Mosquito Less(on) Learned
This just seemed like this little screw up needed documented.
There have been several attempts at bringing 25b products or those Generally Regarded As Safe (GRAS) products into Canada. You remember the EPA decided products like thyme oil, spearmint oil and other plant based extracts did not require a full blow data package, or any package to be used as a pesticide in the US.
Extract from citrus, d-limonene another great example.
But in Canada?
No way. Show me the money!!
So how many GRAS products do we have registered?
So anyway, one company decided to pony up all the money involved, with a bit of a break as some date just could not be generated, and obtained a registration for Garlic Oil.
Yeppers, just the juice from a garlic clove.
Wait, you need to submit data and fees and a little bit more data and a lot more fees to get a registration for garlic oil? you bet
To repel mosquitos? damn straight
So if I squished the hell out of a billion garlic gloves and sprayed my bushes I would be making an illegal application? hahahaha…or a salad for an extinct oversized lizard.
So we have had a couple garlic oil products registered, domestic for the RTU’s and a commercial full strength concentrate that requires a mosquito license to purchase. Thats in case someone wants to kill themselves by drinking the concentrate and die by alienating friends and lovers.
SO END OF STORY
hahahahaha
Remember where we are, and this is Health Canada we’re ranting about.
THE REST OF THE STORY
So here we are in the midst of the season, when a customer called and told us he’d been inspected by Health Canada, and that he could not use the garlic oil product he purchased from us last year. About a third of a pail left, used once for a senior organic vegan hippie type. (Who were bitten the next day by Culex pipiens and died of West Nile Virus on Christmas Eve eating cauliflower blintzes. But thats my next rant.)
That was it, you just could not spray it. Nothing about was it a stop sale or recall or disposal as Hazardous waste.
Did they say why? Well, apparently the registration lapsed a while back – like 6 months ago – as the owner came down with a debilitating illness, a new company bought them, but never guessed a garlic oil sprayed for bugs outdoors would require the intervention of Health Canada.
The registration wasn’t renewed. No big deal.
Did someone forget to tell the rest of the world, like us or Varyairyus or Amazon Crime or Home Creepo or Canadian Tired or Home Hardly (sorry on a roll there) that all this product on their shelves and websites and in the hands of millions of consumers, that it was illegal to sell, use or spray?
No, just that the registration was up for fast tracking to mend this oversight. Probably the next few weeks. Which it should be, but here’s the question, what if the PCP# changes, what happens to product in the field? And homes. Does it need relabeled? Destroyed? Burned up as waste for a mere $250 a liter, or hauled off to residential household waste?
Why the delay? Vacation schedules maybe, or the act of just ticking the registered box seems way to simple.
If this had been Preparation HHH and had its DIN pulled, what happens? Does HC tell anybody, or do we just use it like we do the expired tube and stick it….well you get the rest.
It’s July, my garden needs weeding now that its fertilized.