Ex-Consumer Product Chief Says "Awareness" is Driving Recalls

Posted on Dec 19, 2007

An expert in product safety and liability says “plain old” consumer awareness may be driving the latest surge in product recalls.

Michael Brown, former executive director of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), said heightened consumer concerns about product safety are due to increased consumer awareness, rather than a greater number of unsafe products, according to insurancenewsnet.com.

Ex-”Consumer Product” Chief Says Products Today are Safer

“We generally have safer consumer products now than we did 20 years ago," said Brown, now an executive with Brown & Gidding, PC. "Thanks to the Internet and other forms of communications, we have greater awareness among consumers with safety violations."

But Brown is wary of product and manufacturing globalization. He said outsourcing limits government’s and manufacturers’ control over quality control. "The CPSC is woefully depleted, and needs additional staff and training to address these concerns," said Brown. "At the same time, many of the large multinational companies involved in high-profile product recalls had safety standards and policies in place, but assumed their suppliers and contract manufacturers halfway around the globe had the same understanding to adhere to those standards."

Insurancenewsnet.com reported Thomson, West, a legal information services provider, found product liability lawsuits filed in federal courts have doubled in the last five years. A record was reached in 2006 with 28,274 cases filed in federal courts. Pharmaceutical companies accounted for half (47%) of those suits since 2002, followed by industrial manufacturing (14.5%), health care (5%), chemicals (5%), construction (4%) and retail (4%).

In a survey of 1,000 Americans, Thomson West found: - 61 percent of Americans are worried about product safety - 55 percent of Americans are more worried today than they were a year ago - 73 percent of Americans have owned a recalled product: automobiles (42%), food (27%), toys (15%), home appliances (9%), infant products (9%) and medicine (7%). - What consumer did with the recalled product they owned: returned it (65%), discarded it (35%), kept it but stopped using it (5%) and continued using it (8%).