Consumer Product Safety Commission November 2013 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

In this document, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (Commission, CPSC, or we) proposes an interpretive rule to set forth principles and guidelines for the content and form of voluntary recall notices that firms provide as part of corrective action plans under Section 15 of the Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA). The Commission has issued regulations interpreting the requirements of section 15 of the CPSA. The existing regulations provide for notice to the public of the corrective action that a firm agrees to undertake. The regulations, however, do not provide any guidance regarding the information that should be included in a recall notice issued as part of a corrective action plan agreement. The proposed rule would set forth the Commission's expectations for voluntary remedial actions and recall notices, bearing in mind that certain elements of product recalls vary and each notice should be tailored appropriately. The proposed rule also would provide that, when appropriate, a corrective action plan negotiated under our regulations may include compliance program-related requirements.

Section 106 of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA) deemed the provisions of ASTM International Standard F963, ``Standard Consumer Safety Specifications for Toy Safety'' (ASTM F963), to be consumer product safety standards issued by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC, Commission, or we). Among other things, ASTM F963 contains provisions regarding sound-producing toys. Existing CPSC regulations pertaining to caps intended for use with toy guns refer to obsolete equipment, but the ASTM F963 provisions for sound-producing toys allow the use of a broader array of more precise and more readily available test equipment for sound measurement. In addition, the ASTM standard requires fewer measurements and permits use of more automated equipment that would increase the efficiency of testing. Because the existing regulations are obsolete and have been superseded by the requirements of ASTM F963, the final rule revokes the existing regulations pertaining to caps intended for use with toy guns and toy guns not intended for use with caps. The final rule is unchanged from the rule as proposed in the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPR).