EPA calls for Miracle-Gro pesticide recall

The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency has ordered major retailers to pull certain types of Scotts Miracle-Gro products from their shelves.

The EPA ordered Home Depot, Lowe's, Wal-Mart, Ace, Do-It-Best, True Value, Sam's Club, Meijer and K-Mart to stop selling and distributing "illegal, unregistered and misbranded" Miracle-Gro Shake 'n Feed All Purpose Plant Food Plus Weed Preventer and related pesticide products immediately, the agency said Thursday.

The pesticides have an invalid EPA registration number -- 62355-4 -- on the package.

Federal law requires all pesticides to be submitted to EPA for review, evaluation and registration to ensure that they do not pose an unreasonable risk to human health or the environment.

The Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. said it is initiating steps to strengthen its product registration practices and procedures.

"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," Jim Hagedorn, chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International

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