The spin is out there about how, over the past four months, the Chinese government has been promoting their products and introducing measures to improve product safety.

The relevant quote though comes from Robert Kapp, a business consultant who headed the U.S. China Business Council from 1994 to 2004.

“The events of the past six or so months do represent a watershed,” said “But watersheds are not always forever.”

“The problem may be very systematic by now, and I don’t know if the Chinese will overcome it,” he added.

The process our retailers have gone through to move to continuously lower costs of production has gotten to the point where to compete, companies violate product safety, environmental safety, and worker safety in order to get a cost edge. These companies displace companies that have the added safety measures but the costs associated with them.

Free trade is not fair trade. Product costs that are only defined as the purchase cost, without the requirement for the safety measures, leads to this outcome. It is the system. Overlay it with minimal costs to producers for getting caught and what even the Chinese government acknowledges is wide spread corruption in their bureaucracy and the outcome is inevitable.

The solution requires  that imported products comply with the same safety, environmental, and worker standards.

Cartoonist Etta Hulme of the Fort Worth Star: Telegram produced this political cartoon. Nice portrayal of the situation except….We don’t know which of our toys and which of our medicine came from China. Santa and his elves at least know. Do you know who made your medicine?

Chinese-made flip-flops found to contain toxic chemicals.

Starting this summer, people who purchased flip-flps from Wal-mart shortly discovered that they caused severe blisters where their feet came in contact with the plastic. We warn you, these pictures are not for the squemish.

We’re sure Wal-mart did not order toxic flip-flops but Wal-mart does cut suppliers off for even fractions of a penny. It is proven that China has ineffective and corrupt regulatory practices. Thus, a company that can save a fraction of a penny wins Wal-mart’s business. To save that penny and win that business, the manufacturer will do what ever they can legally, or in China illegally, do. If the manufacturer’s production process was legal China’s standards are too broad. Still, it is the system, initiated by Wal-mart, that leads to bad products driving out good. The cycle has to stop.

In June, 2007 a lady in Florida bought a pair of flip-flops from a Wal-mart. Shortly after wearing them she got the severe rashes above. She reported this to Wal-mart. Here’s the rest of her story.

When she reported this to Wal-mart their response was for her to contact the manufacturer in China. Right. How do you even call to China?

Would this have happened if the flip-flops were made in the USA or Europe? Why now and not earlier? Because its taken this time for Wal-mart’s purchasing process to drive out the good companies making good products. This is a ‘dumbing down’ of our products to the point they may not be safe. Wal-mart said they pulled the product but a reporter in Tulsa, OK was able to buy a pair because they were still on the shelf (although not in the cash register system but the clerk was able to override the no-price flag and sold the flip-flops).

This won’t stop until we start to know where items were made and for guarantees from the retailers about the product’s safety.

Its to Gap Co. credit that they convened a meeting of their Indian suppliers but it was after a British newspaper reported violations of child labor laws by these suppliers making Gap clothes.

The Observer quoted the children as saying they had been sold to the sweatshop by their families in Indian states such as Bihar and West Bengal and would not be allowed to leave until they had repaid that fee.

Some, working as long as 16 hours a day to hand-sew clothing, said they were not being paid at the unidentified Gap supplier because their employer said they were still trainees.

The clothing retailer said the sweatshop was being run by a subcontractor hired in violation of Gap’s policies, and none of the product made there will be sold in its stores.

”We appreciate that the media identified this subcontractor, and we acted swiftly in this situation,” Gap spokesman Bill Chandler told The Associated Press on Sunday. ”Under no circumstances is it acceptable for children to produce or work on garments.”

The principal supplier may be operating in violation of their agreements with Gap but what is Gap’s process for checking on their suppliers? Do they just not ask and verify? Why did investigative journalists report this? Why wasn’t it Gap or India?

There is a falacy about ‘free trade’. It assumes certain levels of conduct but extra profits go to those who skirt the laws, when they are in place, and thus have an advantage over legitimate companies over time. Over time, the legitimate companies are driven out. What is need is ‘fair trade’ where the rules of conduct are the same. It also requires a new paradigm for consumer protection both from the consumer but also from Federal and international entities. Minimally we must shine a very bright light on bad actors and report these situations. We need more complete disclosure about product sourcing and means of production. We all suffer otherwise.

Much focus in the general press has been about toys and pet food but a more sinister situation is brewing – our medicines. Both real and fake medicine are coming from China and Asian suppliers. As we found with pet food, and to a lesser extent toys, we don’t know who makes our medicines. There are no labels ‘Made in China’ on our pills.

With the healthcare system spinning out of control, people in need of medicine look for alternative, read affordable, sources other than their neighborhood drug store. These can be foreign suppliers or internet providers. Some are legitimate. But some aren’t.

Our laws are good but our regulatory structure was set up for domestic manufacture. The FDA is not staffed for the situation where Chinese pharmaceutical imports have doubled in the past five years.

In the Federal government’s talk about ‘free trade’ the discussion has to advance to ‘fair trade’. What good is it to have something be cheap if it is not what it supposed to be? What have we done to ourselves in our work for ‘cheap products’ get unsafe products?

RC2 recalled 1,500,000 (yes that’s 1.5 million) of their Chinese made toys due to lead in the paint on the toys. To make it up to their customers, they gave away free replacement toys. Nice right? Not. It turns out that the replacements also contained lead paint. Honestly, we couldn’t make this up if we tried. At least, up to this point if we did, folks wouldn’t believe us.

