Mary: Patricia Vierra [assumed spelling], from the office of our general council, are going to go ahead and give the overview for this part of the statute.
Patricia: Good afternoon. My name is Patricia Vierra and like Mary said, I'm in the general council's office. I'm going to give you a quick and brief overview of the statutory provisions that will guide our next discussion and as previously, the views are those of the staff and do not necessarily reflect those of the commission. As you know, the statute requires the commission to establish and maintain a database on the safety of consumer products and other products or substances regulated by the commission. That is, publicly available, searchable and accessible through an internet website of the commission. There is a notice requirement. The commission must provide clear and [inaudible] notice to database users that the commission does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of the database contents. The statute also contains provisions for the handling of inaccurate information, if prior to making a report of harm or a comment available in the public database the commission determines that the information in such report or comment is materially inaccurate, the commission shall decline to add the material inaccurate information to the database, correct the materially inaccurate information in the report or comment and add it to the database or add information to correct inaccurate information in the database. Regarding information already in the database, if the commission determines after an investigation that information is materially inaccurate or duplicative of information in the database, the commission shall, within 7 business days after such [inaudible] termination, remove such information from the database, correct such information or add the information to correct inaccurate information in the database. That is a short overview of the provisions of the statute, which will guide the next discussion and with that I'm going to turn it back to James.
James: Thanks Patricia. Thank you and welcome back everyone. So our topic for this next workshop is materially inaccurate information. I think we've got, I think everyone's give me the overview before, so I'm going to [inaudible] a short period of time here. I know we've got a lot of material to cover. What I would like to do however, very briefly, since we have a couple new panelists, is have everyone give a very brief introduction, name, organization and try and keep it under sixty seconds if you would and we'll go at this point, just the outside panelists please. Brad.
Brad: Hi, I'm Brad Brush. I'm general council for Lasko products out of Westchester, Pennsylvania.
Wayne: Wayne Marst [assumed spelling], with the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers in Washington DC.
George: George Rutherford, Engle [assumed spelling] Consulting, former CPCS employee. Just had a thought that for two years in the administration of the president, before George HW Bush, my job was to review CPSC documents to identify materially inaccurate or misleading information under Section 6B6.
Mary: Mary Campbell of Hartner [assumed spelling] in the DC office of Minap [assumed spelling], Phelps and Phillips and I chair the Consumer Product Safety Practice Group. And as a practitioner, I have evaluated and responded to many Clearinghouse reports and foya [assumed spelling] requests containing incident reports and communicated with the staff for many years. I'm particularly concerned about the topic of materially inaccurate information because in my practice, I routinely interact, print, broadcast and online media to ensure the damaging misinformation and inaccurate information that could harm the reputation of brands or products or companies, is not published or if it is published, is removed or corrected. So what is published on the CPSC's website is very important.
Rachel: Hi, I'm Rachel Winetrab [assumed spelling], with Consumer Federation of America.
Iga [assumed spelling]: I'm Iga Dia [assumed spelling], with Consumer's Union.
Christine: Christine Heinz [assumed spelling], a public citizen.
Shawn: Shawn Kane [assumed spelling], safety research and strategies.
James: All right thanks. Thanks very much. What I'd like to do is jump right in. I do want to make one comment for the folks who are watching on the webcast, if you have questions or comments for the panel, please send those in to workshopquestions@cpsc.gov. We get those real time here. We will have a brief period of time for audience participation and we'll get to those questions at that point, at the end of our panel. Jumping right in, there were seven questions that were made, that were part of the public record, public announcement for this workshop. What I'd like to do is actually focus in on two of those to start, which I think get right to the heart of the matter and those are bullet point number three and bullet point number four. And I'll just read those briefly. The first is, what types of information constitute materially inaccurate information? And the second is, how should the CPSC process a claim that a report of harm or a manufacturer comment contains materially inaccurate information, both before and after such information has been made available in the public database? So what I'd like to do is, is open it up with those two questions and throw it out to our panel to get the discussion started. Carrie.
Carrie: All right, I'll jump right in. As an attorney dealing with this material and with the statute, I've looked at it many times and considered the import of it and the impact of it. So talking about what's materially inaccurate, it seems to me that the first thing to do was to figure out what's the plain definition of material or what can we include in that category. And the basic definition is, it's material if it has real importance or a great consequence. An interestingly, the Miriam Webster definition, appropoed [assumed spelling], our discussion says, the example is, facts material to an investigation. So based on my experience, looking at reports and working with the staff, I've seen a fair number of incident reports that have contained inaccurate facts or facts that are relevant and Germain to any follow up or investigation, such as the misidentification of a product or a brand, inaccurate reported circumstances or even an inaccurate reported harm and with this in mine the types of [inaudible] would be materially inaccurate could include, and I'll try to provide some examples. One, it's been mentioned repeatedly, the inaccurate description of a product. That is, indicating a product caused harm when in fact the product that caused harm or was related to the harm was an add-on or an accessory. Number two, an inaccurate identification of the manufacturer, private labeler or brand. Again, this has been mentioned in the conversation. There are a number of ubiquitous products that can be mistakenly identified as a popular brand, when in fact it's a different brand and has a different maker. So that's certainly material. Number three, an inaccurate description of the reported harm. For example, the reported harm is different than the actual harm or even in some instances, the absence of actual harm. Number four, the inaccurate assertion that an identified product caused the reported harm and this is I think difficult to deal with and trickier and I don't think will be self evident on the face of a report. But that's where follow up investigation, either by the staff or someone else, could confirm that the reported harm is in fact unrelated to the use of the product identified in the report. Fifth, an inaccurate identification of the individual who reportedly experienced the reported harm. And this is another one that I think is difficult to deal with, is the practical matter if in fact there is no documentation or information to substantiate the reported harm or to substantiate or document the reported personal injury or property damage. So those are difficult things, but I understand the word material, [inaudible].
James: OK, Wayne.
Wayne: I would concur with what Carrie said, but I'd add to that a little bit. From my reading of and other's reading of Black's Law Dictionary, it refers to material as, of such a nature that knowledge decision making process and indeed, that's what we're after here. In fact, our consumer representatives have reminded us that their purpose, the one of the purposes of the database is [inaudible] make choices [inaudible] products. And therefore, materially inaccurate information has direct relevance to, to this situation. So I would start with that and go on to say that in addition to the list that Carrie had, I would say that the material that's not directly related to that particular incident, for instance, conclusatory statements, unsupported or opinion statements about a product's design or it's general practice, would be considered in my mind, a materially inaccurate information. The statute requires that it report to include a description of harm and thus the purpose is to describe that particular harm. I believe the commission should keep in mind that comments about quality of products, are not equivalent to reports of harm or even the risk of harm automatically and therefore the best way that we believe to do that is to in fact, flag that type of situation with some type of a color coding or some database that would indicate that this material is wrong. But more importantly, the commission has the responsibility to remove or correct any information that they find to be materially inaccurate. And I think that that's, that those are two big choices. It's difficult I know, in the spirit of this, to think about removing a comment from a consumer. But if there is substantial proof that this is a materially inaccurate piece of information, in order to avoid harm to the manufacturer's reputation, brand reputation, that, that piece of information needs to be withdrawn from the marketplace. And it needs, when it is withdrawn, it shouldn't be kept in some other file folder or some other methodology. That that material needs to be permanently exempted or in some form destroyed, so that it doesn't appear in other formats. And that type of situation. Thanks.
James: Christine, did you want to make a comment. I saw your light was on at one point. OK. George.
George: Two quick follow up comments I guess. One thing that I would agree with this past statement about, if you've got substantial proof that it's materially inaccurate, that is just because a manufacturer says, that's not true, that's not necessarily enough. If he can't show that it's not true. As far as the permanently discarded or destroyed, again, if I get an incident report and I'm working for CPSC and that incident report says it was brand X again and in looking at it, it turns out that I think it's not brand X, maybe what's in the file gets deleted saying that it was brand X, but I certainly don't want to lose the incident report. Because it's [inaudible] I may find out what company made it and I may find out that I've got forty others by a different manufacturer and what do you know, it needs to go in that pile.
James: Rachel.
Rachel: You know I'm definitely thinking it likely would. Causes me great concern. Under the scenario that Carrie laid of the elements she said should go in, I wonder what information would survive in a particular claim, if the manufacturer actually disagrees with the consumer information. And that would be in the worse case scenario. I think the concern about harm and causation, we talked about this in the previous panel, these are the from the perspective of the consumer. They have an interaction of the product, rose to the level that they felt they should report the harm or potential harm in the database and it's that type of information that's really important to be in the database. In the instances where the manufacturer has information where they could [inaudible], I think those would be very, very rare cases. Analysis among the consumer groups was sort of similar to Wayne's. I mean, we looked at various statutes, federal and state statutes, as well as you know, the plain meaning of [inaudible]. We looked at the definition in Black's Law Dictionary and thought that that was a good, a good meaning. Right now I don't know that we've all come to a conclusion about what the exact definition should be, but the types of things that should, that can be verifiable, that are critical to identifying the product such as the manufacturer, if the model number, you know if there was a digit that's wrong, that could be corrected. Those types of facts that critical to identifying the product, are important to be corrected. But issues that are getting to the causation, descriptions of the harm, documenting what the harm is, that's information that the consumer is relating from their own experience. Which needs to be protected.
James: Shawn.
Shawn: I tend to agree with Rachel and I will add that just based on our experience in dealing with consumer complaints in the motor vehicle arena, you know, the problem with this, if we take what Carrie has laid out here, I get concerned about when a manufacturer disagrees with what a consumer has reported. Frankly, even an agency disagreement. We have seen numerous instances where you know, our engineer has examined, we can find no evidence of the problem. And this again, when you start looking at electronic products, you start looking at products that are very difficult to verify what causes them, so then it becomes you know, is the consumer's description materially inaccurate. Well I don't think that's what we really should be getting into. This is a reflection of what they're reporting to the agency. They're trying to get some useful information to the agency. What seems to me the most important is to really verify the accuracy of the manufacturer, the identification of the product and making sure that we have that as the baseline. And you know, the consumer's input on what their experience is, is their experience. Otherwise we're at a point where you know, who's the arbitrar of what is in fact, accurate. You're going to have your experts versus their experts and you know, I just think that gets into a place where it eviscerates any meaningful nature of this particular database, which again is a place for consumers to report what their experiences are.
James: Wayne.
Wayne: Well, the statute does tell us what a report will be at minimum. And it says, the description of the consumer product, the identification of the manufacturer, private labeler, the description of harm, contact information and verification. If any of those are materially inaccurate, I don't think it's a report and it doesn't rise to the level of being included [inaudible] can it be kept somewhere until such time as further information can be gathered and so far as their might be some active investigation going on to determine that, fine. If not, [inaudible] acceptable to keep that around. I think that it's also important to remember that ensuring the materially inaccurate information doesn't get posted, is a good thing for all of us. The last thing we need is to be sent down different pathways, blind halls, looking for trends or other kinds of situations where we're chasing inaccurate information. That does no good to anyone. It doesn't certainly do any good to the commission and the commission's staff. It doesn't do anything good for public safety. I think that to the extent that we continue to demand that the information is truthful, correct and properly verified, we are sticking to what the statute says and we're also sticking to what is the intent of this. To drive toward better product safety. That's what we're all here after. Thanks.
James: Ami.
Ami: I would agree with what Rachel and Shawn have said earlier. That I think the list that you laid out Carrie, is far to broad and it goes, it doesn't go to what's materially inaccurate. I think you're talking about things that may be inaccurate, but are not materially inaccurate and that's what we know the statute talks about. Again, it's the consumer's experience as folks have noted and when you're talking about things like you know, absence of harm or what [inaudible] is actually different than the actual harm. The consumer is reporting what's happened to them. Is it going to be reported the same way you know, your lawyers or an emergency room doctor might report it? Maybe not, but the information is still valuable to the, to the commission and I think that goes far afield of what the statute intended.
James: Brad.
Brad: I think these situations will ultimately work themselves out. Because you can't anticipate each and every factual scenario under which a manufacturer may truly dispute the veracity of the report. To give an example, we've heard from one consumer and I know the CPSC has heard from the same consumer before, who insists that certain levels of carbon monoxide. To a person who's not trained in how carbon monoxide is produced, that may seem like a reasonable assertion. But we know and I think anybody involved in any technical aspects of product design, electrical analysis, knows that electrical appliances are not capable of emitting dangerous levels of carbon monoxide. So in that situation, I don't think we want this consumer's report, which I'm almost certain will appear on the database at some point, we don't necessarily want that report because that is materially inaccurate and we all know that. So there are some really easy ones to field, then that line becomes blurry after you get down into the realm of well, the manufacturer simply disagrees. The manufacturer may be absolutely right, but I understand that we still have a check and balance system in this procedure whereby the manufacturer still gets to comment and still gets to post their position. Whether it gets taken off or not, is a whole different issue and it may not get taken off. But at least the manufacturer at a minimum, gets the opportunity to, to post their comment. But some postings will be pretty evident that the content is not accurate and so at least in the easy situations, I think that those should be subject to removal from the database.
James: Christine.
Christine: That the ID of the manufacturer, getting the correct manufacturer is pretty [inaudible].
James: Christine. Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but you might want to move the mike a little bit closer.
Christine: And that, that the database should have, the information in the database should be helpful to the public in that the information should be generally accurate. The list there, I think I just had to think about what I was going to say because my blood pressure went up. But the list is extremely exhaustive and I don't know if the proper way to address these would be through a case by case basis, as opposed to having a list of oh look, they spelled Mattel with two L's instead of or however you spell Mattel, with three L's, whatever and that means that's materially inaccurate and therefore this should go in the garbage. That's not what the, what we're trying to accomplish with the database. And so I just think that you know, we should, I think we just, we need to focus on whether the actual issues are materially and are actually materially inaccurate. Now there is materially, material for the commission, there's material for the manufacturers, which will probably be anything on the database and there's material to the public in terms of how whoever is reading the database, would they be effected by the information that they're seeing. Would they say oh, look at that. There's this, not that Mattel is spelled wrong, but that there's something about the information that would effect how they would [inaudible] maybe, maybe that's, that information would be material. But I strongly disagree with the finding that a list of questions or a list of scenarios, that if an incident reports fits into that category would be materially inaccurate and should be removed or should be deleted. I think that's just unreasonable.
James: Carrie.
Carrie: Thanks. I'd love to respond. I think we could all agree, unless I'm really missing the mark, that of one wrong letter and a person's or manufacturer's name would not be material. And we clearly have a mandate by congress to address materially inaccurate information and the question here before us is what types of information constitute materially, what's material essentially. And so to respond to Christine's point, to set aside the consumer advocate views [inaudible] from the manufacturer's view, let's look at congresses view as it created this mandate and this section and congress clearly identified material pieces of information that at a minimum are required to be posted on the public database. And so what congress has identified as important and material, to qualify for posting, is right before us in the section language and it includes the product, the identification and certainly, very importantly and materially in congresses eyes I would suggest, as part of the minimum bit of information required, is the description of the harm relating to the use of the identified product. So I would suggest that that gives us guidance on what congress viewed as material in these reports.
James: Rachel.
Rachel: Yeah, so here's a hypothetical that's my worst case scenario, but also that it happens all the time. And that is it happens in you know, when we're working on voluntary standards, it happens in litigation, which I'm not involved in ever and it happens in the media and that is, when there is, a consumer comes out and says, you know, I was harmed in this way, in worst case scenarios but are frequent, the manufacturer says, it's not it's you. It the consumer, it's the parent, it's the child and that tends to be a knee jerk reaction. And you know, the [inaudible] about this issue my concern is that if a consumer puts up a description of an incident that occurred, which meets every other threshold and the manufacturer rebuts it saying you know, the description of the harm is materially inaccurate because it's the consumer's fault and not the product's fault, then under the scenario that's being set the entire report wouldn't go up. And I think that is not what congress intended. There is a mechanism, which we've discussed at length, where manufacturers have the opportunity to say that. They could say you know, based on our analysis you know, we don't think it's, it's the manufacturer's fault. You know, it's the way the consumer used the product. But that's information that could go into, into the report. Not that which should actually act as a way to rebut, to rebut the presence of the report itself.
James: George.
George: Again, two things. One, just to reiterate what Wayne said about substantial proof. That a simple rebuttal or a saying it's not our fault, it's your fault, is at least as far as I'm concerned, that doesn't make something materially inaccurate. You're going to have to be able to show CPSC that it's not, not just that it was his fault. Because it's entirely possible that the consumer made an error that contributed to the incident, but it doesn't make the information in the incident report inaccurate. Specific to the question of brand name, I think the question that I'd have is what are we going to set or define as an acceptable brand. Because in the previous panel, we had the discussion that going from brand to manufacturer, to figuring out where this thing came from, is a to use the word, visintine process and many times the manufacturer can't tell if it's the right model or if it's one of his or if the manufacturer is the one that somebody thinks it is. Given that much difficulty, how we can expect Joe consumer to know, especially for example if he's bought, an example that came to my mind today was, if he's bought something out of a bin at the beach and it's in a little net shaped bag and it's a toy and who knows what kind of labeling it's got on it. But his kids hurt on it and he wants to complain about it. It might be that all that goes under brand is, I don't know who made this but I bought it at such and such beach shop and it's blue. Here's a picture of it. And that might be all he knows. Do we disqualify that? Do we prevent the person who wants to, who maybe has that same product and his kid got hurt on it, from finding out that somebody else had that issue, because they don't have the right brand name? Especially since we've heard from some industry people that sometimes that can be hard for even them to figure out.
James: Ami.
Ami: I just wanted to highlight one issue. The discussion of the five types of information that are requested for the consumer to provide for the report to be made. The description of the product, identification of the manufacturer, that kind of thing. That's separate and apart from the discussion of materiality and I just want to make sure those things don't get confused. That the five types of information to be plugged into the report, are a different discussion than the material accuracy or inaccuracy of said information. So.
James: Melissa.
Melissa: I just wanted to kind of follow up on something that I heard this morning and it kind of plays off this discussion now and that was, this morning there were suggestions by some folks with respect to the description of the harm, that the description be limited to facts and that if there was speculation of any sort in there, that that would not be within the scope. And I'm just curious as to the panelists positions on that.
James: Yeah, we had a couple of lights on before Melissa's question. If we could maybe get a direct answer to her question and then we'll move back to the previous topic. Ami or Shawn.
Shawn: I was just going to say just think, you know, when you start getting into that I mean, somebody's going to speculate. You know, I wasn't harmed by this, but I could have been harmed by this. You know, are you going to eliminate that because they've speculated that because a product failed in a certain way and they were not harmed that you know, I think that gets into some difficulty as well. And you know again, joining with our experience with it, these are the kinds of things that are helpful, these are the kinds of complaints you want to get in there. Because you're looking at it from providing information to consumers and also as again, the whole purpose of this is in the public interest.
James: Wayne.
Just. Oh I'm sorry.
Wayne: I don't think anybody was suggesting Ami, that or Shawn, that just because somebody had speculated a risk of that situation, that it would not be included in the database [inaudible]. Nor the point that we were trying to bring out. I think that if there's a significant inaccuracy in what the consumer says you know, about the harm that was caused by that and the nature perhaps of wanting to make sure that their issue is treated fairly, they have way overstated the situation what the harm was. I think that that could get into the area of material inaccuracy. Fortunately however, in addition to stating all of this and yeah, it does give discretion to the commission, to make those determinations. And it says that specifically in the act and therefore I think we respect the fact that the commission is going to have to have people that are going to make these determinations. These are, we would imagine and certainly hope, these are very well trained people that are have a lot of experience with that particular product field, as they're making those determinations. I don't think that somebody, not that you ever would do this today and I don't think you would in the future, but somebody familiar with toys is not going to make an adjudication or a decision about materially inaccurate with an electrical appliance or vice versa. So I think that that is very important. That there is some structure set up to who are the people that are going to making that, that determination. The second is that I think that there needs to be some very clear guidelines issued by the commission, as to what you [inaudible] as materially inaccurate. I think this probably needs to be done in the notice of public rule making and allow comment on that. That the commission needs to come forward and exactly say, this is what we view as the test. And by the way, that test goes both ways. That is a test for both the consumer report and for the manufacturer to come back. I believe that fair is fair. That if there is going to be a test as to what is materially inaccurate or accurate information for the consumer to report, then there needs to be guidelines for the manufacturer to be able to say, this is what we view as being your guideline for determining materially inaccurate reports, when you come back to us and say that this is inaccurate. So I think it cuts both ways, but I think that it's very important that we have those guidelines and that the commission needs to come forward with those and allow us to comment on it. Thanks.
James: Ami.
Ami: Two points. One riffing off of what Wayne just mentioned, that the test goes both ways. An idea that occurred to me in an earlier panel was, in the same way that a manufacturer excuse me, in the same way that a consumer checks a box when they're submitting their report and [inaudible] this information is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge or whatever the boiler plate is, that when the manufacturer is putting up their comment, I think a similar you know, verification and consent check box should be asked of the manufacturer. The other point, Melissa to answer your question, I think there is a lot of utility and I think folks have mentioned this in some of the other panels. There is a lot of utility to that narrative box and that free form report from the consumer. You know, they may be able to give the commission a lot more clues as to what exactly happened or what their incident report is once they get outside of the preset fields of you know, type of product and brand name and that kind of thing. So I think that leaving that box open and allowing that information to, without character limitations as Rachel's mentioned previously, and allowing that information to go up can be be extremely useful both to the commission and to generating additional reports from the public at large. If necessary and accurate.
James: Carrie.
Carrie: To address Melissa, I think you raise a very important and interesting question and that is, if there are consumer reports that contain information beyond the facts or the reported harm, is there something to do in that situation. And for one example would be and I don't know how frequent this would be. I mean I've seen so many examples of it. If the report goes beyond describing the circumstances and into sort of extraneous derogatory or infective type material, do you do anything with that? Do you, do you leave it in? Do you take it out? Is that part of the factual scenario of what the reported harm is reported to be? And if you do that you know, I've heard earlier discussion, which makes perfect sense, that manufacturers certainly aren't going to comment and make those kinds of comments on the public database. So should there be some equalizing standard for the nature of comments that may in some circumstances, go beyond reporting the harm? Or what you know, the facts as you mentioned. Beyond the facts.
James: Anything further on that topic? All right, I'd like to, I'd like to pose another question then to the panel, from our list which is this. If any measures, should the CPSC employee vent the submission of fraudulent reports of harm while not discouraging the submission of valid reports? And I'll open that up to the panel. Shawn.
Shawn: Sure, I think you know one of our primary concerns was just being able to, from a technical side, eliminate the ability of web bots and robots that go in and be able to file reports, using various you know, algorithms. And I know your IT guys are probably racing through all the different scenarios to eliminate that. I think that is one of our primary concerns Is having the ability to stop that from happening and filling a data set with information that is generated you know, electronically like that.
James: Brad.
Brad: On a lower tech basis, if somebody is sitting at one computer entering ten or fifteen incidents at the same time, hopefully the commission will have some way to at least detect that so that they can look at those reports. I mean, it's not unimaginable that somebody would do that for a variety of reasons. So we were, we were having these discussions that we would like to at least see some ability to detect somebody that's entering multiple reports over a short period of time or somebody that's a frequent poster and maybe look into those reports to maintain the accuracy of those reports.
James: Virg.
Virg: Again, demonstrating a little IT ignorance here, but to follow up on what he said, you might also be looking for a way if you can detect if somebody is essentially recruiting other people or other computers when you get like computer chain letters almost saying you know, please sign this petition, please send this, please forward this to everybody you know. That sort of thing. If there's a way to detect that kind of thing. It's not really a bot, it's a person doing it but it's essentially an internet chain letter kind of thing that again, is a malicious attempt to attack somebody.
James: Rachel.
Rachel: Numerous times on the panels throughout the last two days, people have talked about that this is you know, a balancing act. That there are checks and balances and where no it's in everyone's interest to get you know, accurate information there. And I think in terms of how to get to discouraging inaccurate claims but not stifling reports in general, I think the act does a good job with requiring the disclosure form. Because I think when a consumer sees a disclosure, it is for the most part, something that makes consumers think. You know, they typed up this information which and or called and already got past the threshold of you know, wanting to communicate something to a government agency. Which George, did a great job yesterday in sort of explaining that. For some consumers you know, being a little guy against you know, a large government agency, can be an intimidating experience in and of itself. But getting to you know in putting all this information, exposing what could be a personal and painful incident and then seeing a statement verifying that what you are saying is true and accurate to the best of your knowledge, I think goes a very long way in not intimidating a consumer, but making a consumer realize how important it is to convey factual and accurate information.
James: Wayne.
Wayne: I said earlier that my mind isn't necessarily go to the nefarious But I will say, since you raised it in the question about fraudulent reports of harm, I do think that we have to deal with sort of the fringe or the, or the minority situation that could occur. And I guess to us, it is crucial that CPSC take specific and very rapid measures when they, when they find that a report is fraudulent. We believe that the commission needs to have some very clear guidelines as to exactly what they will do and how they will go about looking at that. We also believe that fraudulent reports have to be removed from the website immediately. They should not be posted. Not just [inaudible] associated with them, but just completely taken down. Fraudulent reports are totally inaccurate. They are both materially inaccurate and they are harmful and they have no business populating a database that's out there to try and accomplish product safety. We also believe that CPSC needs to have some methodology to track down and make sure that the person actually reporting the incident is who they say they are. Now I'm not saying that that has to happen with absolutely every single circumstance, but if it's pointed out that somebody questions whether or not that that is an accurate situation, I think there needs to be some methodology of follow up to determine that that consumer indeed is a proper situation and as Brad brought it out, if you've got somebody that's filling out report after report after report on the same product, the same model number, the same situation and they're doing it multiple times, some of those are evidently fraudulent. Are all of them? That's dependent upon the investigation. But certainly, if there's ten reports, they're all exactly the same and they're all by the same person with the same computer, the same email address, I think that one would have to withdraw nine of them at the very least to make sure that we don't have a situation where the database has been assaulted. I think that also, that the verification situation is very important. That this needs to be in a strong language to encourage accuracy of this situation and the instruction have to be make if very clear that the submitter is providing information in truth and accuracy in order for the follow up reports to be conducted and the what the commission or whomever are dealing with the right situation.
James: Ami.
Ami: Wayne and Brad, you're going to be shocked. I agree. Yeah, I mean obviously, fraudulent reports have no utility and they detract from you know, the database is we want it to be good, we want it to be helpful, we want it to be accurate, we want it to be containing information that is going to help the commission, is going to help consumers. So absolutely. I think Brad's suggestion, if there is some technology out there to get at, multiple reports from a particular IP address. I think that's a great idea. The box and captcha or whatever is used to eliminate spam reporting of any kind. And then obviously, whatever process can be used to weed out duplicates, would be necessary I think.
James: George.
George: Just another quick operational thought is that, in addition to the people sitting at that end of the table, sometimes there are consumers who for one of a better word I'll call them crusaders. This is not necessarily a bad thing but you'll have a crusader who is actively collecting incident reports from other people. So the question would come to my mind is if we've got one of these people who has been in the media, who's talked to people, who's given talks and people have contacted her and she's got brand, manufacturer, date, incident, description and everything else, do we accept that call as twenty incidents when she reports it? Do we count it as one or do we handle it some other way?
James: Rachel.
Rachel: What would be your recommendation?
George: I think I'd recommend that the staff look at it and look at the incidents carefully and see if they believe they are multiple incidents from a number of different people. And by that point, it might be worth the agency getting back to the person. Which is what we always did in the past anyway. We'd wind up calling them back. Sometimes that was unfortunate, because then she had that [inaudible] phone number and you heard from that person frequently. But it doesn't mean that it's not a person with a real issue, with real data and it might be easier for them to do that. Because there might be consumers who are still scared of the government and they'll call this person and report. Taking it a step further, I'd question, what would happen if they called Rachel? And she's got thirty incidents of the same thing and she'd like to get them into our database.
James: Rachel.
Rachel: I have a question for the commission or possibly for George as well. And [inaudible] the commission has done this type of work before. It was not in the context of the database, but has done analysis what is materially inaccurate and I'd like to know if you could share some of that insight and what factors you look at and what you found to be sort of key features of that definition and that analysis in the past.
James: Melissa.
Melissa: I would just point out that Section 6 A and B, well Section [inaudible] deals with the submission of confidential business information, but Section 6B speaks to the commission taking reasonable steps to assure that accuracy. Which is a little different in terms of statutory language, than the language that we're dealing with here. But the commission has laid out at Section 16 CFR Part 1101, what reasonable, what it considers to be reasonable steps to assure the accuracy of the information, specifically 16 CFR 1101.32, deals with that, the accuracy provision. It's not only we have to take reasonable steps under 6A or 6B, I'm sorry, to assure the accuracy [inaudible] and that disclosure is reasonably related to effectuating the purposes of the CPSA. So we have regulations [inaudible] what we believe are reasonable steps to assure accuracy, to assure fairness and to assure [inaudible] of the CPSA. But I make that comment with the notion that the language here obviously is not the same and we'll be looking at how to deal with that with respect to assuring accuracy the regulation lays out a number of situations where what we consider a reasonable step to assure accuracy. Which includes you know, doing an in depth investigation report and confirming information with the consumer. So I recommend those to you for further review and maybe further discussion later on in the process.
James: George.
George: I think you've answered that question pretty thoroughly. My comment was going to have more to do with the question of accurate descriptions of what happened. And I just want to say that in my experience, I can think of two right off the top of my head that I'm not going to go into in great detail right now, but at least two incidents over the years where an authoritative source described a hazard as happening one way and another authoritative [inaudible] said it couldn't happen that way. And sometimes it just never gets resolved. And I guess the anyway, what I'm thinking of is for example, at least I can still probably request data from the CPSC files where it will say that the fire department reported that the first started because of an excessive build up of lint in the dryer. And yet, I've been told by professional engineers, some on staff, some off it, you know what, I don't know how to duplicate that and I don't think that's a real hazard. So who's inaccurate. Is the fire professional inaccurate, is the engineer that says he couldn't match the hazard inaccurate, is somebody lying, is somebody an advocate, no one knows. So basically, you have to accept both possibilities for right now and I would want to make sure that I didn't let one person's opinion or one manufacturer's opinion, rule out a case just because they don't think it can happen that way.
James: Ming.
Ming: Actually I have a follow up question to what Wayne was saying earlier, about making sure the person submitting the report is who they say they are. So we collect, I think we said one of three pieces of information, email, phone or address. What would you say would be a reasonable or acceptable verification of who they say they are?
Wayne: Well I think that there's a couple of things here. There's the reasonablist test in terms of the numbers of reports that you're going to get and how many are you going to be able to follow up on. If you get even the equivalent number to what you now get through the website and eight or nine thousand a year, are you going to really be able to go back and check every single one of those? No, of course not. But you know, if the manufacturer comments back that they have questions about whether or not that that is in fact a valid claim that they've tried to duplicate, that or they question whether or not that is the correct person that has in fact made that report, I think the commission then has the responsibility to try and contact that person by whatever [inaudible] you have. You have, you have a phone number, you can call them on the phone. If you have an email address, you can try and contact them by email. If you have a physical address, you can try and contact them by that, to determine whether in fact that person is who they say they are. If somebody answers the phone with a different name, I think you have you know, you can ask the question. You know, does so and so live there? And then you can divulge that information a little bit, develop that theme to try and find out if that in fact is the right person. I don't think this is going to happen very often. I think that this is again, on the fringe of the [inaudible] circumstances that happen, but anytime that you have a public database with the opportunity for somebody to use it for purposes, we certainly know what the internet is like these days and we know that how the internet can be used for disparaging either people's lives or company's names and products and through the blogosphere and we don't need this to be a blog. That's not the purpose of it. I don't think that was what it was intended for and I think we need to ensure accuracy of it. It will help everybody. And so yes, I think that there needs to be some checking on the routine basis. Maybe there's some audit sampling that is done as well. It's not uncommon and for companies to have databases and to routinely [inaudible] make some phone calls to people, just to determine if in fact that they're correct. What are you going to do if you find that out? Well then you have to take further action and I'm hoping again that you'll have the concrete steps that'll be laid out as to exactly what you'll do in those circumstances so. I fit the statute does tell us who are the right people who are allowed to make reports. In the case of somebody who's trying to gather a crusade, I don't find that in the statute. Crusader. And so it in fact is important that we stick to finding out that we've got a report from an actual person that is involved in the situation or somebody closely related to that, as we mentioned yesterday.
James: Ami.
Ami: I think the great, the greatest utility of the database is going to be in highlighting large, large numbers of reports from consumers or the other delineated provider [inaudible]. About the same problems. The same problem keeps coming up over and over again on the database, I think that's really the rub of all this is, where it's significant. And so, I think the issue of the reporter not being who they say they are, really only comes up in the question of when you're getting multiple reports of some significant sample size. Not with the one off. Because I think with the one off, you know, it would I think waste a lot of the commission's resources to track down every time a company says I don't think this one reporter with this one complaint of this type, is who they say they are.
James: OK. Wayne, did that answer your question? OK. Anything further on that point. If not, I'd like to move on then to the next question which is, how should the CPSC allow a submitter or others to claim that a manufacturer has submitted materially false information? OK, I'll open that question up to our panel. Any, any thoughts on this one? For the first time in thirty six hours, I think our panel is [laughter] been here for thirty six hours. George, did you have something you want to say?
George: Just you know, the mind sort of boggles, but I'm thinking you know, how we'd define that. I mean, if what you mean is as simple as you know, the consumer reports a complaint that as he says, is exactly how it happened and the manufacturer comes back and says, nah couldn't happen, it's your fault, whatever. The consumer wants to respond by saying, yeah that's exactly what happened. I told you the truth in the first place. Is that him saying that the manufacturer submitted materially inaccurate information or is he just restating what he said? I, it seems to me unlikely that you're going to get anything much beyond that from consumers as far as the manufacturer submitting material inaccurate information.
James: Let me, let me pose a hypothetical then to the panel which is, if there is an incident report, there's a comment back from the manufacturer that says as you said George, this couldn't happen the way it was described. What if someone else, completely independent third party, happened to be browsing the database, happened to see that particular incident and happened to say, wait a minute, wait a minute, this you know, the manufacturer's response doesn't look right to me. You know, I understand this field as well, should they be allowed to comment? How might that work? Hypothetically. It's a hypothetical. Brad.
Brad: Yeah, I think that that again, opens up this entire database. Again, as Wayne has said many times, to being a blog. If you open it up to third parties, then it just becomes a venue for people to chime in on incidents that they weren't involved in. So, I mean the only scenario I can really envision in which a manufacturer might be alleged to have provided material inaccurate information would be for example, him saying, the manufacturer saying, that's not our product. When in fact maybe it is that manufacturer's product but again, I would think that somebody on the staff would be looking at that manufacturer's assertion. The consumer says, I had their product and this happened to me when I was using the product. If some investigation or review of that incident occurs by somebody on the staff and it's found that it really was that manufacturer's product, I guess you know, now we're talking about what type of enforcement or penalty might be imposed or was it an honest mistake. I mean it just seems a little bit different. You know, when, when the initial complaint comes in, if it's, if it contains materially inaccurate information, at a minimum the material inaccurate information will be removed or the entire report won't be posted. But it just seems like the scenario's under which a manufacturer might do the same are pretty limited. Other than the couple of hypotheticals seen so far.
James: Rachel.
Rachel: I would agree with Brad. We definitely do not want to open this to third parties. I think it would just be a disaster. But I also think there is an important role for CPSC here. That if the manufacturer conveys some things, if a consumer conveys something that through their research and investigation, they were able to verify that a statement or a fact is true or false, that that's the role of the commission to correct. And using the same, the same options that are provided in statute specifically for the initial information that they could apply those same factors and to information from the manufacturer that if they found it to be inaccurate, materially inaccurate.
James: Carrie.
Carrie: I just wanted to respond. This one question seems to fold [inaudible] it's a number of the questions that are posed in this topic that are difficult to deal with. But I want to agree with Rachel. Third party reports definitely would not serve the purpose of the database. And Section 212 plainly contemplates a process that's applicable to the reporter and the [inaudible] or recipient of the report. So that's a starting place. Given the statutory time frame and the requirement to look at materially inaccurate information and the options available, if there is materially inaccurate information it seems to me that the staff has a tough job and it might make sense I would suggest, to set up some standards for how this is going to work. And that whatever that process is, that it's clearly defined and it applies to reporter as well as the responder and that it include among other things, at least three consistent elements which are diligence so that someone is diligently dedicated to looking at these, whoever's making the assertion that there is materially inaccurate information, it goes somewhere to a dedicated staff who is trained or informed on what that's going to mean, according to whatever the rule making may turn out to be. But there's a diligent follow up by a dedicated staff, there's some time frame, there's some promptness that's folded into here's how we're going to handle them. Establishing limited time for review or how long it's going to be and that there's some consistency on both sides. And that is establishing some criteria, such as documentation [inaudible] proof or some criteria by which to assess, to make the determination. And I think at least those three elements should be part of whatever the system is and that could draw from what Melissa mentioned was, a pretty well developed guidelines in the regulations already in 1101, on how to assess fairness and accuracy. So I think the groundwork is there, but there need to be some very specific processes put into place that include these three elements of diligence, promptness and consistency.
