China offers training to toy makers on quality, safety

Suffering massive losses due to global product recalls, China, the world's top toy-maker, has decided to clean up its huge toy industry.

As part of the government-initiated move, more than 1,000 toy company managers and government officials have received a two-day crash course in quality and safety supervision, Xinhua news agency reported today.

During the training sessions held in Guangdong Province, China's major toy manufacturing base, government officials and executives of multinational firms gave lectures on toy certificate systems and export test regulations and standards in China, the US and Europe.

Toy makers, from Guangdong, Zhejiang, Fujian and even Hong Kong, were taught on how to deal with lead level and design flaws.

China has come under the spotlight amid a spate of export toy recalls, the recent one by the US toy maker Mattel.

The company has staged three separate recalls of Chinese-made toys, 87 per cent of which were found to have loose magnets "" a design flaw by Mattel itself "" and 13 per cent of which contained excessive lead.

During the training, officials with the Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, who co-sponsored the training, asked toy producers to tighten quality control and develop self-owned brands.

To improve product safety, China's quality watchdog introduced the nation's recall systems for unsafe food products and toys in late August, the government has also launched a four-month nationwide campaign to improve the quality of goods and food safety in close link to human safety and health.