Manufacturer Product Safety

Fresh off a victory in the CA primary, California Attorney General Xavier Bacerra filed suit on June 7, 2018 against Nutraceutical Corporation of Park City, Utah and Graceleigh, Inc. dba Sammy’s Milk of Newport Beach, CA, alleging violations of California’s Proposition 65 and California’s consumer protection laws.

Happy New Year! And now on to your regular Consumer Product Matters programming…

It has recently been reported that President Donald Trump is looking for ways to defend American-made products by certifying legitimate U.S. goods and aggressively going after imported products unfairly sporting the “Made in America” label, the White House said on July 18, 2017. President Trump announced that his…

As we have discussed in previous posts, Congress may be moving towards finally enacting some long-awaited cosmetics reform legislation this year. On January 13, Representative Pete Sessions (R-TX) reintroduced his cosmetics modernization bill as H.R.575. The package of reforms was first introduced in November 2015 as the Cosmetic…

We reported a few weeks ago about a new warning from FDA related to the safety of certain teething-related, non-prescription homeopathic drug products, and in that pos t we mentioned that both FDA and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) held public workshops in 2015 to gather information about…

Our colleagues in Mintz Levin’s Intellectual Property Practice, Aarti Shah and James Wodarski, recently authored an expert analysis piece in Law360 that examined the use of the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to combat a rising tide of counterfeits and knockoffs in all kinds of consumer product industries.…

Back in April 2015, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Susan Collins (R-ME) introduced the Personal Care Products Safety Act (S.1014). More recently, on September 22, 2016, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee received testimony from Senators Feinstein and Collins in support of this bipartisan legislation. The…

Last week, following up on a more general warning issued on September 30, FDA alerted the public that it had received at least 10 reports of baby deaths associated with the use of homeopathic teething products, as well as over 400 other adverse event reports over the past…

After launching with an ambitious agenda fourteen months ago (as we wrote about here), last Friday the Obama Administration announced that its Biotechnology Working Group had completed its two main tasks. The Working Group has proposed an Update to the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology, and…

The International Campaign Against Microbeads in Cosmetics is most likely celebrating this week, following the California State Legislature’s passage of a bill that would prohibit the use of plastic microbeads in personal care products after January 1, 2020. The bill, AB 888, now heads to Governor Jerry Brown’s…

California, the beacon of individualism and often marching to its own set of rules, has joined the rest of the country as Gov. Jerry Brown has signed SB 633 which revises California’s take on what constitutes “Made in USA”.

The “toxic trio” is a foreboding name some associate with common and seemingly innocuous manicures and pedicures. Salon workers suffer higher-than-average rates of birth defects, miscarriages, cancers, and skin afflictions stemming from their daily use of nail products, many of which contain potentially harmful chemicals. A New York…

So what is the CPSC’s “fast track recall” program and what is the benefit of participating in it? What is a “stop sale notice” and why does the CPSC generally request it for fast track recalls? What else is required by the CPSC in order to participate in…

Acting to finalize a tentative decision from 2013, FDA announced on June 15, 2015 that it was issuing a declaratory order that will require manufacturers to remove partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) from processed foods over the next three years. PHOs in ready-to-eat foods like baked goods, snack foods,…

On January 5, 2015, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced that Gerber Legendary Blades, a division of Fiskars Brands Inc., has agreed to pay a $2.6 million civil penalty to resolve charges that it knowingly failed to immediately report to the CPSC a safety hazard associated…

At their April Senate confirmation hearing, both incoming CPSC Chairman Elliot Kaye and Commissioner Joe Mohorovic pledged to Senator John Thune (R-SD) to submit plans for reducing third party testing burdens within 60 days of confirmation. Rather than send separate plans, Kaye and Mohorovic submitted a joint letter…

As we’ve explored in past posts, mandatory GMO-labeling legislation has, at best, a spotty track record among state legislatures. Nevertheless, the GMO issue continues to draw the public’s attention, and it is becoming clear that the “Non-GMO” label now appeals to at least certain segments of the consumer…

On October 28, 2014, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced that Baja Inc., and its corporate affiliate, One World Technologies Inc., of Anderson, S.C., agreed to pay a $4.3 million civil penalty to resolve charges that it knowingly failed to immediately report certain defects and an…

On October 20, 2014, FDA reached a settlement with the Center for Food Safety (“CFS”) in litigation pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. This litigation is related to FDA’s rule for food additives that are “generally recognized as safe” (“GRAS”). In 1997, FDA…

In May, we advised readers conducting recalls that the CPSC’s new monthly “recall progress report” form may catch you by surprise. Among other changes, the form included new provisions requesting companies to report recall notification statistics on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter along with information from…

The CPSC recently released a new monthly progress report form for companies conducting recalls with the agency. The revised form is in some respects better written than its predecessor and retains many of the old information reporting categories, disposes of or modifies other information fields from the old…

On May 5, 2014, the Vermont Senate gave final approval to a bill that would ramp up regulatory scrutiny of the chemicals found in children’s products. The bill, S.239, gives the Vermont Department of Health the authority to require manufacturers to report, label, and remove chemicals it considers…

A growing number of states are passing Green Chemistry laws, e.g.; California, Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota, and Washington State. These laws present a challenge to manufacturers who distribute and sell products into the 50 states.

Since the inception of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), voluntary recall agreements between the agency and companies conducting a recall (commonly referred to as “corrective action plans”) have not been legally binding on the company conducting the recall. At the November 13, 2013 meeting of the…

As this space has pointed out on several occasions, California’s laws are nothing, if not unique. One such law is California’s Business & Professions Code Section 12606.2 which prohibits a container or package from having false bottoms, false sidewalls, a false lid or covering or to “facilitate the…

Demi Lovato’s hit song “Made in the USA” recounts how her love for her boyfriend is both amazing and patriotic. If they had fallen in love in Paris or Acapulco, however, she may be facing an enforcement action by the FTC or a lawsuit in California under Business…

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (“CPSC”) recently proposed to substantially alter its 2008 regulation governing the form and contents of certificates of compliance for consumer products. Commonly referred to as “GCCs” within the retail and manufacturing industries, certificates of compliance are used to establish a product’s compliance…