Oct 16, 2026 · 8 min · 7 segments
PETA has asked Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker to put the kibosh on the poisoning of those vile four-legged varmints and take a wholly different approach.
It probably doesn't surprise you that Philadelphia is home to a huge rat population.
It's a big city, and big cities have rats.
There's no getting around that.
[rat scurrying] Is that a sound effect of a rat? I don't know.
But according to a recent ranking from the pest control company Terminix, Philadelphia is actually the third worst city in the country for rats.
No home, no matter how clean, is safe from invasion, and for every one you can see, there may be hundreds more you can't see.
And the problem is so bad in certain parts of Philadelphia that City Council just declared a full-blown public health emergency.
The ayes have it.
The motion carries.
The resolution is adopted.
In a unanimous vote, City Council passed Resolution 260819, essentially calling on the Departments of Public Health, Licenses and Inspections, and Sanitation to work together to solve the rat infestation in the lower northeast section of the city.
The good folks at PETA say they have the solution to our rat problem and that we've been doing it all wrong all these years.
PETA wants Philadelphia to stop poisoning the rodents that can spread all sorts of nasty things like, oh, hantavirus, plague, murine typhus.
I could go on.
Instead, they insist we should be giving the rats of Philadelphia birth control.
It probably doesn't surprise you that Philadelphia is home to a huge rat population.
It's a big city, and big cities have rats.
There's no getting around that.
[rat scurrying] Is that a sound effect of a rat? I don't know.
But according to a recent ranking from the pest control company Terminix, Philadelphia is actually the third worst city in the country for rats.
No home, no matter how clean, is safe from invasion, and for every one you can see, there may be hundreds more you can't see.
And the problem is so bad in certain parts of Philadelphia that City Council just declared a full-blown public health emergency.
The ayes have it.
The motion carries.
The resolution is adopted.
In a unanimous vote, City Council passed Resolution 260819, essentially calling on the Departments of Public Health, Licenses and Inspections, and Sanitation to work together to solve the rat infestation in the lower northeast section of the city.
The good folks at PETA say they have the solution to our rat problem and that we've been doing it all wrong all these years.
PETA wants Philadelphia to stop poisoning the rodents that can spread all sorts of nasty things like, oh, hantavirus, plague, murine typhus.
I could go on.
Instead, they insist we should be giving the rats of Philadelphia birth control.
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