The Non-Financial Ledger: What the Fine Cannot Measure

Pesticides are not ordinary consumer products. They are chemicals designed, at their core, to kill living things. The entire legal framework around pesticide production exists for one reason: so that when something goes wrong, someone can trace exactly what was in the bottle, when it was made, and where it went. Batch codes are the minimum standard. They are the paper trail that makes accountability possible.

Agroscience International and Planet Earth Creations stripped that trail away. For a year and a half, they shipped Hammer Head PGR, a plant growth regulator pesticide, in containers that were completely untraceable. If a farmer applied a contaminated batch to a field. If a greenhouse worker was exposed to a formulation error. If a child got into an improperly labeled container. The companies would have had no records, no batch numbers, and no way to identify which shipment was responsible. There was nothing to pull back. Nothing to investigate. The chain of accountability simply did not exist.

The EPA’s own document confirms that Agroscience maintained zero production records for the entire year of 2020. Not incomplete records. Not records with minor errors. Zero. An entire year of pesticide production with no documentation that it happened. When they finally provided records four months after the inspection, those records still did not include the required EPA registration number.

What makes this worse is that the violation is not complicated. You do not need a chemistry degree or a legal team to understand that if you make pesticide in a batch, you write down which batch it is and you put a code on the container. This is basic manufacturing hygiene. It is the kind of process that any responsible operation builds on day one. Agroscience had been registered with the EPA as a pesticide-producing establishment since August 2016. They registered Hammer Head PGR in October 2019. Sixteen months later, they still had not bothered to implement batch tracking. They developed the system the same week the inspector walked in.

The people at the end of this supply chain, the ones using Hammer Head PGR on their plants, their lawns, their crops, had no idea they were holding a product with no batch identity. They could not have known. The label did not tell them, because the label was missing required information. The company did not tell them, because the company was not keeping records. The only reason any of this came to light is because a Michigan Department of Agriculture inspector showed up on August 4, 2021, and physically examined the containers. Without that inspection, the shipments would have continued.

The fine is $27,064. Split across 20 separate federal violations. That is $1,353 per violation of the law. When you are a corporation that manufactures and distributes pesticides, $1,353 is not a deterrent. It is a line item.

Legal Receipts: What the Document Actually Says

The following quotes come directly from the EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Docket No. FIFRA-05-2024-0007, signed January 16, 2024, by both respondents, and filed January 26, 2024.

“During the Inspection, the inspector observed that nonrefillable containers of Hammer Head PGR (EPA Reg. No. 92522-2) released for shipment did not include a batch or lot code on the label or elsewhere on the container.”

— Paragraph 41, Consent Agreement and Final Order

• This confirms the labeling failure was total. The batch code was missing not just from the label but from the container itself. There was no secondary marking, sticker, or ink stamp anywhere on the product that would allow traceability.
• The phrase “released for shipment” means these products had already cleared the company’s internal process and were on their way to buyers. This was not a warehouse anomaly. It was standard operating procedure.

“A representative for the Respondents stated that they had not placed a batch code on the containers of Hammer Head PGR (EPA Reg. No. 92522-2) produced and distributed prior to the date of the Inspection. A batch code system was developed immediately after the Inspection.”

— Paragraph 42, Consent Agreement and Final Order

• This is a direct admission from the company’s own representative that no batch code system existed before the inspection. The system was not broken or outdated. It did not exist at all.
• The phrase “developed immediately after the Inspection” tells you exactly what prompted compliance: not company ethics, not a quality control audit, not a customer complaint. An inspector with a clipboard and federal authority.

“Respondent Agroscience failed to maintain any production records for Hammer Head PGR (EPA Reg. No. 92522-2) produced in 2020.”

— Paragraph 61, Consent Agreement and Final Order

• Federal law under 40 C.F.R. § 169.2(a) requires producers to maintain records showing the product name, EPA registration number, amounts per batch, and batch identification. Agroscience maintained none of these for an entire calendar year.
• During 2020, the document shows at least six separate sales of Hammer Head PGR occurred (Invoices #1295, #1317, #1331, #1367, #1369, #1371). All six shipments went out with no corresponding production records.

“As of the date of this CAFO, Respondent Agroscience has failed to submit its annual Pesticide Production Reports for calendar years 2018 and 2020 for its establishment to EPA.”

— Paragraph 54, Consent Agreement and Final Order

• The 2018 annual report was due March 1, 2019. The 2020 report was due March 1, 2021. By the time this consent order was signed in January 2024, neither had been filed. That means the 2018 report was nearly five years overdue.
• These reports are how the EPA knows what pesticides are being produced and in what quantities across the country. When a registered producer goes dark for an entire year and skips a separate year entirely, the agency’s picture of what is in the supply chain has a hole in it shaped exactly like Agroscience.

Societal Impact Mapping: Who Actually Pays the Price

Public Health

Batch codes exist specifically to protect people from pesticide exposure incidents. Their absence is a concrete public health failure, not a paperwork issue.

