Record number of rogue goods recalled in EU in 2008
20 Apr 2009 14:54:11 GMT Source: Reuters
(Adds comments from news conference) BRUSSELS, April 20 (Reuters) - A record number of dangerous goods were found in the European Union in 2008 and more than half of the rogue items, such as toys and electrical products, came from China, a European Commission report showed on Monday. Under the EU executive's rapid alert system for non-food products -- known as RAPEX -- the number of goods that posed a serious health and safety risk to consumers across the 27-nation bloc rose by 16 percent last year. "This rise from 1,605 notifications in 2007 to 1,866 last year shows that the capacity of the RAPEX system has substantially increased again in 2008," the Commission said in its annual report. Product safety must not be set aside during the recession, Meglena Kuneva, EU commissioner for consumer affairs, told a news conference. "We cannot afford to let current economic and financial challenges diminish our vigilance in any way," she said. "On the contrary, at times of economic crisis, when price becomes a very important factor in consumer spending, we need to step up our efforts and keep our vigilance especially high," she added. Products from China, including Hong Kong, accounted for 59 percent of goods reported, up from 52 percent in 2007 and 49 percent in 2006. China investigated only half of the reported goods, Kuneva said, adding that this was an improvement from two years before, when no incidents were probed. "It's still not satisfactory," she said. "But it's better than before." In November, the commissioner met representatives from China and the United States to sign a trilateral agreement aimed at enforcing product safety standards and exchanging information on food safety. This was part of the EU's attempt to tackle the flow of dangerous goods at the source, Kuneva said. Toys made up more than one third of the dangerous products recalled, again topping the list. Clothing, motor vehicles, electrical appliances and fashion items each added up to 10 percent of alerts. One fifth of the dangerous products that could have caused injury through choking, chemical burns, electric shock or fire came from within the EU, down slightly from 22 percent in 2007. Germany, Spain, Slovakia, Greece and Hungary accounted for half of the notifications, Kuneva said. (Reporting by Sarah Luehrs; writing by Darren Ennis, editing by Timothy Heritage)
A vendor holds a chicken at a poultry market in Lhasa, China's Tibet Autonomous Region April 20, 2009. China's Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) confirmed on Sunday a new outbreak of bird ...
