromadiolone and difenacoum once the changes come into effect – unless the rules of application and consequential housekeeping for all SGARs are tightened up to ensure that less of these toxic substances find their way into the wider environment. As things stand, it is clear that rats killed by SGARs are finding their way ‘away from buildings’ and are being found by scavenging species.
One step which the authorities should take is to ensure that all of the poisons in discussion here should only be available to professional users. This should ensure that the correct poison for the task is used, that it is targeted properly and in the correct quantities and, lastly, that there is a regime for collecting and safely disposing of the dead rats
The rule changes announced by CRRU are very welcome. However, they need to ensure that they are backed-up by rigid monitoring to ensure that they are being followed.
Rats and mice usually hoard the baits in their burrows. Often very large quantuties. So it will take some time after the ban is implemented for it to have some real effect on wildlife.
Only when this stuff is sold to pest controllers holding a RSPH Level 2 will a decrease in anticoagulant levels in barn owls be noticed. The farmer and gamekeeps will ignore the label change, they have switched to brodifacoum due to increased resistence in bromadialone and difenacoum…….. Quite a pointless label change as nobody enforces it, in fact they may have made things worse.
Problem is any one can go to B and Q and buy rodenticide. I have seen it thrown around in the open, left out at the end of treatments ( when slugs eat it and pass on secondary poisoning to song birds etc ) and constantly topped up rather than trying to solve an issue by removing food sources or clearing up. ( All contrary to the labels on them) Most DIY users don’t even bother to read the label. DIY users can get Brodifacoum and generally don’t apply it correctly .Till that changes likely residues will continue. I think its great that Pest control industry is regulating it self via CRRU ( which includes major companies supplying rodenticide) . As people have said great news for all wild life but Pest controllers are not the only users , farmers , Game keepers and DIY needs to also comply and I would suggest DIY use cease.
………. which is precisely why several of us on here have said that these substances should only be available to professionally qualified users! CRRU, HSE etc need to get a grip on this.
Nothing will change until pest control becomes a licensed industry, ie proof of training and certification before purchase is allowed.
I can go on eBay tomorrow and buy a ton of rodenticides that are for professional use. Also, I have heard on the grapevine that 80% of barn owls that are investigated are actually Road kills, maybe we should think about banning road vehicles and give the owls a chance!