Scotts recalls products for label noncompliance

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered Scotts Miracle-Gro to recall several misbranded pesticides this spring. The company’s Miracle-Gro Shake ‘n Feed with Weed Preventer All Purpose Plant Food, Scotts Bonus S Max Southern Weed & Feed and Fire Ant Killer and Scotts Turf Builder Max Plus 2 Weed & Feed and Crabgrass Preventer were all affected by the order.

Labels on these products made false or misleading claims and one product lacked safety instructions as required by EPA. Scotts chairman and CEO Jim Hagedorn issued a statement saying problems with the labels resulted from deliberate employee error.

“Over the last several days, we learned that one of our former employees deliberately circumvented company policies, caused invalid product registration forms to be submitted to federal and state regulators and then hid those actions from co-workers and managers,” said Hagedorn. “We sincerely apologize to the EPA, our retail partners, our consumers and our shareholders. As I stated yesterday, compliance with government regulation is not optional, and we are taking aggressive steps to better understand how this action occurred and to seek to avoid any reoccurrences.”

Hagedorn said the company terminated the employee and hired an independent consulting firm to review its regulatory compliance processes and procedures.

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For more: Scotts Miracle-Gro, (888) 270-3714; www.scotts.com.

July 2008