House Speaker Nancy Pelosi takes on product safety

Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Representatives Bobby Rush (D-IL), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Diana DeGette (D-CO) held a news conference on Capital Hill on Democratic efforts to promote product and food safety.  I was also invited to give remarks (see page 2) in a speech I called “The Year of The Recall.” 

As the only non-elected official invited to speak, I was certainly honored to participate in an event that caught such media attention.  The headlines today reported the most newsworthy subject of the press conference: Speaker Pelosi’s call for Nancy Nord, the embattled acting chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission to resign.  Representatives Rush and DeLauro echoed the call.

Should Nord resign, and she said today she has no intention of doing so, the CPSC would lose quorum.  That means they would not be able to mandate recalls, levy civil penalties against rule breakers, or adopt new safety standards.  That would leave only Commissioner Thomas Moore to head what is supposed to be a three-commissioner agency.  The Bush administration has yet to define a viable candidate for the chairman seat, left vacant when Hal Stratton quit abruptly in June 2006.   

The CPSC needs strong leadership to help reduce the infiltration of hazardous products into the marketplace as well as our homes.  With all the concern about product safety today we hope the CPSC gains the resources and authority it needs to keep unsafe products off the market in the first place rather than relying on an ineffective recall process once they are already there.   -- Don Mays

(Don Mays' remarks from the news conference follow.)    

The Year of the Recall, Comments of Don Mays

This is the year of the recall.   The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a record number of recalls this year – 472.  But it’s not just the number of recalls that’s alarming, it’s the quantity of products being recalled.  More than 20 million toys have been recalled due to toxic lead paint that can lead to brain damage, or because they have small magnets that, if ingested, can cause severe internal injuries.  One million cribs whose side rails can separate and strangle infants.  175 million pieces of children’s jewelry made with lethal levels of lead.  30 million pounds of ground beef contaminated with deadly e-coli bacteria.  And pet food adulterated with fertilizer, toothpaste containing antifreeze, shrimp contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals.   The list goes on.  Where does it stop?

Consumer Reports just released a report on lead in the marketplace as a result of a four-month investigation.  We found lead in toys, art supplies, vinyl backpacks, ceramic dishware, and children’s jewelry. None of these products found to contain lead appear on any federal recall list.

Recalls are not the answer to the product safety crisis in this country.  Recalls are a highly ineffective method for separating consumers from harm’s way.  Last month’s highly publicized recall of one million Simplicity cribs had a consumer response rate of a mere 4.5 percent.  That leaves more than 950,000 hazardous cribs still in the homes of unsuspecting parents.  We cannot continue to rely on recalls to make the world a safer place.  We need proactive measures to prevent unsafe products from reaching the market in the first place, rather than relying on an ineffective recall system to pull dangerous products back once they’re already in our homes … in our refrigerators … in our children’s toy boxes.

A recent consumer poll by the Consumer Reports National Research Center revealed that our product safety problems could have economic implications:  36 percent of consumers say they will be buying fewer toys this holiday season, and 30 percent say they will not be buying Chinese-made toys at all.  84 percent blame our product safety problems on the manufacturers, but 62 percent hold the U.S. government or regulators accountable.   

We can no longer allow industry to police itself when it comes to safety.  We can no longer sit back as our government’s watchdog agencies allow dangerous products to slip through the gaping holes in their safety nets. 

We support strong legislation that would give our government agencies the resources and authority they need to protect consumers from this onslaught of hazardous products.  Consumer safety must be a non-partisan issue. The CPSC and FDA need strong leadership and the will to develop proactive measures to prevent unsafe products from reaching our homes.  Consumers Union urges Congress to make 2007 the year of safety reform, to fix our broken food and product safety agencies, and to restore consumer confidence in the marketplace.   

-- Don Mays is Senior Director, Product Safety Planning at Consumers Union