http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070921/ap_on_bi_ge/china_tainted_products;_ylt=AmhwSI1B7lqr7Of8ns0NP.Ss0NUE Mattel apologizes to China over recalls By ALEXA OLESEN, Associated Press Writer 17 minutes ago BEIJING - U.S.-based toy giant Mattel Inc. issued an extraordinary apology to China on Friday over the recall of Chinese-made toys, taking the blame for design flaws and saying it had recalled more lead-tainted toys than justified. ADVERTISEMENT The gesture by Thomas A. Debrowski, Mattel's executive vice president for worldwide operations, came in a meeting with Chinese product safety chief Li Changjiang, at which Li upbraided the company for maintaining weak safety controls. "Our reputation has been damaged lately by these recalls," Debrowski told Li in a meeting at Li's office at which reporters were allowed to be present. "And Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys," Debrowski said. The carefully worded apology, delivered with company lawyers present, underscores China's central role in Mattel's business. The world's largest toy maker has been in China for 25 years and about 65 percent of its products are made in China. The fence-mending call came ahead of an expected visit to China by Mattel's chairman and chief executive, Robert A. Eckert. Following the massive recall, Eckert told U.S. lawmakers he wanted to see Mattel's mainland inspections first hand. Mattel ordered three high-profile recalls this summer involving more than 21 million Chinese-made toys, including Barbie doll accessories and toy cars because of concerns about lead paint or tiny magnets that could be swallowed. The recalls have prompted complaints from China that manufacturers were being blamed for design faults introduced by Mattel. On Friday, Debrowski acknowledged that "vast majority of those products that were recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel's design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China's manufacturers." Lead-tainted toys accounted for only a small percentage of all toys recalled, he said, adding that: "We understand and appreciate deeply the issues that this has caused for the reputation of Chinese manufacturers." The slew of Chinese-made toys since June by Mattel and other smaller toy makers has resulted in many parents scouring for U.S.-made label stamped on playthings at toy stores. That is no easy feat when more than 80 percent of toys sold in the U.S. are made in China. Mattel's mea culpa could help reshape the debate surrounding Chinese-made toys. In fact, new research from two business professors shows that recalls due to problems with the U.S. maker's design accounted for the vast majority — about 76 percent — of the 550 U.S.toy recalls since 1988. The report, released earlier this month from Paul R. Beamish, an international business professor at Canada's University of Western Ontario, and Hari Bapuji, business professor at University of Manitoba's I.H. Asper School of Business in Winnipeg, Canada, found that recalls blamed on design problems and manufacturing defects, such as lead paint or poor craftmanship, both rose in the past two years as U.S. makers have shifted more of their production to China. But they noted that, "if shifting manufacturing to China resulted in poorer quality goods, then the number of toys recalled due to manufacturing should be greater than the number recalled due to design," the report said. But that is not the case. "Nobody gets a free ride on this," said Beamish, arguing that toy makers' obsession to quickly get new products to market before they are widely copied has resulted in a lot of cost-cutting and inadequate testing. In a statement issued by the company Friday, Mattel said its lead-related recalls were "overly inclusive, including toys that may not have had lead in paint in excess of the U.S. standards. "The follow-up inspections also confirmed that part of the recalled toys complied with the U.S. standards," the statement said, without giving specific figures. The co-owner of the company that supplied the lead-tainted toys to Mattel, Lee Der Industrial Co. Ltd., committed suicide in August shortly after the recall was announced. Li reminded Debrowski that "a large part of your annual profit ... comes from your factories in China. "This shows that our cooperation is in the interests of Mattel, and both parties should value our cooperation. I really hope that Mattel can learn lessons and gain experience from these incidents," Li said, adding that Mattel should "improve their control measures." Li, the head of China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, also expressed his appreciation for Debrowski's "objective and responsible attitude toward the recent toy recall." Chinese food, drugs and other products ranging from toothpaste to seafood are under intense scrutiny because they have been found to contain potentially deadly substances. But China has bristled at what it claims is a campaign to discredit its reputation as an exporter. It accuses foreign media and others of playing up its product safety issues as a form of protectionism. Beijing insists that the vast majority of its exports are safe but has stepped up inspections of food, drugs and other products in response to the concerns. Li told reporters after meeting with Debrowski that the government had taken swift action against Lee Der, shutting down its operations and revoking its business license. Four people from the company also face criminal charges, he said, without giving details. Since this summer's recalls Mattel has announced plans to upgrade its safety system by certifying suppliers and increasing the frequency of random, unannounced inspections. It has fired several manufacturers. Tests had found that lead levels in paint in recalled toys were as high as 110,000 parts per million, or nearly 200 times higher than the accepted safety ceiling of 600 parts per million. Mattel's shares fell from the mid-$23 level following the first recall in early August, reaching as low as $20.97 on Sept. 10. They have since rebounded, and rose 55 cents, or 2.33 percent to $24.11 in morning trading Friday.. China has become a center for the world's toy-making industry, exporting $7.5 billion worth of toys last year.
That's crazy. What does Mattel apologize for? The company did not manufacture the toys. It is actually the victim, right?
