Three Rodenticide Laws Later: Lessons from California

More than a year has passed since California’s most recent major rodenticide restrictions took effect, and the industry has had time to move beyond immediate reaction mode. The dust has settled long enough to ask a more useful question: What did we actually learn?

California has long served as a preview of where pest management regulation may head nationally. While every state’s regulatory environment differs, many of the operational challenges we faced during the rodenticide transition are not unique to California. For pest management companies in other states watching similar conversations emerge, here are three lessons worth considering.

LESSON ONE. The first lesson is that negative public perception moves faster than the law. One of the clearest takeaways from California’s rodenticide transition is that public perception and operational reality will differ greatly from the actual law, and you must determine how your company balances both while remaining compliant. Customers and industry members alike will often incorrectly state that anticoagulant rodenticides are fully banned in California (which is untrue). Media coverage, advocacy campaigns and social media discussions create a public understanding that is often inconsistent with the final legal language, leaving companies stuck between a rock and a hard place.

If a company moved away from certain rodenticide products early, some customers felt they were receiving a lesser service. From their perspective, professionals were choosing not to use products that were still legal, available and often viewed as the more effective option. At the same time, companies that continued using products right up until restrictions tightened risked appearing reactive. Our customers often expect us to anticipate where regulations are heading, instead of waiting until the final possible moment to change.

This created a difficult balancing act. Move too early, and some customers questioned whether service quality was being reduced unnecessarily. Move too late, and lose customer trust by failing to plan ahead.

After the passage of AB 2552, potential penalties increased dramatically, up to $25,000 per illegal placement, per day. That level of exposure significantly changed the operational risk calculation for companies still using rodenticides, even where certain active ingredients and applications remained legal. As a result, many companies chose not to simply build protocols around the exact minimum requirements of the law. Instead, they began proactively reducing rodenticide usage altogether to limit liability, simplify decisions for technicians, and prepare for where regulations and public expectations appeared to be heading next. For companies in other states, the lesson is straightforward: monitor not only the law itself, but also the long-term direction the law suggests.

LESSON TWO. Another important lesson is that communication training has become as important as service training. If California exposed one major weakness across the industry, it was inconsistent communication.

Rodenticide regulations are complicated. Interpretation of exempt uses can differ based on your local regulator; these exemption definitions aren’t black and white. Customers increasingly arrive at least partially informed after reading articles, advocacy materials or, in some cases, the final bill text itself.

Terms like restricted, anticoagulants, and exempt/nonexempt sites are not easily simplified at scale. In our case, we focused heavily on immediate logistics related to tweaking our rodent programs before the law went into effect and underestimated the importance of messaging protocols. With each passing law, our communication strategy became more robust. Messaging guides, technician FAQs and approved talking points for difficult conversations all became essential. This experience reinforced that communication is a core competency, not an optional soft skill.

Another important lesson emerged on the opposite side of the spectrum. Overly anticipating regulations can create its own communication problems. If we speak too aggressively/early about future restrictions, customers may later feel misled if products remain legally available longer than we expected. Balancing transparency without overstating certainty became critical with certain customers.

LESSON THREE. A third lesson is that it is critical to determine your company’s position early and stay consistent. In our experience, branches in different markets handled the transition differently from 2020-2025 as the three bills eventually became law. Over time, we noticed that the branches that navigated the transition most smoothly were often the ones that established a clear stance early on and applied it consistently.

Across California, this did not mean that every company made the same decisions regarding their protocols. Some continued using allowable products down to the wire, while others shifted heavily toward trapping, exclusion and habitat modification strategies. Which decision a company makes is less important than ensuring technicians, managers and customers all understand the company’s position and commit to it.

A WARNING TO OTHER STATES. California’s rodenticide experience demonstrated that regulatory shifts create ripple effects far beyond compliance alone. The operational impacts touched training, technician confidence, customer trust and company identity. In the end, the companies that handled California’s rodenticide shift best were not the ones asking, “What are we still allowed to use?” They were the ones asking, “Where is the industry headed next?”

The author is director of technical and quality assurance for Clark Pest Control and a member of the Greater Rollins Technical Team.