18 December 2008

Will Berliners start breeding rats?

A Berlin politician is trying to give them an incentive - suggesting that poor people should be given 1 Euro for each dead rodent they bring in.
The idea poses some practical problems too. Killing rats by hitting them with shovels or kicking them to death would break animal protection laws. Besides, rats are fast and much tougher to catch than returnable bottles, much sought after by poor people who retrieve deposits on them at supermarkets.

4 comments:

  1. I can't say I'm really taking a stand one way or the other, but I hate statements that argue with themselves; they talk about shovels and kicking and then say they are much too fast for that... Am I the only one that sees the break in logic there.

    And why do they assume only the poor will do this? Giving the population as a whole incentive to help with the rats will be much more effective than 10 pounds they spend elsewhere.

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  2. Duly noted about the breeding rats, though. It'd still have to cost much less than a pound per rat to raise them for that to make money, though.

    And excuse the lack of question mark at the end of the first paragraph. :)

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  3. The apparent lack of coherence in the quoted statement probably derives from the fact that I was citing an article that presented two points of view. If you go to the original link, the flow of logic will probably be more consistent.

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  4. The killing part is a direct quote. :) I did read the article.

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