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ITV has been fined after pleading guilty to animal cruelty during the making of UK reality television show I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here.
Two contestants, including last year's winner Gino D'Acampo, killed and ate a rat on camera while the programme was being filmed in Australia.
A court in Sydney heard that although the rat was initially stabbed with a knife, it took a minute and a half for the animal to die.
Magistrate Mark Buscombe said that unnecessary pain had been inflicted, and the company should have taken greater care.
In documents presented to the court, RSPCA Australia said that initially D'Acampo stabbed the rat, then Manning picked up a second knife and attempted to kill it with three separate cutting motions, while D'Acampo used his knife to restrain it.
Mr Buscombe asked ITV's solicitor Chris Lawson whether the men had any experience in using knives, and was told that D'Acampo was a celebrity chef.
He and fellow contestant Stuart Manning had originally been charged with animal cruelty.
Those charges have now been dropped because ITV admitted that production staff had given the go-ahead to their request to kill the rat.
Producers had only taken into consideration whether the rat would make the contestants ill, rather than whether they were breaking any laws.
In mitigation Mr Lawson submitted a Wikipedia article on brown rats, which showed that the brown rat was not indigenous to Australia, and there were probably more rats than humans on the planet.
He said the death of the rat was an 'oversight' rather than a deliberate act.
The company was fined $3,000 and ordered to pay $2,500 in costs.
An ITV spokesman said: 'ITV has apologised for the mistake which led to the incident.
'The production was unaware that killing a rat could be an offence, criminal or otherwise, in New South Wales, and accepts that further enquiries should have been made.'
The spokesman added: 'This was an oversight, and we have since thoroughly reviewed our procedures, and are putting in place a comprehensive training programme to ensure that this does not happen in future series.'
RSPCA chief inspector David O'Shannessy said: 'In New South Wales, regardless of the animal, they're all protected under the Cruelty To Animals Act.
'An animal was inflicted with unnecessary pain and distress.
'Had the circumstances been different and the rat killed outright we wouldn't be talking about it here today.'
