ABSTRACT
In recent decades, the problem of product safety has become one of the main issues on the agendas of national regulators. All developed states and an increasing number of developing countries have adopted various comprehensive legal frameworks that detail specifi c safety requirements for industrial as well as agricultural goods. An example of such activities is the system for registration, evaluation, authorization, and restriction of chemical substances adopted by the European Union (EU) – the so-called REACH Regulation. 1
Despite all the efforts, product safety scandals still occur. They relate not only to food products – such as melamine in dogs’ pet food (2007) or in milk and infants’ formulas (2008), both imported from China – but also to industrial goods. 2 For example, in 2007, the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission ordered a recall of 967,000 toys – mainly Sesame Street toys – produced in China by Mattel’s Fisher Price, because some of their parts were coated with lead-based paint. 3 Two years later, another recall in the United States (US) covered 5.2 million Toyota cars with a problem related to accelerator pedals that
* This chapter is part of the results of the Research Project on “ Current Trends of Chinese Law towards NonTrade Concerns such as Sustainable Development and the Protection of Environment, Public Health, Food Safety, Cultural, Social and Economic Rights, Labor Rights and the Reduction of Poverty from the Perspective of International Law and WTO Law ”, coordinated by Professor Paolo Davide Farah at gLAWcal – Global Law Initiatives for Sustainable Development (United Kingdom) and at West Virginia University John D. Rockefeller IV School of Policy and Politics, Department of Public Administration, in partnership with the Center of Advanced Studies on Contemporary China (CASCC) in Turin (Italy), Maastricht University Faculty of Law, Department of International and European Law and IGIR – Institute for Globalisation and International Regulation (Netherlands), and Tsinghua University, School of Law, Institute of Public International Law and the Center for Research on Intellectual Property Law in Beijing (China). An early draft of this chapter was presented at the Conferences Series on “ China’s Infl uence on Non-Trade Concerns in International Economic Law ”, Third Conference held at Maastricht University, Faculty of Law on January 19-20, 2012. This publication and the Conference Series were sponsored by China-EU School of Law (CESL) at the China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL). The activities of CESL at CUPL are supported by the European Union and the People’s Republic of China. The chapter refl ects the TBT case law as of June 2016.
