More Than 100 Small Businesses Send Letters to House Energy & Commerce Committee on Problems Caused By CPSIA
WASHINGTON-(Business Wire)-September 10, 2009 - More than 100 small businesses from across the United States sent letters to the leadership of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce this week urging the Committee to hear from businesses affected by the unintended consequences of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), the sweeping new children’s product safety law that went into effect over one year ago.
The letter-writing campaign, organized by the Alliance for Children's Product Safety, was in response to the decision by the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection not to allow testimony from the business community on problems in the implementation of the new law. The Committee will only hear from CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum at the first ever oversight hearing on CPSIA.
Alliance Chairman Rick Woldenberg issued the following statement:
"No law is perfect, and after more than a year everyone but the Committee's leadership has acknowledged real problems with the CPSIA that need to be fixed. The letters sent to the Committee vividly illustrate the problems experienced by small businesses across the country resulting from the unintended consequences of CPSIA. Ignoring these letters won't make problems caused by CPSIA go away.
"The main problem, as Chairman Tenenbaum has acknowledged since becoming CPSC chair in June, is that CPSIA forbids CPSC – the government's own product safety watchdog – from using common sense and considering safety risk when implementing the law. As a result, products ranging from library books, pens and socks to bicycles and ATVs have been pulled off the shelves, not because they cause any danger to kids, but because of the way Congress wrote the law.
"Even rocks and fossils must be tested for lead if they might be handled in class by a child 12 or younger. Schools will teach Earth Science class with posters of rocks because it's legally safer to do so thanks to the CPSIA.
"Whether or not the Subcommittee wants to hear about it, the evidence to date demonstrates that the CPSIA has created chaos and losses for businesses, limiting choices for consumers and creating bureaucratic nightmare for companies trying to comply with the law - all without improving product safety. It's time for Congress to fix this law."
Copies of the letters can be found at www.AmendtheCPSIA.com. For more information, contact George Felcyn at (202) 828-1715 or george.felcyn@bgllp.com.
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