Toy industry asking for government regulation
The latest, surprising, chapter in the ongoing toy safety story: Major toy manufacturing companies in the US are asking for the federal government to impose mandatory safety-testing standards that would apply to all toys sold in this country.
Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who recently co-sponsored legislation that would impose such testing requirements on all children’s products, said he welcomed the request.
“What a dramatic turn,” he said in an interview Thursday, adding, “These news stories have really shaken the confidence of American families in toys.”
The proposal, which was approved by the board of the Toy Industry Association at a private meeting last week, does not envision a broad federal inspection program.
Instead, companies would be required to hire independent laboratories to check a certain portion of their toys, whether made in the United States or overseas. Leading toy companies already do such testing, but industry officials acknowledge that it has not been enough.
To address these shortcomings, the proposal calls for uniform standards for frequency of testing, to determine at what point during production the tests would be conducted, and what specific hazards, whether lead paint or small parts, must be checked for.
The uniform standard would also establish global requirements for laboratories that do this testing.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has not yet taken a position on the proposal. The agency would be expected to have a key role in enforcing the mandate. Currently, the CPSC has only one full-time employee who tests toys for safety concerns.
In the meantime, the CPSC and representatives from the Chinese government are to meet this week to discuss the recent recalls of toys manufactured in China.
Stay tuned.
Posted by MommaSteph
September 10th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
What??? Why don’t the toy companies take responsibility for their own products and do the testing themselves?
September 11th, 2007 at 2:09 am
Lots of them do - particularly the big ones. I think the Mattel recall was a real blow to the industry because they were the “gold standard” of how to work with China, supposedly, and they have all sorts of quality control in place, and look what happened…
The companies still would do the testing - the process would just be standardized, with penalties, I guess, for those who willingly violate the standards.
Some of this move may be to get the less known companies in line. If some little unknown company imports a lead toy from China, and it gets recalled, the thinking may be that it makes all the companies that do business with China look bad. And if this Christmas a lot of parents decide “That’s it, we’re not buying anything from China” that’s going to hurt most of the toy industry, big companies and small.