Did you read the article? Debrowski acknowledged that "vast majority of those products that were recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel's design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China's manufacturers." The damage has been done but this is a pretty big development. Mattel is basically taking full responsibility and liability for this now.
what's new. these days, any problem, no problem. just blame it on china. ****, should ban some of these ****ers in the future. that'll teach them not to mess with china
Everything's China fault, company want low labor, they want their product produce cheap, and they design them stupidly, it's China's fault. Good thing is that China doesn't give it **** about foreigner.
[rquoter] [Time Magazine] Why Mattel Apologized to China by Jyoti Thottam So are toys from China safe or not? If you think you're confused, it looks as if even Mattel, the largest toymaker in the United States, doesn't know. On Friday, Mattel's executive vice president for worldwide operations, Thomas Debrowski, met with the Chinese product safety chief Li Changjiang, to apologize for the company's own weak safety controls. "Our reputation has been damaged lately by these recalls," Mr. Debrowski told Li. "And Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys." It's a stunning reversal. In August, after the company announced its recalls of several toys because they were made using lead paint, reporters grilled Mattel CEO Bob Eckert about how lead paint, which is banned for use on children's toys in the U.S., ended up on its "Sarge" toy cars. Surprisingly, he had answers. In a conference call on Aug. 14, he blamed it on a subcontractor who violated Mattel's policies and "utilized paint from a non-authorized third-party supplier." That moment of candor and Eckert's heartfelt apology to parents in a video the company released on Mattel's website were high points in Mattel's otherwise punch-drunk performance in handling these recalls. By pointing out specifically where things broke down and then spelling out what he would do to fix it — testing every batch of toys before it leaves China, rather than relying on testing raw materials — the CEO reassured American consumers that he understood the problem and would back up his apology with action. Eckert is now paying the price for his candor. Mattel needs China just as much as China needs Mattel, and it cannot afford to jeopardize its relationship with the country that produces 65% of its toys. In a global public relations campaign, Chinese officials have emphasized that the country does have strong safety standards, and that problems at a few companies shouldn't be used to paint the whole country's products as unsafe. Even well-regarded Chinese companies with no link to toys or any hint of safety problems, such as brewer Tsingtao and appliance maker Haier, could suffer in the backlash against the made in China label. So Mattel found a face-saving way of taking back the blame that it had previously placed so squarely on its Chinese partners, the source of all the toys it recalled this year. The "vast majority of those products that were recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel's design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China's manufacturers," Debrowski said. "We understand and appreciate deeply the issues that this has caused for the reputation of Chinese manufacturers.? Technically, Mattel's analysis is correct. Of the 19.6 million toys that it has recalled this year globally, 2.2 million were due to lead paint; the remaining 17.4 million (11.7 million in the U.S.) were toys recalled not because of lead paint but because they were made with super-strong magnets. If they come loose and are swallowed in multiples, those magnets can come together with force enough to tear through the intestines of a young child. (Mattel's announcement noted three such serious injuries that required surgery.) The magnet recall was unusually large because it includes toys sold as far back as 2002, before Mattel changed its design to encase the magnets in plastic to make them more secure. Perhaps it was convenient for Mattel to issue the magnet recall at the same time as its much smaller lead-paint recalls. Or perhaps the company was using an abundance of caution in recalling any toy that might pose a potential hazard. Either way, lead paint in toys from China is not an issue Mattel can correct overnight. That isn't a happy situation for anyone, from families in the U.S. to workers in Chinese factories who face a daily risk of lead poisoning. It will take much more than yet another apology from Mattel to fix that. [/rquoter] source
I am sure if everyone in the US stop buying things from China they would not have any problems in the future, ya right. Why do these stupid people want to buy cheap chinese products?
mattel is heavily dependant on Chinese manufactuers - so of course they have to cow-tow to them. I do not see though how having lead in the paint is a design flaw.... In any case, my advice is don't buyt mattel toys.
the hell man, vast majority of the recalls have nothing to do with painting. most of them are design problems. only a small portion have painting problems. they just put them together and called it a paint problem to blame it on china.
All of the lead paint problems, which was what had people upset, were problems internal to China. People weren't pissed off about the magnet design issues.
are you too low-class to debate with any amount of class? I'd say 10% is pretty high....justifies a massive recall and labeling Chinese manufacturing unsafe.
Who's trying to debate with you whether it's massive or not? Go ahead to say 5% or even 1% is too high if you want. Who cares what you think is massive anyway? You are dumb because you asked a question when the answer can be found in just a few posts above. So either you have asked a dumb question or you had to ask that question because you are too dumb to do simple math.
I'd not even talk about class if I were you. NewYorker's class This is the low-life comment you made in the other thread which caused it to be locked.
10%? i wonder how do you calculate these things. the article says, china produces over 7.5 BILLION toys every year. 2.2 million / 7.5 BILLION = ? that's like 0.0003 after rounding up. i say 0.03% is pretty damn good qualify control. probably better than a lot of the things you guys make domestically.
10% of Mattel's toys made in China had lead paint. Not good quality control at all. It should be zero. 2.2 million / 19.6 million > 10%.
gees, someone needs to re-take analytical classes. besides, how do you explain only mattel's toys are like that then? other toy companies don't have the same problem. just shows mattel doesn't really know what they are doing, more than anything else.
