Conversations with Consumers

As you turn your calendars, there are a few things you should be keeping in mind. The Commission’s stay on the enforcement of the Third-Party Testing and Certification Rule is gone as of January 1st. So you should make doubly sure that your manufacturing program is in compliance if you make a children’s product that is subject to a testing rule.

And, if you’re a small-batch manufacturer, you should hurry up and sign up on the Commission’s Small Batch Manufacturers’ Registry here to give yourself peace of mind that you are exempt from certain testing requirements until the Commission takes further action.

Finally, and most importantly, in all of the regulations that the Commission has put out over the past two years, we have not given any serious consideration to the cost imposed on the economy. Congress, after hearing some loud complaints, decided to fix that with H.R. 2715, the law passed last summer that requires the Commission to consider ways to reduce the burden of third-party testing, among other things. The Commission published a series of questions on the issue in October, and we asked you for your ideas on the ways the Commission can reduce costs. We need your ideas by January 23rd. So submit your comments here!

I will be pushing internally to make sure that the staff and the Commission give serious, thoughtful consideration to the ways we can reduce costs, and your ideas in particular. But we can only be successful in reducing costs if we get serious—and perhaps out-of-the-box—ideas from you on how we can best achieve those reductions. So, please, help us ensure product safety in the most rational, cost-effective manner possible; send us your comments!