Sedgwick
Prioritizing product safety during the holidays
The holiday season is a time of joy, family gatherings, and festive traditions, but it can also bring unique safety risks, especially for children. Each year around the holidays, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) releases its annual Toy-Related Deaths and Injuries report and highlights essential tips to help keep children safe when playing with new toys and taking part in other holiday activities.
CPSC’s latest Toy-Related Deaths and Injuries report found that an estimated 154,700 children aged 12 years or younger were treated in emergency rooms (ERs) for toy-related injuries, and 10 children died in toy-related incidents during 2023. The number of ER-treated injuries for children 12 years or younger that are related to toys has decreased nearly 8% from 167,800 in 2016 to 154,700 in 2023. Non-motorized scooters topped the naughty toy list, accounting for the largest share of injuries in 2023, with 53,000 reported across all age groups.
CPSC urges consumers to keep their holidays safe
The CPSC is using the holidays to encourage consumers to practice safe habits when buying toys for children. Their tips include urging consumers to check labels for age guidance and safety information, and to keep small toys or packaging parts out of reach of younger children who may try to ingest them. Labeling and packaging are both strictly regulated for products marketed to children. However, when the CPSC directs consumers to pay closer attention to this information, as it does with its holiday messages, it can create more risk for manufacturers and sellers.
Over the past several years, the CPSC has made a more concerted and aggressive effort to communicate product safety best practices to the public. This has ranged from unilateral press releases and statements to the media, to direct notices to consumers. As a result, consumers are viewing the products they use with closer scrutiny—and not just during the holidays. According to Sedgwick brand protection’s Pulse Report, 61.9% of respondents claim to ‘strictly adhere’ to all safety warnings and instructions for the products they use.
With consumers and regulators keeping a closer eye on products marketed to children, it is critical that manufacturers comply with all applicable regulations and have a recall plan in place. In addition, manufacturers should regularly test these plans through mock recalls to identify any shortcomings and take steps at regular intervals to update their plans to incorporate new regulatory and product safety developments.
Online marketplaces becoming complicated
As consumers increasingly turn to online retailers to purchase products, manufacturers are finding themselves with additional responsibilities and liabilities. The CPSC now views manufacturers as responsible for monitoring secondary markets and ensuring that consumers are aware that products appearing on those markets may be subject to a recall.
Additionally, the companies that operate these secondary marketplaces may also find themselves responsible for policing their platforms and removing recalled products. In July 2024, the CPSC unanimously voted to designate a leading online marketplace as a distributor of third-party products under the Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA). That means the company has a legal responsibility for recalling unsafe products and issuing notifications to the public, even for items sold by third-party sellers on the company’s website.
The CPSC clearly intends to broaden its protection of consumers by forcing retailers and other service providers to share responsibility with manufacturers in removing faulty or dangerous products out of the market and away from consumers.
Safety as a holiday tradition
Just as the CPSC is encouraging consumers to pay extra attention to the products they purchase during the holidays, toy manufacturers and sellers should take the opportunity to put their own operations under a magnifying glass. While the holidays are a time for cheer, they are also a time for reflection and setting goals for the new year. It’s important to add safety as a core holiday tradition.
Trusted by the world’s leading brands, Sedgwick brand protection has managed more than 7,000 of the most time-critical and sensitive product recalls in 100+ countries and 50+ languages, over 30 years. To find out more about our product recall and remediation solutions, visit our website here.
The post Prioritizing product safety during the holidays appeared first on Sedgwick.