James: Ami.
Ami: Just reiterating a point I made earlier. I think to answer this particular question the same, I swear that the information I'm about to submit is true and accurate. Boiler plate, should apply to the submission of manufacturer comments as well as the initial reporter comments.
James: Carrie, did you have another comment or?
Carrie: Excuse me.
James: George?
George: Just an addendum thought. Because it was mentioned earlier. Don't want to lay any extra burden on the CPSC. I know they don't have that many people and not many contract dollars, but at least five or six years ago, when I was working here, every incident report, every death that came into the agency, was read by the people in data collection and by the people on the emerging hazard staff. So if we get an extra ten thousand reports, I don't think it's going to overburden any [inaudible]. Now if we're going to have them read them and be following up with people as to whether or not they're who they say they are, that might be a bit more. But let's not think it's impossible to read every case that comes in. Because it's happened before and it might be happening today.
James: All right, if there's nothing further, I want to move on to the next question then which is, given the statutory time frame, how should the CPSC review claims of materially inaccurate information? We've, I know we've already touched on this a fair amount. You know, this, this question really gets specifically to the you know the statutory required time frames, tight time frames. I wanted to open that one up to the panel and see if there were any comments on that particular question. Beyond what's already been said.
James I just wanted to jump in. I'm still formulating my question to the last one. Without putting too much burden on the consumer, so consumer provides an incident report and manufacturer provides comments, sort of via the disputing the report or asking questions. I personally wouldn't want the [inaudible] on the consumer to keep coming back to the website to say hey, did the manufacturer ask me a question. So how can we not burden the consumer but still get that, our conversation going?
Well I think you couldn't rely on the fact that the consumer is going to keep checking the report online. I mean, I think you would, in the way that you've communicated with the consumer before you need, we'll need to communicate with them again. Just to you know, if it was electronically send, no one update you know and I think maybe there should be an automated form. That would work best I think, electronically and if the communication was with the phone, you'd need a parallel mechanism. But you know in automated forms you know, the incident report that you've filed has been updated. And so conveying that information in hopes of and explaining what the consumer's option is then or consumer, whoever the reporter is.
James: Wayne.
Wayne: Well, to the question that is at hand, which I think actually are somewhat related. I mean, there is no, there's no maximum amount of time to Christine's point earlier, there's no maximum amount of time to get accuracy of the database on any report. If further information is found at any point in time, on either the consumer's part, commission's part or the manufacturer's part, there's basically an obligation to update the website. It's not a, it's not a nice to do, it's a mandatory situation under the statute. So I [inaudible] that we really have the responsibility to go back and look at that situation. There's no question that time frames are exceedingly short, on all parties involved in this situation. But they're not maximums, they're minimums and I think that having clear procedures within the commission for exactly how these reports are going to be screened and reviewed and check for accuracy for materially accurate information, will help a long way. And I know that commission is very big on doing that kind of situation now. I know that you have all types of procedures for handling consumers complaints that come in now. I don't see that this is going to be substantially different in that regard. I think the commission does it's best at the present time, where you have that a number of people are involved in that situation right now and I'm, I don't envision that to be significantly different. I'm even wondering whether or not with this we're going to see a tremendous rise in the number of reports. I don't know. I mean, I think that in some manner, it could just improve what we have already, rather than necessarily adding significant burdens. Other people have suggested that you know, this thing could grow ten times or twenty times what it currently is. I kind of wonder of that situation. In some ways that would be a nice problem to have, because it would mean that we're capturing a lot more information on harm and situations and they're out there, but I think that the consumer [inaudible] and other organizations already know to contact the commission or their state organizations or other consumer groups and so forth, who then will advise them of how to contact the commission. So I find it odd to believe that we're going to see you know, ten or fifteen times what the current level of reports are. All said though, then that just means that we have to do a better job of screening what we existingly get, have the clear procedures in place to follow up on that and I think we'll do a fine job.
James: Ming.
Ming: So we discussed not allowing third parties to I guess particular consumers, to provide comments on [inaudible]. On the flip side, manufacturers, if a manufacturer provided a comment and another manufacturer for example has something to say, would we allow that? Even if it relates materially to the subject at hand. For example, I know who the right manufacturer is.
James: Carrie.
Carrie: Well to answer that question first, I think that the response on the website would be to the person who was provided the report and like much of the [inaudible] days, if information comes into the commission from another source, it can certainly be considered an evaluated and follow up upon, but not posted on the website. I think that goes beyond the purpose of the public database. And to just circle back for a second on the how to process these, sort of harkens back to my comments before which is, it is open ended in terms of how that works. [Inaudible] stringent time frame for when it has to go to the [inaudible] has to go on the website, it's rather open ended on how these important issues of asserted [inaudible] accuracy are going to be resolved. And that's where I just want to reiterate, that I think it's important to have some system in place internally where you have a standard of a time frame that's reasonable and expeditious because if there is particularly harmful materially inaccurate information on that internet website, it's going viral. It can be causing a lot of harm. It can be finding it's way into nationwide news reports, other websites. So there is a real concern to get that promptly addressed, as few or as much as it happens, without commenting on the frequency with which it would happen I think it's really important to have a system in place, with a time frame that you look at to address it and resolve it. And going back to how you might do that, there is a section in the regs that Melissa mentioned, that talks about the retraction procedure that the commission follows when someone brings to it's attention that inaccurate and damaging information has been published somehow through a commission publication. And that would provide a good guideline and in that scenario, it's within thirty days and here we're certainly on a much quicker time process. So that's for consideration on how to deal with that. My concern is that it languishes somewhere because it's difficult or there's not a dedicated, defined way to handle it and perhaps there needs to be.
James: Brad.
Brad: Yeah I mean this goes back to your original question. Should perhaps other manufacturers be able to post a comment, if they know for example who's product it is, etcetera. But I still think that opens everything up to the whole comment process. Over the lunch hour we were even talking about the mechanics of who would be able to comment on a particular incident. It would seem that if when the report comes in, the only party that can respond or comment on that report would be for example, the manufacturer that received notice of the report. So somehow in this system, there's got to be a safeguard that only that entity [inaudible] who is registered to receive reports for that brand name or manufacturer's name or whatever the case may be, is the only one that will receive authorization to post a comment. Now if it's erroneous, if I'll use our company, if Lasko receives a report of an incident and it's not our product or we've been misidentified, then that will be our comment. Our comment will go back on the posting within the ten day period. This is not our product and again, you would envision there being some human contact at some point, so that that issue can be resolved, so that the right party could be notified. But I don't think that those types of problems are going to be solved by you know, really opening up the comment field in the database.
James: George.
George: Two thoughts on that. I guess the one thing is you just said about if Lasko receives a comment. But I would hope you would perhaps encourage manufacturers, if they know who it was, to say more than it's not ours. To say no, it's not ours, in fact you know what, that's a Hamilton Beach and then it's the other guy's problem. [
laughter ]
Brad: In reality that happens pretty frequently in our industry. We received reports you know, not maliciously, but they were reports that somebody thought a product involved in an incident was one of ours and especially if they're members of the trade associations that we're members of. We'll reach out to them and say hey, we received this. You guys may want to reach out and step up on this one and [inaudible] this consumer that this is your product. And that actually does happen, from time to time. So I don't think anything is going to change and I think we have to realize that a lot of the things we're talking about, actually do happen in practices [inaudible].
George: The other thought I wanted to add to, about the question of reviewing things or about the question about materially inaccurate information. Again, it's going to depend on the case. So in each instance, we're talking about this little piece of the problem or of the issue. And for example, made reference to you know, if that information is out there and it's wrong, it's going viral and it's doing considerable damage, well if we're talking about a catastrophic failure of a product or a death or a near death if that's the case, if somebody has written [inaudible] and said you know what, my kid cut is finger. Probably it's not going to go viral and cause a whole lot of damage. So there are fewer cases that are going to have those catastrophic outcomes and I don't think it's going to be a big problem to get them looked at carefully and I think that there may be some question as to severity. Although I would hesitate to try and define how severe is severe enough. But that'll be something that'll effect how much depth the staff is into looking at it, to decide the, we can't treat them all as equal. Every little bitty, mini injury or mini complaint that might get on the database because a kid cut his finger on a toy, probably isn't going to receive the same level of review by the staff or the same level of importance or the same probability of doing harm to the company out there in the world, as if they've got a death or a near death or a catastrophic failure.
James: We've got about ten minutes left at this point. John, did you want to make a quick comment?
John: Just a quick comment. If a product were misidentified, I say a counterfeit product, I don't think, really I should be addressing this to Walt perhaps. Say that your product does have some marking on it that you could tell staff about to really identify your product. I was wondering if that same information might be provide to the consumer, to assist them in properly identifying the product?
