Issues for traders

• Safety attitudes need to start at the beginning - with manufacturers.

• Trader education was perceived as essential, especially for traders of second-hand goods, chain stores (and particularly 'point of-sale' staff), creche operators, motel owners or others who might supply infant products as part of another service.

• Community-based education is an effective way of getting to local traders (as well as parents).

  Information about safe construction and use of infant products is often missing from second-hand goods. Ways need to be found to ensure that all essential safety information accompanies such goods.

• Some traders do not have the time, staff or expertise for instructive selling.

• There are ongoing safety problems with children being carried in supermarket trolleys.

• There appears to be a confusing number of safety identification marks.

• Traders need to have a greater awareness of the needs of low income, Maori and Pacific Islanders, and consumers who may be placed at an increased risk because of their limited resources, poor understanding of English, and their greater shared use of products.

• The existence of some (more) mandatory standards would help set minimum safety levels.

Discussion

Traders need:

• to have information about their responsibilities under the Fair Trading and Consumer Guarantees Acts, and existing and new measures established to improve products and their safety (both standards and ethical practices)

• to remain up-to-date with safety features, product problems and recalls

• to maintain an effective recording system in order to ensure that all staff are well informed and product history is known and can be communicated to manufacturers and subsequent inquirers.

Traders also need:

• to be continually reminded that their customers are individuals with different needs and from varied backgrounds and experiences

• to be able to communicate product safety information according to the consumers' needs.

These issues are inherent parts of good customer service and meeting legal obligations.

Suggestions for Action

• Formalise, and strengthen, the existing Infant Products Association to develop and monitor standards and guidelines for the supply of safe infant products to New Zealand consumers.

• Develop a code of practice for infant products traders which will put systems in place to ensure (among other things) appropriate information is supplied to consumers purchasing infant products.

• Develop and implement, with the agreement of relevant agencies, a single, easily identifiable and understandable mark for infant products to indicate safety.

• Undertake a public education safety campaign with traders, targeting at-risk consumers.

• There is little point-of-sale information for consumers at present and what there is can be misleading. The second-hand market has been completely missed in the provision of information.

• The safe use of infant products is also associated with adequate parenting skills, and changing attitudes to safety.

• Infant products safety cannot be guaranteed for the life of the product. Consumers need to know how to recognise a potentially unsafe product before it fails and injures the user.

• Instruction booklets are of limited durability and can be easily lost. Key instructions should be attached to the product.

• Instructions for a product's use must reflect local, common usage - some existing instructions may not be realistic.

• Traders and consumers need to be taught to 'think safe'.

• Important safety information should be conveyed pictorially because of cultural and language barriers to understanding.

• More information is needed to identify the most urgent infant products safety issues.

• Different remedies may be appropriate for different groups of traders and consumers.

• Child safety needs a big media initiative (like the drink / drive campaign).

Discussion

As well as the safety of both components and construction, consideration must be given to correct and safe use by parents and caregivers. Education and publicity in safe practices and use, and heightened awareness of safe practices, may well change behaviours. Finally, the collection of accurate, comprehensive data on accidents and 'near misses' would assist traders and policymakers in designing products, in identifying priorities for Government intervention and in promoting safe practices.

Suggestions for Action

• Develop a partnership across traders (and the Infant Products Association), parents and child safety interest groups to achieve infant products safety.

• Secure traders' agreement to provide point-of-sale information, both for new and second-hand markets.

• Undertake an education and publicity campaign aimed at parents and caregivers, seeking their assistance in reporting all product safety incidents to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, and reminding them of their responsibilities towards supervision and safe use of infant products.

• Investigate the use of pictorial information to overcome English language difficulties for some groups.

• Undertake a small-scale study of General Practitioners to collect information on non-hospitalising injuries, consider the likely causes, and identify effective solutions.

• Co-ordinate the information roles of all the various bodies involved in child safety education to maximise efficient use of resources.

Issues

• There is a number of consumer safety standards which are about to be revoked because of a lack of funding. How / whether to continue supporting them, with funding from alternative source(s) needs urgent attention.

• The role of international standards in determining New Zealand infant products safety should be examined to see whether they could offer a suitable / less costly substitute to New Zealand developed standards (which are, in any case, based heavily on international standards).

• There seems to be a confusing proliferation of standards marks and labels.

• The benefits of horizontal standards for infant products may outweigh the duplication of effort involved in creating safety standards for each product.

• Standards development and amendment seems to take too long, and is prioritised regardless of the relevant injury data.

• Standards development must have regard for both safe usage and common usage.

• User education must be an integral part of standards development. For example, requiring safety harnesses for prams and pushchairs must recognise a need to educate consumers into using them.

• Standards may lose their effectiveness as products age and change ownership.

• Effective voluntary standards require a strong, committed industry.

• A product that meets a standard (either mandatory or voluntary) is still not necessarily a safe product. This is because the coverage of a standard may not encompass all product uses and eventualities.

Discussion

There is current discussion over how (or whether) Standards New Zealand's (SNZ) ongoing support for a number of consumer safety standards can be funded from other sources, as SNZ is no longer able to fund their development from within its own resources. The Ministry is looking at ways alternative sources of funding can be obtained, especially through the infant products industry as a current beneficiary of the existing standards. In the event that a number of current standards are revoked or allowed to lapse, the options for safety agencies such as the Ministry include drawing on appropriate international standards in recommending mandatory standards for Ministerial approval, or in determining whether infant products are unsafe.

Product safety (mandatory) standards are relatively costly to make and to enforce. These costs are then met, as a cross-subsidy, by the taxpayer rather than by the purchaser of the product. Mandatory standards are only recommended by the Minister, for approval by the Governor-General in Council, after consultation with all those who are substantially affected by the proposal. This process can take many months.

There are often cheaper and more effective options to mandatory standards available - for example by industry agreeing to comply with a standard, or through a consumer education campaign. For these reasons the Ministry has looked upon mandatory standards as a last resort - to be used only if other action would be ineffective or inappropriate and then only if it would actually solve a safety problem. A more detailed explanation of the Ministry's policy on mandatory standards is contained in the Ministry's Policy Paper No 2, Mandatory and Voluntary Product Standards.

Suggestions for Action

• Identify critical consumer safety standards and secure funding for their continued development and maintenance from sources outside of SNZ.

• Strengthen the existing industry grouping (the Infant Products Association) and seek its agreement to pursue industry commitment to enforceable safety standards.

• Address current and emerging standards in the context of second-hand products and the life expectancy of products.