The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) on Thursday announced the withdrawal of four Chinese testing laboratories to protect American families, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.
Under the Consumer Product Safety Act, manufacturers and importers have to certify that their products comply with American safety standards to be sold in the country. Children’s products must especially be tested by a CPSC-accepted third-party laboratory.
Peter Feldman, the chair of the CPSC, spoke about the need to cancel the accreditation of four Chinese labs, which include:
- Shenzhen GTT Testing Technology Co., Ltd. (CPSC Lab ID 1843)
- Dongguan True Safety Testing Co., Ltd. (CPSC Lab ID 1755)
- Fujian Berton Testing Service Co., Ltd. (CPSC Lab ID 1857)
- Shenzhen HUAK Testing Technology Co., Ltd. (CPSC Lab ID 1710)
Feldman explained to Breitbart News, “One, the amount of commerce that’s coming through that country, the volume alone indicates that is a geographic area of concern. But two, when you’re relying on self-attestations that the laboratories meeting certain independence criteria, that just really comes to a head when you’re talking about authoritarian regimes where workers can’t whistle blow without sort of fear of retaliation, imprisonment, death, gulag, etc. If you’ve got a lab that can’t demonstrate integrity independence, full compliance with our testing regime and laws, that creates real problems when you know there’s issues with the reliability of the certificates that importers are required to furnish when they’re trying to bring things into the country.”
China has a predominant status for CPSC-accepted labs, with 47 percent of total accepted coming from the Middle Kingdom, ten percent are in the United States, and the remainder are spread throughout the world.
As Feldman and the CPSC have taken a zero-tolerance approach towards foreign labs that cheat the American testing system, Feldman emphasized that there is a level of assurance and reliability that comes from a lab from a friendly, Western country such as Italy.
He said that CPSC would “have some level of confidence that, you know, an Italian whistleblower lab worker can come forward and report payments and all of that, you know, without fear that they’re going to get deported. Guess what? China doesn’t have a strong tradition of whistleblowing.” He added that China is also hostile to American interests, whether it be fentanyl or the coronavirus pandemic.
In 2022, Feldman warned that the CPSC’s accreditation under prior leadership relied too much on self-attestation, believing it lacked meaningful verification, especially for laboratories operating in authoritarian countries.
The CPSC chair said that the Commission last year launched investigations into Shein and Temu to look into their roles as distributors within American domestic commerce.
He remarked, “It’s fair to say there are significant quality and safety concerns when it comes to cheap Chinese junk that’s flooding the American market.”
Feldman explained, “There are long-standing requirements that everybody knows the rules of the road in terms of what they need to make. So there’s the keeping American safe aspect of the mission. But also, there’s reputable domestic firms that understand these long-standing rules, that do what they’re required to under the law, that bear the expense of legitimate testing, that, you know, a lot of our enforcement work here I see is leveling the playing field for responsible domestic firms.”
He continued, saying that China accounts for 33 percent of imports under CPSC jurisdiction; however, the country accounts for over 75 percent of product safety standard violations.
“That imbalance alone is enough to underscore, you know, what a significant China problem we have,” he said.
The CPSC chair stated, “The credit here goes to President Trump and his leadership for taking a hard stand against, against unscrupulous Chinese and foreign, foreign actors and other foreign actors who, you know, have been undercutting American safety and domestic enterprise for decades now.”
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