Actually RC2 was trying to do the right thing. They’ve been very straightforward on their web-site. It was their testing that turned up that the Chinese manufacturer had switched the paint formula. China’s alleged quality control system didn’t catch it. This is what we have been saying for some time. It is THE SYSTEM that is broken. China can spin all they want but until there is systemic change, consusmers are at risk.

The list just keeps expanding. When will people realize it is the source and the process at the source?

From today’s AP news wire:

Toys and children’s necklaces made in China were recalled Wednesday, including five more items from the popular Thomas Friends Wooden Railway product line, because they contain dangerous levels of lead.RC2 Corp.’s “Knights of the Sword” series toys and some of its Thomas and Friends items, along with floor puppet theaters and gardening tools and chairs for children, were among the more than 601,000 toys and children’s jewelry announced in the recall by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The recalled toys contain high levels of lead in their surface paint, and the necklaces and jewelry sets contain excessive lead in some of their metal parts.

The government warned parents to make sure children are not playing or using any of the recalled products.

Kind of a little late isn’t it?

Here’s the list of recalled items and contacts:

— About 23,500 more necklaces, bracelets and pendants imported by TOBY N.Y.C. of New York. This expands the company’s recall of jewelry sets announced on Aug. 22. The recalled products were sold at T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, A.J. Wright, Cracker Barrel and Shopko stores nationwide from August 2006 through August 2007. For more information, call the company at 866-235-0588.

— About 850 children’s Spinning Wheel Necklace necklaces, produced by Rhode Island Novelty of Cumberland, R.I. The necklaces were sold nationwide from November 2006 through May 2007. For more information, call the company 800-528-5599 or visit its Web site at http://www.rinovelty.com.

— Happy Giddy Gardening Tools and Children’s Sunny Patch Chairs, imported by Target Corp. of Minneapolis, Minn. The recall involves 350,000 of the toys. The gardening tools and chairs were manufactured by Starite International Ltd. of Taiwan. The toys were sold nationwide from August 2006 through August 2007. For more information, contact Target at 800-440-0680 or visit its Web site at http://www.target.com.

— About 200,000 Thomas and Friends Wood Railway Toys and 800 Britain’s “Knights of the Sword” series toys, distributed by RC2 Corp., of Oak Brook, Ill. The five recalled Thomas and Friends items, sold nationwide from March 2003 through September 2007, include the all-black cargo car, toad vehicle, olive green sodor cargo box and all-green maple tree top and signal base accessories. The “Knights of the Sword” recalled toys products include three items: a mounted silver knight on a red horse with an ax; a mounted silver knight on a red horse with two hands on a raised weapon; and a mounted silver knight on a red horse with a lance. The products were sold at specialty toy stores nationwide from April 2004 through March 2006. For more information, contact RC2 at 866-725-4407 or visit the firm’s Web site at http://recalls.rc2.com.

— About 16,000 children’s toy rakes imported by Jo-Ann Stores Inc., of Hudson, Ohio. The rakes, each about 24 inches long with a yellow duck head attached to the green handle, were sold only at Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores from January 2007 from September 2007. For more information, contact the company at 888-739-4120, option 7, or visit the firm’s Web site at http://www.joann.com/.

— An estimated 10,000 Floor Puppet Theaters produced by Guidecraft Inc., of Englewood, N.J. The recalled puppet theaters, each with a chalkboard surface on the front and colored side panels, were sold nationwide in specialty toy stores, gift shops, catalogs and Web sites from June 2006 through August 2007. For more information, contact the company at 888-824-1308 or visit its Web site at http://www.guidecraft.com.

Consumer Product Safety Commission: http://www.cpsc.gov.

Reports are out today about bracelets a Boston-based charity used contain lead. The reports include information about a 9-month old baby getting lead poisoning after accidentally ingesting one of the bracelets. Lead poisoning can lead to brain damage, particularly in children.

The bracelets came from the Friends of Mel Foundation which got the bracelets from China. From the reports:

The Friends of Mel Foundation said tests conducted on several bracelets last week confirmed they contained high levels of lead. A spokeswoman blamed a supplier based in China that had promised in writing none of the materials it provided contained the toxic element.

“The organization feels like they were lied to and were given bad product,” said spokeswoman Jackie Herskovitz. “It’s such a shame.”

The bracelets have been sold over the past two-years. They could be anywhere as they were sold through their web-site but also by merchants from Massachusetts to Florida.

The California state Department of Public Health thought it was doing a good thing by giving out lunch boxes to school children in order to promote healthy eating. One thing happened though on the way to helping children, the lunch boxes were painted using lead paint. Where did they come from? One guess – China.

These boxes were passed out so they got into the consumer product stream. Testing after the fact, actually done in July and reported on in September, can not be acceptable. But as previously reported here, China won’t allow foreign companies to set up inspections with their manufacturers when it is more cost effective and to avoid problems from happening.

For more on this story. 

The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) issued an alert about more cases of sick dogs that they believe are linked to jerky pet food treats sourcing from China. The AVMA alert indicates that:

multiple brands of jerky treats manufactured in China have been making pets sick. Symptoms of illness have included vomiting, diarrhea, and lethargy. To our knowledge, no deaths have been reported.

The investigation is still pending to find out what is wrong with the treats. New information will be posted to their web-site.