Scotts Miracle-Gro, the company best known for its eponymous fertilizer, has been ordered to pay $12.5 million in civil and criminal fines for violating the Environmental Protection Agency’s pesticide laws, a judge ruled on Friday. The company plead guilty to “illegally applying insecticides to its wild bird food products that are toxic to birds, falsifying pesticide registration documents, distributing pesticides with misleading and unapproved labels and distributing unregistered pesticides.”
This is Scotts’s second time making news in the past month. In early August, Scotts came out as one of a few disclosed corporate funders of the Restore America PAC, the Super PAC running an expensive independent campaign for Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Scotts donated $200,000 in June to Restore America.
Scotts’ disregard of EPA standards may explain its financial backing of Romney. The candidate opposes many regulations by the EPA, including those on mercury and air pollution from coal.
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