Pesticide Crimes By Scotts, Largest Fine, 50 Years After Silent Spring

In September, the Scotts Miracle-Gro pesticide company was sentenced to pay the largest ever criminal penalty, and the largest ever civil penalty, for deliberate violations of the US Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Scott's sold 70 million pounds of bird food it had treated with pesticides toxic to birds, filed false documents and committed many other violations. The penalties total more than $10 million. In a sad irony, the fine came almost exactly 50 years after Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, triggering the modern environmental movement with her expose of the terrible environmental cost of chemical pesticides.

The US EPA described Scott's astonishing conduct as follows: