The hearing, Enhancing the Safety of our Toys: Lead Paint, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and Toy Safety Standards, considered private- and public-sector efforts to strengthen toy safety amid a wave of high-profile toy recalls that have swept the industry in recent months.
Highlighting new and ongoing initiatives within the Institute to develop standards-based solutions that will build consumer confidence, Mr. Bhatia underscored ANSI’s commitment to working with both government and industry to strengthen current safety standards and conformity assessment systems.
“Government and industry need to work together if we are to restore consumer confidence in imported goods,” said Bhatia. “ANSI stands ready to help coordinate this partnership.”
Emphasizing the value of a sustainable approach to compliance verification, Bhatia also discussed key elements of ANSI’s coordination initiative for the Toy Industry Association (TIA) to bolster toy safety testing and compliance systems [See related article].
“We need a system that is consistent and sustainable,” he said. “We’re going to focus our attention on two areas: improving how products are evaluated and assessing who is conducting the evaluations.”
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Bhatia went on to explain that the systems being developed will include standardized procedures that can be used across the toy industry to verify that products comply with agreed safety requirements. ANSI will also help the toy industry develop the tools they need to evaluate the competence of the organizations they are relying upon to conduct safety assessments.
Also testifying before the subcommittee were Nancy A. Nord, acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, TIA president Carter Keithley, Consumers Union’s senior product safety counsel, and the heads of Mattel and Toys “R” Us.
A Webcast of the hearing’s proceedings will be made available on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee Web site.
