CHINA: The world's largest toy maker, Mattel Inc apologises to China after recent massive recalls of its Chinese-made toys

Mattel Inc, the world's largest toy maker, has come under scrutiny following the recall of about 21 million of the toys in a span of five weeks, many because of excessive levels of lead paint. "Our reputation has been damaged lately by these recalls," Thomas Debrowski, Mattel's executive vice president of worldwide operations, told China's quality watchdog chief, Li Changjiang, in the Chinese capital. "Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologises personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys." Debrowski said he realised the damage that had been done to the reputation of Chinese goods, adding the company was committed to manufacturing in China. "But it's important for everyone to understand that the vast majority of those products that we recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel's design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China-made products," he said. The company added in a statement that too many toys had been recalled, although it said that was because it puts safety first. Debrowski, who sat stony-faced throughout the meeting with China's quality watchdog chief, Li Changjiang and did not talk afterwards to reporters, whom the quality regulator had invited to witness most of the meeting, unusual for a normally secretive Chinese government agency. Li told Debrowski of his displeasure at the admission that perhaps too many toys had been targeted. "You cannot recall 10,000 products just because one is substandard. This is unacceptable," he said. Before the Mattel recalls, a spate of incidents involving unsafe Chinese products ranging from toys and seafood to toothpaste that entered both EU and U.S. markets prompted calls on both sides of the Atlantic for a ban on products "made in China". Mattel CEO Robert Eckert this week defended his company's toy safety record as two sceptical Democratic lawmakers accused him of stonewalling a congressional probe into production practices in China.

ITN Source | September 22, 2007

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