Few years ago, Scotts started lacing their bird seed with insecticide to prevent insects from consuming their products during storage (inventory control).
According to court documents, the Scotts Miracle-Gro company added the pesticides, Storcide II and Actellic® 5E, to their wild bird feeds to prevent insects from consuming the products during storage. Neither pesticide is licensed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for use in bird foods. This is in direct violation of FIFRA -- the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.
Here's the major issue.... Scotts was warned about the fact that this was harmful to birds by
their own chemist and ornithologist!!
According to court documents, Scotts Miracle-Gro was warned about the toxicity of these chemicals by two employees. One employee, a pesticide chemist, approached management about these dangers in the summer of 2007, whilst the other employee, an ornithologist, notified management in the autumn of that same year. The Scotts Miracle-Gro company ignored these warnings and continued to produce and distribute their poisoned birdseed products for at least another six months, until March of 2008.
Now the company has pleaded guilty. After selling 73 million bags of poison laced bird food, their proposed solution is a $4 million fine plus $500,000 donation for wildlife preservation.
That is completely unacceptable! Meanwhile, the company's executives continue to make out like bandits and are not held responsible for their decisions.
Oh and on a separate issue... at the same time the bird food issue was discovered.
At the same time, a federal registrations manager employed by the Scotts Miracle-Gro company intentionally falsified pesticide registration documents for two other products sold by the company, "Scotts Garden Weed Preventer & Plant Food" and "Scotts Lawn Service Fertilizer With Halts". Neither of these products were registered with the EPA and thus, both were illegally sold to the public. When the EPA contacted the Scotts Miracle-Gro company asking for the required documents and certificates, the manager then "fabricated correspondence and agency documents ... in an effort to deceive EPA into believing it had registered these products but lost its files", according to court documents. The EPA then launched an investigation.
For the full article, head here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
We need to spread the word and boycott this company. There are a lot of better products than Scotts Miracle-Gro for our lawn and garden.
Update:
While a lot of birds may have died in quite because this is a product for wild birds, at least one couple lost almost all of their domestic birds:
Milt and Laura Cyphert of Lakeside suspect that Morning Song Wild Bird Seed, which they purchased at an El Cajon Wal-Mart last month, is linked to the sudden death of nearly 100 birds in their outside aviary. Only eight birds survived. Dozens of field mice that ate the seed also died suddenly, they report. The manufacturer has previously faced other product recalls and disciplinary actions from federal regulators.
http://eastcountymagazine.org/...
1:28 PM PT: Wanted to share this addition tidbit from EcoWatch: http://ecowatch.org/...
The single biggest problem we face in the gardening industry is the marketing muscle of Scotts and related synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, according to Charles L. Batcheler, a longtime buyer for Merrifield Garden Center in Virginia. Batcheler said: “We sell all sorts of natural, safer products for the garden. They won’t hurt your pets or children. They’re better for the environment by far. But as long as Scotts spends millions and millions of dollars on television advertising, we’re not going to be able to convince everyone that there’s a better way of gardening than Scotts’ four-step plan.”