Dangerous Chinese Toys: Exactly who is to blame?

Hello - it is always fun to read posts here.

Just one thing - you wrote "While 80% of this market is supplied by Chinese factories, only 60% of recalls involve Chinese goods."

My understanding is that "60% of recall" is CPSC figure, and the number includes most of consumer goods (not only toys) and according to CPSC, 24 toy products recalled this year have all been Chinese.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288372,00.html

Chinese manufacturers and more specifically, greedy businessmen with no sense of ethics, are to blame. I believe it to be a cultural issue and I see a direct relation between the corner cutting in the Chinese business world and the rampant cheating that takes place in their schools.

THM:

Now might be a good time for me to mention to mention that only 15% of Mattel's recall (just under 20 million toys) was actually the fault of manufacturers (lead pain). The other 85% was due to a design fault with the product itself. In short, the product would have been faulty and would have been recalled even had it been produced else where.

That may very well be, but then again that is really a moot point since there would have been a recall anyway due to the lead paint. As recent weeks have shown, this is hardly an isolated incident.

Actually, no. There were two separate recalls from the same manufacturer. A 1.5 million unit recall that was China's fault and an 18+million recall that was Mattel's fault. Please compare the two.

"this is hardly an isolated incident"

Again, I'd have to disagree. China provides 80% of the toys purchased in America. If 1% of these toys were dangerous you'd basically have a recall rate of something like 1 per day every day. As it is there have been maybe 2 dozen recalls, including recalls like the Mattel recall where the recall was the result of a foreign design flaw, not Chinese cheapskatery.

Uh huh. And whose fault was it in the tainted dog food case that killed thousands of dogs in America? Or the tainted Toothpaste? Or the toxic clothing in New Zeland? When I say "not an isolated incicent", I'm not just referring to toys. I'm talking about Chinese-manufactured goods in general. Do you see what I'm getting at here? A design flaw pales in comparrison to something involving toxic contamination. Do you think a Chinese toy manufacturer would recall toys in China for a design flaw? Not likely.

There was another account of lead contaminated products reported here in my state this week. The Chinese manufacturer sent a sample of its product here to be tested and everything was fine with the sample they sent. However, when the company received their entire order it was different from the sample they received because every single piece was contaminated with lead. So, I believe it is very much a matter of cutting corners to save costs.

Surprise, Surprise. I woke up this morning and what did I hear when I turned on the news? Another toy recall from China due to lead contamination in toys and crayons. This recall affected Toys R US. It's becoming a familiar song, isn't it?

THM:

I'd ask you kindly to take a look at the per unit price that your average Chinese factory is paid for it's goods. All joking aside, most factory owners can't afford to produce high quality goods at those rates. Western companies are paying Chinese factories peanuts in the knowledge that they WILL cut corners in order to keep prices down.

Western companies could easily afford to station quality control staff in Chinese factories to watch them 24/7, but they don't. They could also afford to station officers in factories to ensure that they complied with labor law and human rights legislation, but they don't. The could also stick with factories for several years and put in the time and put in the investment of time and effort required to kept them up to code, but the don't. Instead they put factories on 6 month contracts and if there is an infraction, or if the factories productivity slips, or its per unit price rises; due to them NOT cutting corners they abandon them and move on to the next factory. Leaving the previous factory in need of money and a new partner company, and thus MORE likely to cut corners in order to get its efficiency and per unit price down so that it can attract more business.

In short, to use the old Western adj, Western companies are paying peanut and are getting monkeys.

Surprise, Surprise. I woke up this morning and what did I read when I opened up my email. Toys are Us imported dirt cheap products and didn't do a quality check on them before they hit the shelves, now they have been found selling potentially dangerous products to US citizens, all because they wanted to save a few cent per unit.

As before, you get what you pay for. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

Great. I look forward to reading those links you're going to provide - especially the ones that contain the statistics you've quoted. As someone with experience working for a multi-national corporation and a international business major to boot, I can tell you with certainty that large corporations like Mattel do not move production to countries like China with the intent of cutting corners to save costs -- they do it to cut labor costs - not quality. In fact, Mattel goes to great links to ensure quality; it just so happens that it has backfired and Mattel is only the latest in a string of victims.

I know you claim to be an expert in many fields without naming one, but I suggest you brush up on your economics and international business because your statements don't make much sense.

Actually, I claim to be an analyst. This means that I analyze situations and events, pure and simple. Although I have a wide breadth of knowledge I don't have to be an expert, if I don't know a topic in sufficient depth then I ASK SOMEONE.

As for statistics and so on, simply pick up your telephone and call the CPSC and CWL. They will tell you what you need to know. No secret organization, no meetings in darkened rooms, and certainly nothing clandestine.

