With the massive number of recalled goods manufactured in China this past year, there is certainly cause for concern. From pet food to children's toys, the products found to be contaminated or simply unsafe have hit families where they can truly be hurt.
A statistic that cannot be ignored is the fact that products made in China account for 80% of all toys sold in the United States, and a similar pattern holds true for the rest of the G8 countries - the richest nations in the world. All of these countries maintain high government-enforced safety standards in the manufacture of toys, but China is behind in such regulation and they find themselves short-staffed to enforce the regulations they do have. The fact of the matter is, as long as large corporations such as Mattel look to shave dollars off of their bottom line by having their manufacturing done in the developing world, rather than within the G8 countries where their toys are primarily sold, these sorts of problems will continue to arise. The factories where these goods are being produced use cheap components and even cheaper labour. I know it's a cliché, but you do very often get what you pay for.
There are some people who have spoken up in defense of the practice of farming out manufacturing jobs, as well as other jobs requiring large numbers of workers (such as call centres), to the developing world, saying that it reduces costs to the consumers. Frankly, I believe that it only increases profits to the companies that use these factories. However, when companies cut costs, somebody somewhere has to pay them - and it seems that it usually ends up being the shopper that is buying their toys. We're seeing it now, in the massive recalls that have probably only just begun.
That is not to say that China hasn't felt the sting of this global controversy. The head of the Chinese toy factory at the centre of the lead paint dispute took his own life in one of his warehouses shortly after the world-wide August 2007 recalls that brought so much negative attention to the country's manufacturing industry. Mattel has announced stricter scrutiny of its own products prior to their distribution and some members of the government of the United States have called for legislation to detain Chinese made products at customs for full safety inspections before allowing them to enter their country. With such a negative light shining on their manufacturing industry and the Olympics coming to Beijing, the Chinese government is likely to step up regulation in its manufacturing industry to counteract the bad public relations that they have received thus far. What that will mean to large companies like Mattel is hard to predict at this point, but I think that a higher cost for toys at the cash register is a small price to pay for the safety of our children.
Sarah Corlett runs the successful toy resource The Toy Maker: http://www.the-toy-maker.co.uk
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