Most recalls of toys made in China are due to design errors, not manufacturing problems, Canadian business professor Hari Bapuji said on Sunday.
"We should be asking the toy makers: 'Are you guys learning from the errors that you are making? What are your testing systems? What systems do you have in place to ensure that an error doesn't get repeated in the future?'" he said in an interview with Canadian Television.
Bapuji, a professor at the University of Manitoba, along with University of Western Ontario international business professor Paul W. Beamish jointly drew up a report on toy recalls. The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada will publish the report.
The latest piece of writing closely analyzed reasons why the US Consumer Product Safety Commission from 1988 to August 2007 has recalled Chinese-made toys.
They found that of the 550 toy recalls since 1988, 76.4 percent were problems that could be attributed to design flaws while only about 10 percent were attributable to manufacturing defects.
The report pointed out that this past August Mattel Inc. recalled 20 million toys; 80 percent of them were pulled because they contained small magnets, a design flaw rather than a manufacturing error.
(Xinhua News Agency September 10 2007)