Walt: We've, not so much in the context of a counterfeit product, but we've had conversations with consumers when they've called in and reported incidents and they've described their product that they were pretty sure it's our because they went on the Walmart website and saw one just like it. We've walked them through the process. We said now, turn the product over and look and see if it's got you know, is the pipe one inch in diameter or is it two inches in diameter? I mean, so I mean, those are things that can all be reverse engineered. I mean, even the Zippo lighter. I'm sure that if somebody that was pretty savvy in terms of design, could reverse engineer and compare the real Zippo to a counterfeit Zippo I would think and probably determine what features were unique to the Zippo. So I mean, we've never experienced true counterfeiting that I know of, of our product, but we don't really have a problem sharing specific markings or features of our product with consumers or the commission if it would help them properly identify the product, if that answers your question.
James: John, did you want to follow up on that? Ami? All right, one second Wayne. Ami had her light on first so.
Ami: Just wanted to, I had a thought with regards to what you were asking and the point that Walt brought up earlier. One of the things that could be asked on the database, as folks have mentioned previously, is where you bought the product and that may help get at the counterfeit issue. Because you know, if you bought your lighter like at a street, with a street vendor, chances are you know, that may not be a legitimate Zippo that you get at a cigar store. So another thought.
James: Wayne and then Carrie and then what I'd like to do is turn it over to audience participation.
Wayne: I know that this John, doesn't relate to all of the products within the commission's sphere, but I would say that in the electrical sector, virtually all of the products sold in the United States are third party certified. And under the terms of that certification and the use of a mark by a safety certification organization, there is placed on that product, a tracking mechanism. There is some type of a number, identification, by that testing laboratory, that is unique to the manufacturer or the owner of that particular listing, the actual location where that product is produced and the type of product that it is. And so you can point consumers usually to those and those are in a publicly available database, by which you can track back and find the manufacturer. So we've been very successful for instance, consumers call our trade association and say, I'm trying to find the manufacturer of this such and such and such. We can walk them through how they can track back using that certification tracking code, to get back to that. Certainly now a days, with the new requirements under CPSIA for tracking of children's products, that should be a little easier to do that and to walk consumers through that mechanism as well. So I [inaudible] beginning to be ways of doing that with a number of products, certainly in the electrical area. I think we've got a have good handle on that and we can certainly assist consumers and I think the commission, a lot of the people in the electrical area of the commission, they know this system, they can, they can sight it real quickly. They can train the commission staff in this database retrieval area, as to how to walk a consumer [inaudible] that situation to find the manufacturer. So I think that there's ways of doing that and I think we'll get better with time.
James: Carrie.
Carrie: Quickly in response to John, I just wanted to say that in my own experience, we have had situations where a counterfeit product turns out to be the subject of an IDI or a report to the commission and in fact, the only way to determine that, that we could find that out was to actually see the product. Because the counterfeit was very sophisticated. So that's just a situation where it really is imperative at some point for the commission or the manufacturer, to whom the product is attributed, to have an opportunity to look. Because these counterfeit products can be very sophisticated, in a way that a consumer would not detect it. And then the only other comment I wanted to make before we turn it over, is I was hoping we would get the disclaimer topic and how we should [inaudible] the disclaimer. Because there's some [inaudible] we can talk about and some good guidance.
James: Yeah and unfortunately we're very short on time and I realize that's the last question on our list. What I would say to that point is, we are still soliciting comments, I think through the twenty ninth on the questions. So please, you know, please do send in comments, whatever comments you have on that.
Carrie: May I make one brief comment about that, not in detail, which is to just suggest that the CPSIA's Section 105 and the staff's final ruling guidance about what constitutes a conspicuous cautionary statement, is very informative to what would constitute a conspicuous disclaimer. And I'm happy to talk in more detail about that at your convenience.
James: OK, thank you. What I'd like to do now is turn it over to the audience. If we have any questions, comments for the panel from the audience, we've got a microphone set up in the back. Please feel free to stand up. Yes? Hang on one sec, I think we need to turn on the microphone. All right, that works. It may not get picked up on the webcast, but. [
no speaking ] Let me, for the benefit of the webcast, I'll just repeat or briefly try and summarize your question. Let me know if I get it right. The question was basically, if you've got a parent who's got an at home lead test and they test a number of their children's products and then submit into that report, based on those test, which may not be scientific gold standard so to speak, just an at home test, how do we deal with those particular incident reports? Did I? OK. So I'll open that question up to the panel, if anyone has a response to that. Fred.
Fred: Yeah, I would think that the commission certainly would want to tread very lightly on those types of reports, with the background information that was just given. If it's a consumer using, if it's a consumer basically trying to determine whether a product conforms with an industry standard or a prohibition on lead in these products, I would think that before the commission posts that particular report, they would want to confirm that in fact the test was accurate before it was posted.
James: Any? Rachel.
Rachel: I would agree actually. I think there could also be a statement from the commission or perhaps from the manufacturer of the product, that would indicate you know, we've conducted our own tests using you know, the established and accepted standards for testing methodology and found different results. And I think that would then lead to the important dialog that could take place. But I think those are cases, true we don't want, certainly no one wants false alarms to be, to be placed on here and I think that's sort of a goal of this database too. That when there's information that can be verified or tests that are done that test differently, that have varied results, varied accuracy, that has to be indicated.
James: George.
George: Just a quick footnote. That that doesn't mean that CPSC doesn't accept the case. It just means it doesn't go on the database. Because they might want to follow up on it.
James: OK. Next question. If that microphone is not working and actually ask you to take a seat over here. Those microphones should be working just fine. No, so if you want to grab one of those.
Tom: Good afternoon. My name is Tom Long and I'm a consultant. I just, I [inaudible] a remark. I used to work for a directed consumer retailer to Wayne made a comment, we're wondering what level of complaints we're going to see with the database and I'm going to throw out a fearless prediction just based on my experience with product recalls. I think you're going to see three times as many complaints as you see now. Because in my experience, every time we did a recall, we would get reports back from probably five times as many people, saying yeah I had that same issue. And I never reported it. So for whatever it's worth. And another comment for whatever it's worth, I was very involved in product reviews being put on the website and those reviews now, there's probably three or four hundred per day on this particular company's website, those are all managed by a company called Bizarre Voice, that does that for many, many retailers. And I would suggest maybe the CPSC IT staff may want to talk with Bizarre Voice in San Antonio, just to talk about systems and procedures and how they manage tens of thousands of these types of reviews every day. With all these same types of issues of accuracy and [inaudible] the product, etcetera, etcetera.
James: OK, thank you for those two comments. Any response from the panel? If not then next question please.
[Inaudible]. I'm curious, in the state of California, under the banner of proposition 65, a group of people have sprung up called, I've heard them called private enforcers, I've heard them called citizen enforcers. How will you handle those kind of instances where they report a risk of harm or an actual incident of harm where these people's motives may not really be the interest of public safety, the interest may be more on profit. I've read reports, some of these people collect commissions for incidents that they an report to [inaudible] California. I've seen one company, one organization I really should say, that made about $37,000 last year on claims. I wonder how you would treat those incidents? One other comment, I'd like just to make about the lady from Good Housekeeping. I read an article in the Wall Street Journal last week, for $400 you can rent an XRF gun and I've heard that there are actually mothers having XRF lead testing parties and they bring all their toys and their cribs and.
[Inaudible] blogger out of I think California. And she bought this XRF gun and now she's started a business.
A business. Right.
And she's going around to families and she's charging them $250 I think for an hour, to start shooting all of their toys. And they're not always accurate.
Absolutely.
That's what started the question in my mind. Is on one hand she could possibly be finding something. Which we want to look into. But on the other hand, she could be finding absolutely nothing and we don't want to cause mass hysteria on have people throwing out all their kids toys. Same thing with the good guy in Zoozoo Pets.
Correct. I work with XRF guns almost every day and sometimes you really have to be very careful with the way that you take the readings. You may not get an accurate reading, plus or minus, just depending on how you do the test. But again, getting back to my question and it kind of echoes what she said is, this woman started a business testing things for lead. When people's motives may be safety, they may be profit, how will we handle those kind of reports? Thank you.
James: Melissa.
Melissa: I would just say that the statute itself speaks to who can submit the report. Obviously we've heard commentary today from everybody about perhaps further definition of those identified categories of [inaudible]. So I think that that may in fact answer your question and we also heard commentary with respect to the issue of third parties submitting information.
They'd be excluded then from submitting?
Melissa: We are gathering comments as we speak. We're not making calls today. So I'm just mentioning what the statute says and what we've heard today. So that's something obviously we'll be looking at.
Thank you.
James: George.
George: Just a thought on that. Again, the fact that somebody is investigating a hazard for profit, to my mind doesn't rule them out. There are a lot of people around this table who are hear with the primary interest in profit and a secondary interest in safety. And I wouldn't disqualify them from commenting. So the question still comes back to is the report materially accurate and does it contain the information we want? And have they identified a real incident? Would be my question. Whether their motives are because their baby got hurt or because they found the hazard and they think they can make money off of it, I don't care. I'm just looking to find out how to make safety better.
James: Any, any additional questions or comments from the audience? Rachel.