"In fact, Mattel goes to great links to ensure quality"

So, why are they recalling over 18 Million toys that have been on the market since 2003 because of a fault with their original product. A fault that would have occurred regardless of where they were manufactured, or by whom.

"they do it to cut labor costs - not quality"

Of course, you do realize that one of the things that makes Chinese labor so cheap is the abuse of labor. Please check out these site for a summary of what I'm saying.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/chinese/simp/hi/newsid_6950000/newsid_6956600/6956634 .stm http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aXd6pwh2TqSE&refer =japan

Here is also a full report from CLW explaining the links between low prices, low quality and the exploitation of labor.

http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/EightToy%20820071%20Final%20edit1.pdf

I also suggest that you ask yourself how Chinese factories can afford to charge so little per unit. It's not just because of currency differences. It's because many Western companies are employing factories that abuse labor and cut corners. Go on, do the math. You'll soon see that were these factories to improve labor standards and stop corner cutting then they couldn't possibly afford to manufacture so cheaply.

I say again, you get what you pay for.

While browsing the CPSC website I just happened across this. Its about a US company whom knowingly imported potentially dangerous toys from China which presented chocking hazards and failed labeling laws.

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml02/02171.html http://www.tdctrade.com/alert/us0212o.htm

It's not just the toys from China, it's the pet food, other food products like farm raised fish raised in sewage. How long are we going to allow most of our own companies that were started in our own country treat us like this. Bring pride back to your country and employ your own people. Outsourcing to another country to get a cheaper price lowers you quallity it is true you get what you pay for.

When you look at the amount of products that China provides, the amount that are actually dangerous is remarkably low (80% of America's toy market is supplied by China, which is a LOT of toys, but there are expected to be fewer than 50). I do, however, agree with you that consumers are reaping the hazards of low prices. Even with China's low labor costs (often achieved at the expense of the laborers living and working conditions) and the exchange rates, and economies of scale, it's asking an awful lot to expect prices this low without corners being cut more than is favorable.

I would, however, like to point out that every couple of days there are cases where local seafood is taken off of the shelves because of contamination, where local produce is found to harbor ecoli, salmonella and so on, and where locally made products are found to be substandard, in the US. It's only because China provides to the mass market that things seem particularly bad.

For example, do you remember the case of the California spinach that was contaminated with e coli in 2006 3 or 4 people died and dozens were made ill.

By coincidence, a British man has just pleaded guilty to supplying contaminated meat to Welsh school children. He ordered workers in his meat plant to use the same fouled packing machine for cooked and raw meat, leading to cross contamination, and told them to cover up that they were doing this when state health inspectors came to his plant.

His actions resulted in significant e coli outbreak that affected children in 44 schools late in 2005. One student died as a result, many more were sickened.

Under Britain's weak laws he received only a year in jail. In China, the fact that he was a corrupt businessman who effectively killed a small child mean that he might have been sentenced to death.

I hear ya on this. First the pet food then the toys — there has been a third recall already! My four-year-old Lily loves Sesame Street and it was heartbreaking to toss them out. You'll be interested to know a few moms are really speaking out and suing Mattel in a class action suit. I found a few interesting links on this case:

<a href="http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read/96046">Political Gateway's article</a>

<a href="http://www.class-action-finder.com/consumer-products/mattel/">A class action lawsuit directory with a good history of this case</a>

<a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003845896_le adsuit21.html">Seattle Times' story on one of the mothers who are going to sue Mattel</a>

You tossed your kid's toys? I don't think that I could ever do that to my children. A toy would have to be seriously dangerous for me to do that unless I could buy them an identical safe toy. It'd be too heart breaking.

Personally, I'd just have sat them down and told them about not sucking on them or something, then let them play with it in a more supervised way (for example, not taking a stuffed animal to bed).

Suing Mattel/Target/etc is definitely the way to go.

If a toy is dangerous then they shouldn't have let it on the shelves, if a factory is crooked then they shouldn't have been using it, and if a company have known about a danger since 200X then they should have acted on it then, not years later.

If Western companies stop using crooked factories, and if they check their goods more carefully, Chinese companies will stop making bad products simply because they will find it impossible to find people willing to buy from them and they will be forced to clean up their act or get out of the market.

What is needed is for Western companies to stick with good manufacturers and to nurture best practice amongst them, rather than simply going for the ones that provide the cheapest per unit price. I believe that making them responsible for their factories is the best way to go about this. Moms hold the purse strings of the American family and if moms demand more moms will get more.

I completely agree with you on this, the faulty imports are the problem of American companies. Those companies are the ones that deserve the blame for not properly regulating their own goods. We should not blame China for failing to check every single export.

We have to crave for safer life, but it still costs too expensive.

I can't help but think that the West is so risk adverse in many areas that they strip all of the fun out of life and create a society where children are so used to being kept safe that they don't think for themselves. Meaning that when they are presented with actual risk they don't recognize it.