EPA registration number

Definition

The number on a pesticide label, with a distributor's company number after a dash on its product.

Why It Matters

It is the fastest way to tell whose product you are actually buying. A plain number is the registrant's own; a number followed by a dash and a second number is a distributor product sold under somebody else's registration. On a shelf walk that distinction separates the lines the house controls from the lines it merely resells. Photograph the labels, list the numbers, and match them against the registrations the seller says it holds, because the label is the record and the spreadsheet is not.