My Letter To Scotts Miracle-Gro

Following up on my earlier post on Scotts Miracle-Gro's deliberate poisoning of birds with their birdseed products, I have sent the following email to the company. If you would like to contact Scotts Miracle-Gro, you can do so here.


Dear Scotts Miracle-Gro Company,


I am writing to express my outrage at finding out that your company knowingly and deliberately sold poisoned bird seed during the years 2007 and 2008.


I am a wildlife enthusiast who has occasionally used your products in the past. Later this spring I will be moving into a home with my family. I am looking forward to working in the yard and garden, and to feeding birds and squirrels in the yard. I can promise that I will never use your company's products.


You have not only deliberately and knowingly caused the deaths of birds, rodents, squirrels, and whatever other living things have eaten your poison. You have also betrayed the thousands of people who bought your products out of their love of wildlife. It sickens me to think that I may have used your birdseed during the time that you were polluting it with your poison, and that any animals may have suffered and died as a result.


You should be ashamed. But then, I'm sure you couldn't care less as long as the profits keep rolling in. I just hope that this matter will be publicized enough that you lose a substantial number of customers.


I have blogged on this matter at http://newsforsquirrels.blogspot.com/2012/03/scotts-miracle-gro-sold-poison-bird.html


and tweeted @squirrelbeebz and will continue to do my part to make sure that your callous disregard for wildlife is publicized.


Oh, and I didn't know until today that your company is a distributor of Monsanto's consumer Roundup, which is another reason to never do business with you again.

Scotts Miracle-Gro Sold Poison Bird Seed

The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company is one of the largest producers of lawn and garden products in the world. Among its products are such widely recognized brands as Miracle-Gro and Ortho. Scotts also distributes the consumer Roundup manufactured by Monsanto.

Scotts also produces wild bird food under the brand names Morning Song, Country Pride, and Scotts Songbird Selections. On March 13, Scotts Miracle-Gro entered guilty pleas in US District Court in Ohio for knowingly selling birdseed that was poisoned with the pesticides Storcide II and Actellic 5E, neither of which is approved by the EPA for use in bird foods. Their use was a violation of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, or FIFRA. More importantly, their use likely sickened and killed an unknown number of songbirds and other wildlife.

The pesticides were applied to prevent the birdseed from being infested with insects during shipping and storage. However, both pesticides contain active ingredients that are labeled as being toxic to fish, birds, and wildlife. The ingredients are known to cause overstimulation to the nervous system, that in small doses can cause nausea, dizziness, and confusion, and in higher doses, paralysis and death.

The very real dangers from the use of this product can be seen in a case in San Diego, California, where a couple purchased a package of Morning Song bird food for use in their outdoor aviary. Almost 100 birds died as a result, nearly their whole flock. Also killed were "dozens of field mice" that ate the seed.

What is worst about this case is that Scotts Miracle-Gro was warned about this problem by two of its employees, one a pesticide chemist and the other an ornithologist, as early as summer of 2007. And yet the company knowingly manufactured and sold the products with the prohibited and dangerous pesticides for almost another year. The products were only pulled from the market in 2008 when the company came under investigation by the federal government for falsifying pesticide registration documents on two other products, and likely feared that the investigation would reveal the illegal pesticide use in the birdseed.

Scotts has pleaded guilty, and is hoping to quietly reach a settlement with the court on a fine, which would include a $500,000 donation for wildlife study and preservation, so that the company can move on and be done with this matter. Whatever fine is imposed will not begin to make up for the suffering and deaths of the birds and other wildlife that ate the companies poison, or the betrayal that the company committed to the wildlife lovers who purchased the products.

I believe it is likely that I bought Scotts' bird seed during the period that the poison was included, and it absolutely sickens me to think that by doing so I might have unwittingly caused the deaths of any birds or squirrels that came to my feeders.

Regardless of whatever fine is imposed on Scotts Miracle-Gro--the higher the better--I hope that this case is well enough publicized that it will cost the company a substantial amount of business. I can promise that I will never buy one of their products as long as I live. And I hope that anyone else who reads this will do the same.

I'm not sure whether to laugh or throw up...

Kellogg Co. is suing a Mayan cultural defense nonprofit group, the Maya Archaeology Initiative (MAI), over the nonprofit's use of a logo featuring an image of a toucan. The suit states that Kellogg is concerned that the group's use of the toucan logo might create "customer confusion." MAI uses a somewhat abstract but still realistic and dignified representation of the colorful bird, which is native to the Mayan homeland area in southern Mexico and Central America. Kellogg uses the character Toucan Sam, an absurd-looking cartoon, to represent it's heavily sweetened children's breakfast cereal Froot Loops.

Just for clarification, here is the MAI logo:

Here is Toucan Sam:

You can, of course, see why Kellogg feels that there might be a problem. After all, after viewing the two images side-by-side, I have the sudden urge to never eat another bite of any Kellogg's product as long as I live.