Manufacturers of Products for Children Have Special Obligations to Consumers and Society (Case Study Sample)

Case Study
Name
Institution
Case Study
Introduction
Manufacturers as well as the importers of products used by children in several countries are required to abide by certain testing and certification protocol. In the United States for instance, the manufacturers of such products have been following particular laid down testing and certification protocol since the 8th of February in the year 2013. These protocols were established by the U.S Consumer Product Commission (CPSC). These protocols are generally aimed at ensuring that the products used by children below the age of 12 years are safe. All manufacturers and importers of such products are therefore required to make efforts to understand these protocols. These protocols were developed at a time when the safety of children’s products was receiving increased scrutiny by the federal government (From, 2013). This paper seeks to argue that all manufacturers of products for children have special obligations to consumers and society. The paper will specify these responsibilities.
Main Body
In the United States, the Consumer Product Safety Act was amended by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. This was to the effect that all children’s products be taken through a thorough scrutiny through third party testing. Moreover, the law requires that all manufacturers, importers and labelers of the products for children abide by the rules laid down by CPSC. As such, third party testing serves as a fundamental way that these companies can use to certify that their products meet all the laid down requirements (From, 2013).
Third party testing and certification involves three practices. These are the initial testing, material change testing and periodic testing. These are the responsibilities of the manufacturers of these products. Initial testing is a practice whereby the manufacturer is required to submit adequate number of samples to an accredited CPSC third party laboratory. This is made to ensure that the products to be made are in compliance with all safety rules hence safe for use by children below the age of 12 years (From, 2012). Once this is done, the manufacturer is required to issue a Children’s Product Certificate to the retailers of their products as well as to their distributors. The manufacturer is also required to issue the certificate to the government upon a request to do so. This certificate is fundamentally based on the third party laboratory test results. The second practice considered a key responsibility of the manufacturer is material change testing. This basically involves a retesting of a product or its component which is subjected to any form of change after its initial testing has been done. Such a product is supposed to be retested by an accredited third party laboratory once more. Once the retesting is carried out, a new certificate is supposed to be issued (From, 2013).
The third practice also considered to be a key responsibility of the manufacturer is periodic testing. This involves the documentation of a periodic testing plan to any continuing production of a children’s product. This happens when the manufacturer goes on with the production of a children’s product after the initial testing and certification. Periodic testing is a requirement which every manufacturer must abide to whether material change is done to the product after the initial testing and certification or not. Periodic testing ensures that the manufacturer continuous to abide by the CPSC rules after the issuance of the initial certificate has been done (From, 2012). CPSC rules require that periodic testing be carried out at least once per year. The rules do not however specify the interval between these tests. As such, the manufacturer is free to choose when to do so. The time interval may be varied based on factors such as the nature of the product and the degree of test results variability. Other factors which ...