Stericycle's recall experts help companies
-- Kids Today, 12/22/2008 10:02:00 AM
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – The federal government this year passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act to help ensure safety of the nation's consumers including children, with a more watchful eye on potentially harmful products. As a result, manufacturers and retailers of products regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission have much more at stake, and cannot afford to gamble with any stage of a recall event.
Stericycle, the industry's leading provider of recall management services, recently launched its Consumer Product Safety Initiative (CPSI) to help manufacturers, retailers and distributors proactively respond to this new legislation. The CPSI utilizes Stericycle's cross-functional team of experts to specifically focus on the more stringent demands of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which increases the authority of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the organization's new regulatory compliance standards in recall events. Stericycle's CPSI offers a complete portfolio of solutions in recall preparation, execution, retrieval, reporting and recall closeout.
The new legislation arms the Commission with more money and staff, which will most likely lead to an increase in investigations and enforcement in recall events. One of the most significant impacts of the new law makes it a prohibited act to sell or offer to sell recalled product - meaning manufacturers and retailers could incur detrimental financial and criminal penalties for recalled products that remain on store shelves. Stericycle's CPSI employs a nationwide retrieval field force that can enter retail stores and distribution centers to check for affected product that may still be on shelves, and verify recall effectiveness and regulatory compliance. These On-site Effectiveness Checks provide manufacturers and retailers with more immediate visibility to the effectiveness of a recall and regulatory compliance.
While the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act impacts manufacturers and retailers of consumer products, it specifically requires manufacturers of some certain juvenile products to provide consumers with a postage-paid consumer registration form with each product. Beyond that, juvenile product manufacturers must also maintain a record of the names, addresses, e-mail addresses and other contact information of consumers who register their products, in order to improve the effectiveness of manufacturer campaigns to recall products. The new legislation also requires juvenile product manufacturers to permanently place their name and contact information, model name and number, and date of manufacture on each juvenile product as a further means of improving effectiveness of recalls.
Stericycle's CPSI has an industry leading team of consumer product recall experts, including former CPSC Director of Compliance Dave Schmeltzer. The experts at Stericycle have been closely monitoring the progression of this new legislation since its conception, and educating themselves on its impact to manufacturers and retailers. Stericycle's understanding of the new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act helps companies prepare for the legislation's more rigid demands.
"The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act completely shakes the landscape of how consumer product recalls are now going to be handled versus how they were managed prior to this legislation," said Mike Rozembajgier, Director of Recalls for Stericycle. "Recalling companies and retailers now have much more at stake and our Consumer Product Safety Initiative can help them protect their brand and consumers while ensuring they meet the legislation's new requirements."
A partner like Stericycle can help guard recalling companies from the potentially damaging effects of negative information listed in the legislation’s new public database. This database – accessible by all consumers – will provide detailed information about the entire recall process, making consumers aware of a recall’s effectiveness. Through its CPSI, Stericycle serves as an objective third-party partner that takes precautionary steps on companies’ behalves to ensure that people are protected, and their brand is protected from negative exposure on this database.
An additional component of Stericycle's CPSI includes access to secure tracking and online reporting systems providing detailed product retrieval status in real time - further providing liability protection to companies as they are especially susceptible to lawsuits in the event there is a serious injury resulting from recalled product.
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