The manufacturer of d-CON, a widely sold and popular brand of rat poison, is taking the rare step of challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to prohibit the over-the-counter sale of one of the nastiest and most effective of the poisons sold to consumers.
Most of the 30 manufactures that make such products agreed to the ban, but Reckitt Benckiser Inc., the maker of the 12 separate d-CON products targeted by the EPA, challenged the agency’s decision March 6. The company asked for an administrative hearing to overturn the EPA decision. It’s the first time in 20 years that a company has defied an EPA pesticide ban, and it took the agency and many consumer groups by surprise.
“The impact of these rodenticides on wildlife is staggering,” Greg Loarie, an attorney with the environmental advocacy group Earthjustice, said in a statement. “Study after study has documented anticoagulant rodenticides in more than three-quarters of necropsied raptors, wildcats and canines. The measures put in place by EPA to protect wildlife do not go nearly far enough, and yet Reckitt is refusing to accept even those baby steps in the right direction.”
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