Product Recalls
An avid reader of Staying Alive asked where our "Danger Spots" had gone. We have linked to the Trading Standards Institute website (here is their Safety Warning Listing) and here is a link to the DTI pages on Product Recalls.
RoSPA's Product Safety Adviser began to list product recalls in 1988 and called for an official national database to be set up1. The need for recall action was recognised by Abbott2 and the Consumers' Association3. New General Product Safety Regulations will soon require manufacturers and distributors of unsafe products to warn the public and take appropriate action to reduce the risk, thus making the voluntary action mandatory.
Simpson4 produced a detailed report on recalls and the DTI funded research into the subject. This was later published in the form of a Consumer Product Recall good practice guide for businesses to take corrective action to safeguard consumers from unsafe products5. A follow up report was also published by the DTI to answer the question why more products that were known to be unsafe had not been recalled by the businesses responsible6. The report recognised that its findings lacked rigour and were open to question, presumably by RoSPA and the TSI who had recorded far more examples of unsafe products that should have been recalled but were not. RoSPA's recall data was also used in research into product recalls, again funded by the DTI7.
RoSPA will continue to take an interest in how unsafe products are dealt with by the manufacturers and the authorities and how consumers are warned about them.
1 "Planning that Recall", Staying Alive, RoSPA, Autumn 1988.
2 "Managing Product Recall", Howard Abbott, Pitman, 1991, ISBN 0 273 03449 9.
3 "Improving Recalls of Unsafe Products", Policy Report, Consumers' Association, London, 1993.
4 "Product Safety Recalls", Ian Simpson, ITSA, 1998.
5 "Consumer Product Recal", a good practice guide, DTI, November, 1999, URN 99/1172.
6 "Unrecalled products, a paper on the estimated safety risks", DTI, London, URN 00/806.
7 "Product recall research", DTI, London, 1999, ref. URN 99/1255.
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