Sources allege that they have witnessed the following at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores:
• Technicians from Ecolab—the company of choice for pest control at Sam's Club and Wal-Mart—allegedly drown mice and other animals captured in live traps at Wal-Mart store #2236 at 651 Main St. in Harleysville, Pennsylvania, by submerging them in buckets of water.
• Ecolab technicians at Sam's Club store #6575 at 249 Summit Park Dr. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have been using cruel glue traps to capture and kill birds who congregate in the pet-food area.
• Employees at Wal-Mart store #2255 at 87 Airport Rd. in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, have been killing birds with glue traps and pellet guns.
The American Veterinary Medical Association unconditionally condemns the use of drowning as a method of killing—in fact, people have been incarcerated for drowning animals—and glue traps are some of the cruelest pest-control devices on the market today. Animals who get stuck on these boards often suffer for days before they finally succumb to starvation, dehydration, self-mutilation, and shock. Patches of skin, fur, or feathers are torn from their bodies as victims struggle frantically to escape the relentless adhesive. Many animals chew off their own limbs while trying to free themselves, and others get their noses, mouths, or beaks stuck in the glue and suffocate. Furthermore, shooting birds with pellet guns is inhumane and illegal. There's no telling how many birds have languished for hours or days before finally succumbing to wounds caused by pellet guns.
Wal-Mart's headquarters in Arkansas has ignored our repeated demands to end these cruel killing methods immediately and to implement a corporate-wide policy prohibiting such actions. Now it's your turn.
