I was just reading about this online…never heard about it until today.

On February 10th, 2009 The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act will go into effect which will put strict safety measures on product made for children and requires that toys and product (even books!) made for children under 12 be tested for safety (specifically lead) content by independent labs and labeled with their material contents.

Okay, this sounds great on the surface.  It means those horrid toys made in China and other developing nations for our US headquartered, outsourcing, mega-toy companies will now finally be tested for stuff harmful to children.  That is great!  Awesome & wonderful! BUT what this law failed to do is protect all those US, Europe & Canada based toy makers that already were making a quality product.

Any product made for use for a child under the age of 12 will have to be tested.  That means the industrious homemaker in Iowa that makes cloth diapers for sale via the internet will now have to have each of her products tested at a cost of $4000/item.  And the garage carpenter that makes wooden trains in Maine also will have to have each of his products tested.

This law effectively will put out of business hundreds of cottage industry toy and clothing makers.  All because some corporate guys got greedy and had their silly toys made for dirt cheap in some country without a conscience.

Dave & I have just started creating our little stash of US, Europe & Canada made quality toys for our future tots and we’re no where ready for these companies to go out of business.  It looks like the fix to this dilemma is for the law to be amended to exclude US, Europe & Canadian companies which already adhere to pretty strict safety regulations.

So today I’m going to find some more facts about this issue and write emails to our local Congressman & Senators.  I’m so bummed.  We literally just found out about all these little toy makers located here in New England and elsewhere that we were hoping to one day soon buy from, but now who knows if they will still exist.

http://www.handmadetoyalliance.org/

http://nationalbankruptcyday.com/