Mexican grocery chains hit with EPA fine for selling illegal disinfectants
A Mexican company that owns two popular grocery chains with stores in Las Vegas will pay the Environmental Protection Agency a penalty for the illegal sale of disinfectants.
Chedraui USA Inc., the parent company of El Super and Smart &Final, must pay the federal agency $472,369 to settle alleged violations of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, officials said Tuesday. The law regulates the sale of disinfectants in an effort to discontinue products that don’t work or can be harmful.
Inspections conducted in 2021 at two stores in California found that the company was selling unregistered disinfectants with labels that made unverified statements about effectiveness against microorganisms, the EPA said. More investigations found that the products were widely circulated in stores throughout Nevada, California and Arizona.
Amy Miller, the EPA’s Pacific Southwest region enforcement and compliance assurance division director, said in a statement that unregistered disinfectants can contain dangerous ingredients.
“Companies have a responsibility to protect their customers from illegal, potentially harmful disinfectant products, and can do so by making sure they are registered with EPA,” Miller said.
Chedraui said in a statement Tuesday that customer safety is its “highest priority.”
“At the height of the pandemic, we sourced disinfectants from new vendors to help meet unprecedented demand, and some of those products were later determined to be mislabeled,” according to the statement. “Once notified, we immediately removed them from sale. We remain fully committed to regulatory compliance and product safety.”
Products no longer sold
In the Las Vegas Valley, Chedraui operates four El Super and seven Smart &Final locations, according to each store’s website.
Regulators said that at an El Super location in Santa Ana, California, the pesticides S&C Sanitizer and S&C Disinfectant contained quaternary ammonia, making them toxic enough to have a label warning of danger.
Another product called Prinex Sanysol featured unverified claims about effectiveness. These products had been distributed at least 61 times.
Similarly, at a Smart &Final in Hayward, California, regulators found that a product labeled Perfect Professional Advanced Multi-Surface Sanitizer had unverified claims about its ability to kill germs, and it was distributed at least 53 times.
The products are no longer sold at either store at any location, the EPA said.
Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.