Rachel: Just one comment about that. I mean, I think it is true that information coming in to the commission, you know whether it's the database or not, no matter what the motive may be, there may be very useful information that is accurate, that is true, that does bear on the circumstance. But I don't think as a threshold issue, information should be ignored across the board, depending on who it's from. I think it is a separate issue in the database, because there is a prescribed list of folks who can report and you know, they have to report harm or potential harm. But as a threshold matter you know, even if an XRF gun or a home lead kit doesn't, is not the same standard, it's always possible that it is in fact accurate. So just know the messenger may not, should not be the sole reason to entirely discount information.
James: If you've got a brief comment, we're quite a bit over time.
Quick. I agree with Rachel and I also would say that's why I believe congress envisioned this situation with regard to disclaimer and why the disclaimer is so important to be on [inaudible] and also on every printed page, should this be allowed to be printed down. Thank you.
James: All right. Ami, something very brief or.
Ami: May want to put a notice on the website that third parties can't, you know, if you're a third party, click here to contact the commission with you know, with a problem.
James: OK, with that I'd like to wrap up this particular workshop. We've got one more workshop this afternoon, which is going to be on additional information in the database. I want to thank all of our panelists for this workshop. Thank everyone for their attendance. We'll take a very short break. We're a little over time, so let's try and keep it between five and ten minutes and we'll reconvene with the fifth workshop after that. Thanks very much. [
no speaking ]
OK, we're getting ready to start the last workshop this afternoon. Additional database content. So if everyone could please be seated. Patricia Vierra, from our general council's office is going to give this brief overview.
Patricia: Once again, good afternoon. I'm Patricia [inaudible] council's office. I'm going to provide a very short overview of the statutory provisions guiding this next discussion. And as we've said before, the views are those of the staff and do not necessarily represent those of the commission. To recap what we've covered so far, there are four content requirements for the database. And looking at the bullets, I think you can tell, two of them are bolded. Those are the ones we have not covered so far. So hopefully this next discussion will cover those. Information the commission derives from mandatory recall notice section 15C and any notice of a voluntary corrective action taken by a manufacturer about which the commission notified the public. And the last one, consistent with section 6A and B of the CPSA, any additional information the commission determines is in the public interest. Also, the database shall not include information received by the commission under section 15B or information received under any other mandatory or voluntary reporting program established between a retailer, manufacturer or private labeler and the commission. With that frame work in mind, I'll turn it back to James to kick off the discussion on additional database content. Thank you very much and enjoy the rest of the afternoon.
James: All right, thanks Patricia and thanks everyone for coming back for our fifth panel. Again, I'll keep my opening remarks very brief. I think everyone's already heard them a number of times. We are interested of course in having a good, interactive dialog here. What I would like to do is once again, just have everyone go around, give a very brief introduction. Your name, your organization and keep it, try and keep it under sixty seconds. Thanks.
Jennifer: Hi, I'm Jennifer Cleary [assumed spelling] of [inaudible] representing those [inaudible].
[Inaudible].
Ami: Ami Gadia [assumed spelling], consumer's union.
Shawn: Shawn Kane, safety research and strategies.
Cathy: Cathy Irish. I'm the director for epidemiology and I'm in the division of hazard and injury data systems.
Alberta: Alberta Mills, Freedom of Information officer.
Ming: Ming Chu [assumed spelling], office of the CIO, [inaudible] project manager.
[Inaudible] psychologist with the division of human factors at CPSC.
Mary: Mary Kelsey, IT policy and planning.
James: All right thanks, thanks very much. I'd like to jump right, Rachel you want to give a quick introduction as well?
Rachel: All right, Rachel Entraub [assumed spelling], Consumer Federation of America.
James: All right. Thanks. I'd like to jump right in with this one. We'll keep the same format. We'll keep a little bit of time at the end for audience participation as well. As Patricia pointed out, she went through some of the statute. What we'd like to do is go through, we had three questions that were part of the public announcement. The first one is, what additional categories of information should the CPSC include in the public database and why? Fairly open ended question and I'm hoping we can generate some interesting dialog here. Get some responses going around. What other information might be able to go in that database. So I'll open that up either to our outside panelists or to our CPSC panelists. If anyone has any ideas they'd like to put forward on that. Shawn.
Shawn: Sure I'll throw, I mean I think you know, we, when these questions are envisioning what can the consumer get back when they're using the database? And I think it's you know, in our experience again, using the complaint [inaudible]. When a consumer is looking for information about a product, they don't want to have to search in three or four different data sets to find out, you know, what's going [inaudible]. It would be advantageous for a consumer to be able to search, in a complaint area or in an area on the site, that would allow them to get the complaint and recalls and investigation information in one shot. And I think it makes a lot of sense. It saves a lot of effort and it can reduce the frustration on the consumer in terms of trying to find information and get, you know, should be reasonably accessible within the agency.
James: Ami.
Ami: Agree. Recall information should be available on the database and given that health professionals are amongst those who and public safety folks, may be amongst those reporting a link to Nice or an inclusion of Nice data would be helpful as well I think.
James: OK. Rachel.
Rachel: In testimony that I offered in November before the commission, I explored a little bit what the statute could mean when it says, in the public interest. And a couple of comments, some I mentioned then, some I've expanded on. The CPSC should determine whether criteria other than that listed, is helpful. Helpful to the commission, helpful to consumers in better identifying the product and the potential harm. Also the commission should make the phone script or the entry form, for those reporting to the database, clear and easy to follow. Every effort should be [inaudible] encourage as many details in the report without being so long and lengthy that it ends up discouraging reporting. And also that after the entry part, but in terms of accessing the information, the information should be [inaudible] in such a way that consumers and others can find answers. CPSC has to build and I think you already are thinking about this in this way, but CPSC must build in functionality to allow for searches based upon specific products, specific product names, including misspellings, different types of harms and various uses of products.
James: OK, Chow.
Chow: I first want to add a disclaimer before I start my statement. That is all the following I'm suggesting can be considered as optional. It's not a required field for information populating. And then what I'm seeing is there are potentially three parties that can be involved in the population of the database. First is consumer and all the parties that delineate it by the statute. Second, it can be a combination and thirdly it can be the manufacturer if they have the opportunity present comments as well. So from the consumer perspective, I think they should be highly encouraged to provide detailed description of the incidents and I think we should all understand and but acknowledge that the consumers they are not necessarily safety professionals. So which means guidance is probably needed to guide them through which are the critical informations so that to facilitate the input process. For example, like the product characteristic features, functions. You know, what is the specific activity, the victim or the bystanders engaged in and whether there is any other products involved in the stature. And then another optional field for the consumer is also the incident outcomes. So is that more for potential concern something may happen or is that something already happen and what is the severity of the incident. And then from the manufacturer, I think it may be beneficial for everyone to see the manufacturer's response, even you know, for better judgment. No matter whether it's the consumer, commission or the industry themselves. I think there is the benefit for that. The following one, which is what I captured as additional information, I'm not sure whether that's the best place for communication, for the CPSC or for the manufacturer, to comment on. But that's the basically the information that I think Ami mentioned, should the incident involves a product that eventually was recalled or there is any corrective action taken place, I think that would be the information that can be disseminated [inaudible] box for people to see. As to the agency, I think it would be ideal. You've CPSC since you will be reviewing the incidents that coming through, it would be very nice if you can have sort of like hazard of concern kind of box. Because during the [inaudible] days, we said we really want to, highly encourage consumers to populate as much information as possible. Which also means that for a consumer if I'm logging on to the website, I can see pages, pages of information. There is a possibility there and it may be very time consuming or they wouldn't [inaudible] for me to get any clue, exactly what's the real concern or what happened to the product. So if there is can be a quick snapshot or synopsis or what exactly happened, sort of in the format that what we are seeing is the hazard field in the recall, that would be ideal. Thank you.
James: Rachel.
Rachel: Sorry. I think those are really useful comments and I think you know, the key is the commission finding a balance here. Finding a balance for getting more information without being such a long, unwieldy form that consumers would be turned off and just abandon the effort to report. So I think that's a challenge.
James: OK. Any additional comments in terms of information?
I'm just curious in terms of a couple of people have mentioned recall notices. In terms of like level of specificity, how, how far do you go? Does it have to be a notice about the specific product that you're talking about? I know that I think yesterday a couple people mentioned recalls [inaudible] similar products or what about the, just the general safety alerts that CPSC will put out sometimes about a product class that that might fall under.
James: Shawn.
Shawn: Yeah, I'll take a stab at it. You know, we build a commercial database where we looked at you know, using the Nitza data and one of the things we look at how people, what are people really trying to get back? And so one of the things we have is a category called related information and we've also go exact match information. So I think to your question is you know, if you're searching on a very specific crib model, then you know, if there's a recall related to that crib model great, if there's recalls related to similar, maybe that goes in the related information tab, things you might be interested in. And we found that you know, feedback from our folks is that that's particularly helpful, because they don't always know what they're necessarily wanting to look at, but that related information would just use some logic to pull back things that are related.
James: Ami.
Ami: I think obviously if that particular product at some point has been the subject of a recall or a corrective action, that should obviously come up in the database query. But to what you know, you're asking about the more, the broader categories you know, another crib, but not crib but they're you know, specifically looking into or making a complaint about. What I, one of the suggestions I made yesterday was that in the triaging, to use [inaudible] of getting into the point where you fill in the database. One of the steps would be you know, product categories. And so maybe once the individual gets to the product category, one of the questions, one of the links might be you know, what children's products have been recalled. And then that links to you know, recalls of a particular kind. Or if they drill down to cribs, what cribs have been recalled. And then they can just click on that. You know, [inaudible] get that kind of information.
