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What goes wrong

Repackaged without a contract

Updated

On this page9
A purchase order is not permission, and the registrant is exposed too.

How it happens

A distributor buys a registered sanitizer in bulk and fills smaller jugs for customers, reasonably believing that buying the product included the right to repackage it. The rule says otherwise and says so explicitly.

What was missing

The written contract with the registrant to repackage the product and to use their label, and very often the EPA establishment registration and a subpart C container as well. Three of five conditions in one common practice.

The violation is named

Repackaging a pesticide product for distribution or sale without either obtaining a registration or meeting all of the conditions is a violation of section 12 of the Act. There is no good-faith exception in the sentence.

And it reaches the registrant

Both you and the pesticide product’s registrant may be liable for violations pertaining to the repackaged product. A registrant who discovers this will act quickly, because their exposure is as real as yours.

Relabeling makes it worse, not better

The permitted changes are an appropriate net contents statement and the refiller’s EPA establishment number. Putting your own brand on a repackaged registered product adds a second problem to the first.

The lawful version is available

Ask the registrant for the contract, register the establishment, get their written description of acceptable refillable containers and buy one. It is a real process with real lead time and it is entirely achievable.

Until then, sell it in the registrant’s packaging

Which is the simple answer that too rarely gets considered. Distributing a registered product as the registrant packaged it carries none of these obligations.

Good faith is common here and irrelevant

Almost everyone who does this believes buying the product included the right to repackage it, which is a reasonable thing to assume and not what the rule says. The absence of a bad motive does not appear anywhere in section 12.

References

40 CFR 165.70, Refillers who are not registrants. Paragraph (b) sets the five conditions under which a registrant may let you repackage their product into refillable containers, including an EPA-registered refilling establishment and a written contract; paragraph (c) makes repackaging without them a violation of section 12 of the Act for which both you and the registrant may be liable. law.cornell.edu
40 CFR 165.67, Registrants who distribute or sell pesticide products to refillers for repackaging, the mirror of 165.70. Paragraph (d) requires the registrant to provide the written contract to the refiller before the product is distributed or sold to them; paragraph (e) keeps the registrant responsible for product integrity. law.cornell.edu
40 CFR 165.45, Refillable container standards. Paragraph (a)(1) requires a non-DOT-hazardous pesticide in a portable refillable container to be designed, constructed and marked to comply with an enumerated list of 49 CFR requirements for a Packing Group III material, including parts 178 and 180; paragraph (b) requires full 49 CFR parts 171-180 packaging where the product is a DOT hazardous material. law.cornell.edu
Written from federal regulation, not from a plant floor. FIFRA is administered by EPA and the states have their own pesticide programs on top of it. Nothing here is a registration, a contract or a finding that a container complies; those are the registrant’s, the lawyer’s and the container manufacturer’s to give.