Bush Administration's Battle To Make Rat Poison More Attractive To Rats Hits Snag

According to the WP, the Bush Administration has lost the first round in their battle to make rat poison more attractive to rats. 

The Environmental Protection Agency has failed to protect children from rat poison exposure, a federal judge ruled yesterday, suggesting chemical manufacturers should add a bittering agent to keep children from ingesting their products.

Ruling in favor of two advocacy groups -- West Harlem Environmental Action and the Natural Resources Defense Council -- U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff wrote that the agency failed to justify its 2001 agreement with pest control companies, which dropped two provisions from a 1998 rule requiring them to include a bittering agent and an indicator dye.

"In short, the EPA lacked even the proverbial 'scintilla of evidence' justifying its reversal of the requirement it had imposed, after extensive study, only a few years before," Rakoff wrote.

You can almost see the smile on Juliet Eilperin's face when she managed to work this line into the story:

Three years later, Bush administration officials rescinded the requirements, on the grounds that they would make the poison less attractive to rats and could damage household property.

We can only assume that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and various other special interests will soon be railing about out of control courts and needless, job killing regulation of small businesses.  But they probably won't be mentioning this part.

Millions of pounds of rat poison, often in the form of pellets that children sometimes mistake for candy, are applied nationwide each year in public housing, public schools and city parks.