• Without a batch or lot code on the container, any pesticide recall or contamination investigation is effectively impossible. If Hammer Head PGR had been contaminated, mislabeled as to concentration, or improperly formulated in a specific production run, there would have been no mechanism to identify which containers were affected or which customers received them.
• Hammer Head PGR is a plant growth regulator pesticide. These chemicals are used in agricultural and horticultural settings where exposure risk is real: farmers, greenhouse workers, landscapers, and home gardeners can come into contact with the product through skin absorption, inhalation, or accidental ingestion. Federal labeling requirements exist to ensure that anyone exposed can get accurate product information to medical personnel immediately.
• The complete absence of production records for 2020 means that for an entire year, there is no documented account of what quantities were made, what went into each batch, or how those batches varied. If a worker had a serious exposure event in 2020, there would be nothing to investigate.
• Pesticide-related illness is chronically underreported in the United States, particularly among agricultural workers. The traceability systems that FIFRA mandates are part of the thin infrastructure that makes adverse event detection possible. Agroscience and PEC operated outside that infrastructure for over 18 months.

Economic Inequality

The people most likely to be harmed by untraceable pesticides are the same people least able to fight back when something goes wrong.

• Agricultural and horticultural workers, the primary end-users of products like Hammer Head PGR, are disproportionately low-income, often immigrants, and frequently employed without the job security or health insurance that would allow them to pursue legal action after a pesticide exposure incident.
• Small-scale farmers and independent greenhouse operators who purchased Hammer Head PGR had no way of knowing the product they received was legally misbranded. They relied on the label and the regulatory system to guarantee the product met federal standards. That guarantee was hollow.
• A $27,064 fine split across 20 violations is so small relative to the cost of doing business that it does not create meaningful deterrence for any company large enough to operate a registered pesticide-producing establishment. The people at the bottom of the supply chain absorbed the risk. The corporation absorbed a fine that amounts to a rounding error.
• When a pesticide exposure incident cannot be traced to a specific batch, the burden of proving harm in a lawsuit falls entirely on the injured party. Without batch records linking an incident to a specific production run, a victim has no documented chain of custody to present in court. Agroscience’s record-keeping failures effectively pre-immunized the company against individual liability claims.

The Cost of a Life Metric

One Man, Two Companies, One Facility: How the Structure Works

The corporate structure here is worth understanding. Both respondents, Agroscience International, Inc. and Planet Earth Creations, Inc., share the same president and the same address. The consent order separates them legally, but in practice one person signed for both companies on January 16, 2024.

• Agroscience International registered the Facility with the EPA in August 2016 and registered Hammer Head PGR in October 2019. As the registrant, it bears legal responsibility for production record-keeping and annual reporting to the EPA.
• Planet Earth Creations is the entity that actually sold the misbranded product on 16 occasions. Structurally, splitting production and sales across two entities with the same owner can make it harder to hold a single corporate entity fully accountable. The EPA counted them as separate respondents here.
• Both companies signed the consent order on the same date (January 16, 2024) through the same individual, Jawdat Elia, as president of each. The $27,064 fine is assessed jointly against both respondents.

How It Was Supposed to Work vs. How It Actually Worked

What Now: Who to Watch and What to Do

The consent order resolves the federal civil penalty, but it does not compel the company to pay for independent testing of distributed product, notify buyers, or disclose which customers received which shipments.

The Watchlist: Agencies With Authority Here

• EPA Region 5: The agency that brought this case. Responsible for continued monitoring of Agroscience’s FIFRA compliance. Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division contact: bouche.angela@epa.gov.
• Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD): The state agency whose inspector actually caught this. MDARD has ongoing authority to inspect pesticide-producing establishments in Michigan and is the first line of detection for state-level violations.
• EPA Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP): The national office that manages FIFRA registration and compliance policy. The missing 2018 and 2020 annual reports are a national database integrity issue, not just a regional one.
• OSHA: If Hammer Head PGR was used in occupational settings, workers who handled the product during the period of non-compliance may have grounds to file concerns about inadequate product traceability in their workplace.

Roles Involved: Who Signed, Who Is Responsible

• Jawdat Elia, President of both Agroscience International, Inc. and Planet Earth Creations, Inc., signed the consent agreement on January 16, 2024, for both entities.
• Michael D. Harris, Director, Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, EPA Region 5, signed for the EPA on January 23, 2024.
• Ann L. Coyle, Regional Judicial Officer, EPA Region 5, issued the final order on January 26, 2024.

Actions for Mutual Aid and Grassroots Resistance

• If you purchased or used Hammer Head PGR between January 2020 and July 2021, contact MDARD to report your purchase and document which invoice or lot you received. You can file a pesticide complaint at michigan.gov/mdard.
• Agricultural and horticultural workers in Michigan can contact Farmworker Legal Services of Michigan (flsm.net) for guidance on rights related to pesticide exposure incidents where traceability records were never maintained.
• Demand that EPA Region 5 confirm in writing that Agroscience has now filed the missing 2018 and 2020 Pesticide Production Reports. The consent order requires compliance with FIFRA going forward but does not explicitly mandate back-filing those reports. File a FOIA request for the current status at epa.gov/foia.
• Organize with neighbors, farmers, and co-workers around pesticide accountability. The National Pesticide Information Center (npic.orst.edu) provides free, expert guidance on pesticide safety and can assist in documenting exposure incidents. They can also help you understand product labels and identify what information is legally required to be present.
• Share this story with anyone who buys or applies pesticides. The enforcement document is public record. The docket number is FIFRA-05-2024-0007. Anyone can look it up. Awareness is the first layer of accountability when regulatory fines are this small.