Maasai Mara Incident

In early 2008, FMC was made aware of a potential lion poisoning in the Maasai Mara Reserve in Kenya. We offered our cooperation in developing and interpreting evidence of any carbofuran involvement to the government agency conducting the official investigation. In concert we opened our own investigation.

The investigation of the Mara incident was conducted by the Pest Control Product Board (PCPB) the Kenyan government agency that regulates pesticide products. The PCPB worked with the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS) during the course of their investigation.

The PCPB-KEPHIS investigation determined that "there was no connection found between the dead animals and the suspected chemical [carbofuran.]."

FMC also conducted its own investigation. We wanted to make every effort to determine the root cause of the death of these animals and better understand the allegations of misuse. FMC sent a regulatory scientist into the region to work with our local distributor, the local industry association, as well as government and NGO officials to determine if our product was involved. We interviewed officials from the Mara Conservancy, PCPB, the government lab that conducted the TLC analyses on the Mara samples, KEPHIS who conducted the HPLC analysis of PCPB's samples, KWS (Kenyan Wildlife Srervice) and Serena Lodge manager and staff.

Among our findings were:

• The lodge and staff quarters are area almost entirely encircled by an electric fence making it virtually impossible for a hippo to enter the lodge grounds to feed.
• No Furadan products were used at the lodge or by the staff on their small garden.
• There is no agriculture in the Maasai Mara Reserve, so there is no reason to use Furadan or any other agricultural products within the Reserve.
• No detectable residues of carbofuran were found in soil or plant samples.
• It is unlikely that the hippos died from direct ingestion of Furadan granules since a single hippo would have to eat 700,000 granules to reach a toxic dose. A single lion would have to consume 19,680 kg of hippo meat or about 10 entire hippos to reach a toxic dose.

Based on these findings and scientific data, we reached the same conclusion as the PCPB that there was no connection between carbofuran and the deaths of the animals.