Toy makers feel brunt of China safety swoop

CHINA has revoked the export licenses of 600 toy makers during a nationwide four-month campaign to ensure product safety and defend the "Made in China" brand around the world.

The food industry was also a key target in the crackdown.

The country's leading quality watchdog has registered all toy makers and inspected more than 3,000 factories that supply toys to overseas markets during the campaign, Pu Changcheng, deputy director of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said yesterday.

Stricter supervision standards have been established for China's toy manufacturers.

The new rules require firms, especially those exporting toys, to run quality inspection checks on all their products, Pu told a news conference in Beijing.

The administration will also check toys made according to designs and quality standards provided by other countries.

Chinese industries have been battered by a raft of reports detailing substandard products ranging from drugs to toys.

More than 19 million China-made toys were recalled in 2007, many by United States-based Mattel, after reports said some items were contaminated with lead paint.

Others had small magnets that children might swallow.

Pu said some of the toy recalls were caused by design flaws of overseas firms. Others were the result of quality standards in other countries.

Pu also said the illegal practice of using non-food materials and recycled food or oil to produce food or oil was essentially eliminated during the campaign.

"Product quality and food safety are global issues," Pu said. "There is no end to the improvement of product quality and food safety so we need to work together to do a better job in the future."

Problems with food safety are particularly worrisome in China's vast countryside, where lax supervision of small factories has contributed to food-poisoning incidents.

Pu said one of this year's objectives would be to increase supervision of small manufacturers.

"We must fight to solve the problem of poor product quality and lack of safety in the shortest possible time," he said.

And food for this year's Beijing Olympics will be highly scrutinized, Pu said. "All the food supplied during the Olympic Games must be produced by accredited companies who have been qualified for market access."

The food will be distributed from specially designated centers, and will undergo repeated inspections from production to consumption, he said.