(POSTED 9/14/06)
The Environmental Protection Agency has announced a settlement with Kamehameha Schools stemming from an incident in which it gave pigs an accidental overdose of rat poison in an experiment intended to show the effectiveness of using helicopters to deliver poison in the forest as a means of rat control.
We published details of the experiment that went awry in our May 2004 edition; the experiment itself occurred in late August and September of 2003. Be sure to check our archives for the full story.
Terms of the settlement call for Kamehameha Schools to pay $3,300 for improper use of a rodenticide. The EPA concluded that in the experiment, which involved not only the aerial distribution of poisoned rat bait but also maintaining bait traps on the ground, Kamehameha Schools used rat bait in the ground traps in a manner that was not consistent with the EPA’s experimental use permit.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, a cooperator in the experiment, came in for EPA criticism as well. “As a result of this enforcement action,” the EPA said in a press release, “a notice of warning has also been issued by the EPA to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, for its role in assisting with the ground application of the pesticide.”
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