After alleging numerous violations of the Federal Law on Insecticides, Fungicides and Rodenticides (FIFRA) due to the illegal sale of pesticides by the online selling giant, the EPA by CAFO (Consent Agreement and Final Order) ordered Amazon to pay a colossal amount of money as penalties.
The announcement of the agreement was made on Thursday, February 15,2018 by the EPA, which stipulates payment of $1.2 million to Amazon for selling illegal pesticides online.
In light of the violations, Amazon had no choice but to agree to pay $1.2 million in administrative penalties as part of the agreement with the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that would protect consumers from the dangers of illegal pesticides and bad branded pesticides sold by the online retail giant. It stated that the agreement resolves allegations that Amazon has committed nearly 4,000 violations of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) over the past five years by authorizing third parties to sell and distribute pest control products imported from Amazon warehouses, even though these pesticides were not authorized for sale in the United States.
This agreement is about drastically reducing the online sale of illegal pesticides, which pose a serious threat to public health in communities across America. Above and beyond that, the agreement has a major peculiarity because it makes it possible to impose one of the sanctions that had never been imposed by the agency for this purpose. Hence the deterrent nature of the agreement in question.
Among the most worrisome products for sale were chalk sticks, used by customers to trace a barrier loaded with pesticides on a surface that the user does not want an insect to pass through and survive. The peculiarity of these products is that they arrive in packaging that attracts children who can be led to play with these toxic products while exposing themselves to the risk of suffering from certain diseases linked to the toxicity of these chalk sticks.
While Amazon has neither admitted nor denied the facts alleged by the EPA, it has indicated that it is now committed to closely monitoring and removing illegal pesticides from its website. Nor did it fail to state that regulatory compliance is a top priority within the company and that third-party vendors must comply with all relevant laws and regulations when listing items for sale on Amazon.
Even if this agreement has made it possible to contractually repress violations of the pesticide law in the United States, it must nevertheless have a strengthening of the texts and regulations in this area in order to enable the protection not only of direct or indirect victims of pesticides by restoring their rights, but also the protection of the environment against its impacts. Moreover, the Justice Pesticides association makes it one of its major concerns and has set itself the objective of gathering all the French and worldwide jurisprudence concerning pesticides in order to constitute a database to help victims understand the consequences of the use of these products in their legal actions.