Biorat bites business - a dangerous pathogen

New Internationalist, Jan-Feb, 2001

The German company Bayer and British-based Zeneca Agrochemicals have launched an attack on Biorat, a mouse and rat poison developed in Cuba. The two Northern companies say Biorat is a dangerous pathogen. But Jose Antonio Fraga, director of Cuba's Biological Pharmaceutical Laboratories, says the active substance in the poison is a strain of salmonella that affects only mice and rats.

The bacteria lives only 72 hours, he adds. Fraga also points out that Biorat has also played a role in combating outbreaks of bubonic plague in Peru, haemorrhagic fever in Bolivia, leptospirosis in Nicaragua and other rodent-borne illnesses in Costa Rica, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. Latin America Press Vol 32 No34