Britain fears infestation by super rats due to drastic cuts in pest control budgets

#superrats #huddersfielduniversity With the drastic slashing of pest control budgets by nearly 25% by local authorities, there are genuine fears of a plague of 'super-rats' as revealed in dailymil.co.uk dated 14 February 2015. A situation could come when a search would be launched for a 21st century Pied Piper to tackle the menace of super-rats in Britain.
As per information released by councils there have been deep cuts in the amounts being spent on controlling vermin and it is understood that across 200 local authorities in England, pest control budgets have been cut by 24.4 per cent on average since 2010. Moreover, there has also been a 16 per cent cut in the amounts spent on street cleaning. The net result is possibility of the rat population going out of control.
The problem is that rats in the UK are becoming bigger, and some are becoming immune to traditional methods of control giving rise to the so-called 'super rats' and, these could outnumber humans two to one by next year.
That rats are becoming immune has been shown by genetic testing carried out by Huddersfield University – the results indicate that some rodents have developed a mutation that allows them to survive conventional poisons. This is true in counties like Berkshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Wiltshire, Hampshire and Kent – it was found that all the rats tested have become immune to poison.