If you are opposed to human babies being poisoned by this crap, you should be opposed to any species or any part of the Earth being poisoned by it.

Sorry, but house cats are only native to Egypt.  In the U.S., they're responsible for killing millions of birds every year, in addition to other native species.  While they're a non-poisonous method of dealing with rodents, they cause their own ecological problems.

...while I agree with Wolverine that cats can be a problem if let out, just so long as the cat is spayed and stays indoors, it should be okay.

Really, the best way to get rid of rats is to get rid of what attracts them...unprotected food.

Put all food in rat-proof containers, cover up all openings where rats could in, clean up, keeps weeds to a minimum, that sorta stuff.

Setting out poison, like setting out traps, is cruel, cowardly and disgraceful.

Poison should certainly be put out of the reach of children.  Thus far, Dawn Pattison is right, this is "great news," if the idea is in the pipeline to keep poisoned edibles away from children.

But in general, though the issue is not widely recognized, poison should certainly not be put in bait for our fellow sentient creatures, against whom we may entertain some absurd heartless prejudice: e.g. wolves, coyotes, lynxes, mountain lions, ferrets, and even rats.

Saving our childrens' lives is our prime duty as parents.  But instructing them carefully regarding the community of living creatures in which we live, and in which we play a supremely powerful part; and our many responsibilities to that community, including being kind to animals; is also a major duty.

Rats deserve our friendship.  They can indeed be pushy, and require tough love.  But they are good critters all the same.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

I just have to respond to the last comment.  If you were talking to someone who lived in west Harlem and actually had to deal with rats in their apartment building, I don't think you'd be talking about "tough love."  In urban areas where rats are a problem, they are key residents of an out-of-whack ecosystem characterized by crumbling infrastructure and horrible garbage-removal services.  It may be better to direct one's "heartless prejudice" at sleazy landlords or misguided city budget-writers.  But I sense a bit of heartlessness in caniscandida's comment towards those who have to suffer both the rats and the environments that give rise to them.

It is not at all clear how Fawn Pattison concludes what he/she does regarding my earlier comment.

I happen to live in West Harlem, across a narrow street from a huge, Laurentide-glacier-dropped boulder that the developers of the neighborhood early in the last century decided could not practically be removed.  It lies behind the kitchen of a popular restaurant, and across from the large garbage bins parked outside a church's much-frequented soup kitchen.  Not unsurprisingly, rats have colonized that boulder, and are a common sight on this street, especially during the warmer months of the year.

In the basement of our building (and we live on the ground floor, separated by only one storey), rats are regular visitors during the night.  From our back bedroom, the computer room, where I am now, we can look out onto the floor of the airshaft, down on the basement level; often enough, when the janitorial staff have collected the trash there, I have heard and seen rats scurrying around excitedly down there, observing them from this very window over my right shoulder.

Occasionally, no doubt because we live on the ground floor, in an older building, in which the fixtures for plumbing, heating and gas have a lot of history and wear, we are visited by mice.  They do not settle in, but they visit, whenever their normal preferred residence is disturbed by some sort of construction.  I have not seen any in well over a year; but I recall, one night very late, when I was reading on the sofa, watching a pair of them playing tag on the dining room floor.

It is possible that our super, and all the other people responsible for maintenance in the neighboring buildings, put down poisoned traps for rats and mice.  We ourselves never complained, nor requested that he exterminate our mice.  As it turned out, the mice left on their own.

"Sleazy landlords" can indeed be harmful to the health of a building's residents, much more so than rats, e.g. when they restrict availability of heat and hot water.  They can be found in many parts of the city, though more notably lately in the South Bronx than in Harlem, which in fact is being gentrified.

 Killing animals, when that is the only way to protect the health and safety of human beings, is justified.  But it should never be done without regret.

TasPar is right about rat-proof containers.  Also important, though, in these old neighborhoods, is sealing off access avenues within decaying architecture.

The moral is, we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem, in a problem-filled world, in which love is all too scarce, if we think that killing animals whom we find inconvenient is normal, natural, unobjectionable, acceptable, even desirable.

Human beings' sense of entitlement is the enemy of the human race (and other living creatures).

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.