So you're envisioning it sort of a and I know this is kind of how it was described yesterday, sort of a multi-layer approach where you are not necessarily just filling in a single form where you're saying you know, filling in everything and then submitting it. You're submitting you know, a certain level of information that takes you to another level, at which point you can be presented with information and you can also continue to pair you know, give additional information that would, that would tighten up the criteria that you'd be you know, performing the search at. Is that? Does that sort of capture what you're saying?
Ami: Yeah I mean and you know, not to be sort of aggravatingly not answering your question, but you know, in a way that it doesn't make the process more complicated you know, but as they're going to be doing like step by step you know. Step one, what category is your product. And then the step two page is you know, those five elements of information that they are required to enter, as well as you know, below that something about you know, what children's products have been recalled or what tools have been recalled or whatever. Perhaps.
James: Jennifer.
Jennifer: I would agree that it's useful to have some other information for the consumer, but I think we want, also want to balance and make sure that we're not weighing the form down with additional pop ups [inaudible] to be useful to the consumer. I think as we've been talking about striking a balance, that would be really critical with these pop ups as well.
Ami: This may be where the focus grouping comes in. [Laughter].
James: All right, anything further on that? OK, if not the next question is, is kind of the opposite which is, what if any information, cannot be included in the public database pursuant to the statute [inaudible]? Do we have any comments on that? None? All right. Finally, under what circumstances are the provisions Section 6A and 6B of the CPSA, relevant to the provisions of Section 6A of the CPSA, especially with regard to the additional, to additional categories of information that may included in the public database? If we, Rachel.
Rachel: I'm sorry, I think much, those of us who have been speaking to you a lot where incredibly there's probably some algorithm of how much slower we are on the uptake. [
laughter ] Just for your, to answer your first, your previous question in part.
James: Yes please, please do.
Rachel: I think, you know, we've discussed this before, but I think there is you know, complete agreement that fraudulent information should never be on the database. That that's harmful across the board. So, that's the sort of simple answer. For that question.
James: Jennifer.
Jennifer: We would absolutely agree with that, in addition to the things that are specifically listed in the statute as being excluded, which we began the session discussing.
James: OK. Anyone else? Anyone want to address the third question that was included in the public notice? Yeah, Rachel.
Rachel: Well one important point is that this database is specifically exempted from 6B, so that's a threshold issue that this information does not need to go through the 6B analysis. So that's very important. But I think one that I believe it was Melissa articulated before that, there are elements of what the commission does to comply with 6A and 6B, that could be useful here. Such as the current analysis that the CPSC performs, I think it was 16CFR1101.32, talking about regulations pertaining to [inaudible] accessing the accuracy of information. So I think what specifically is not exempted, is sort of lessons learned from the current use of applying commission discretion and analysis for determining accuracy.
James: Jennifer.
Jennifer: I agree with part of your statement Rachel, but I do think that the database in it's entirety is not exempt from 6A and 6B. The reports received under Part B1A are what are the statute states are exempt from those sections. So I believe that the additional information that would be added, if the commission determines it's in the public interest, would be and it states in the section, that it is needs to be consistent with [inaudible] of Section 6A and 6B.
Rachel: Well that raises and interesting question. That is you know, what, what ends up being what it is in that provision which creates the database. If you interpret it incredibly narrowly, then it's only that information that has those [inaudible] criteria. But I wouldn't, I wouldn't interpret it that way. I think any information on the database would be considered exempt because it goes to what the database is in that provision and the provision sets out the minimum criteria but allows for the CPSC in their discretion, to interpret it more extensively in the public interest. So I don't think those other factors or other information outside of that category, is outside of 6B.
James: OK. Any, any additional comment? At this point, of course you know, we can come [inaudible] to some of these discussion points. I'd like to ask the CPSC staff if they have any additional questions at this point, in terms of additional content in the database or really anything [inaudible] that? And if not, well while you're thinking about that, if anyone in the audience would like to come up, if anyone in the audience has any questions or comments they'd like to pose to the panel, please feel free to stand up and give us, give us one second to get the microphone turned on. It's working again. [
no speaking ]
Tom: Yeah, I'm Tom Parks with Bell Supports and I certainly agree that keeping the survey as simple as possible and as friendly as possible, is very key. Because obviously the more input we get, the better. I wondered if perhaps once we determined what the essential information is and there well be more than those five elements we've been discussing, maybe it's six or eight or ten, at that point, again hopefully just a few minutes of time would be required to get to that point, we note that thank you for this information. This is all the information that is required, however it would be helpful if you could answer these additional five or six questions. In other words, let people know that they've already completed the minimum level and as such, you know they've been very helpful. But if they can spend the time to answer additional questions, they would be even that much more helpful. I'm involved in customer service like a lot of us in this room are, either directly or indirectly [inaudible] calling in with allegations of harm or potential harm and some of these things, most of these things we discussed yesterday that would be very helpful from an analysis standpoint. The date of purchase is extremely helpful. Because for example, if someone bought almost any toy five years ago and it was colored red, that product has lead in it. And that is at least extremely common to have lead in product that is that old or older and yet that is less helpful today because all good manufacturers have long ago abandoned lead in the colorants involved in children's products. So date of purchase would be very important. Place of purchase we discussed as well, which is very helpful. Date of the incident is also helpful. Because sometimes people will contact us for incidents [inaudible]. The freshness can be helpful for us to evaluate just what's going on. If that product is available of course, it's very helpful to the commission and also perhaps to the manufacturer so that we can make a more complete analysis. And I think having a specific request to upload a photo, in other words as opposed to having it be just an optional aspect. If we could have a particular category for that, again to help place the product, to make sure that we understand actually what the brand and the model is. Every detail, like the location on the body, size and degree of the injury, whether they sought medical [inaudible] specifics of the activity at the time of injury is very, very helpful. If and I think we were talking about this to an extent earlier on the product description. If for example they are unable to for example, come up with a brand or the model, even things like the color or asking them to look for any numbers that might appear on the product could be helpful. Looking for any kind of a sticker, any identifying sticker. Those kinds of things can be helpful to find out. So.
James: OK, thank you. Thank you very much for the comments. Anyone on the panel have a response to that? OK.
Mary: Mary Campbell from Annette, Phelps and Phillips. I have one comment and then a question. The comment is in response to [inaudible] comment. And I'm just looking at the language concerning the applicability of 6B, whether it applies or doesn't apply and it looks very clear where it says, the provisions of Section 6A and B, shall not apply to the disclosure under this Section of a report described in sub section B1A. So I think very specifically, limited to a report that meets the requirements of section 6 or section B1A and then other than that, I think the commission does operate under it's long existing 6B standards for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of information that's reasonably related to effectuate the purpose of the act which Melissa reviewed at the beginning of this discussion. So I think for anything other than a report, that's the rules of disclosure that would apply, as I read the information. And then my question is for the staff. A perplexing one to me and I just don't know how this is going to work. So I really appreciate any feedback or guidance in whatever form it may come. How does the report, reported information and the information on the public database, co-exist with existing Clearinghouse and Foya procedures? I'm trying to figure out how that's going to work and if someone doesn't go directly on to the database to file an incident report and they use one of the existing means of calling in or writing in or some way the report is collected, where does everything live and how is it processed and how does it co-exist with what we've known for the last twenty years?
I think that's something we haven't worked out yet. [
laughter ]
Mary: So I'm not alone.
We're still trying to figure that out. Because it is going to be a little strange in the beginning.
Mary: Yeah I'm wondering when the Foya request comes in, what's the bucket?
What databases do you search?
Mary: Right and I mean I would just say thinking out loud, to discuss the new circumstances. If it's on the public database, why would it need to be subject to Foya? Because the premise of Foya is something that's within the, right, if it's publicly available, the Foya process would not be required.
It would be something that.
Mary: So I think that's worth some consideration and it would certainly ease the burden on the staff.
It is the whole purpose of the database. That they don't have to make an FOY request.
Mary: Right. So I would think it would have some impact on how we handle the Foya's and the extent of them going forward.
James: Rachel, did you want to add something to that?
Rachel: Yeah, I just wanted to respond to the comment about what 6A and 6B do in fact apply to and see that it is the report. But I think the question is and I'm not sure we may be in agreement, we may not be. I'm not quite sure. But what the question is, what is the report? I think becomes the question. [Inaudible] 6B1, it describes you know, who [inaudible] the report, but I think the question is and I'm not sure if I'm reading more into it or if you're stating this or I'm not exactly sure what the implication is here but, I think the issue is what the report is. Whether it is the initial information, whether it's the information that was provided for certain categories, I'm not quite sure. But I do agree that the report is exempt from this. And again, it may be for discussion at some other point, but what people view as what constitutes the report and if information that a consumer or other entity provides you know, through this mechanism. Is that the report? I think that's sort of the plain meaning of what the report is. I'm just not sure if people are thinking that it's the definition of report is now or then.
James: Any other comments on that? Tim, I didn't mean to cut you off on the last question. It looked like you might have had a response to that.
Tim: Yeah, this is related to the previous commenter. I was just curious, the way that you specifically described saying OK, you've entered all the required information, now here's some additional information that would be useful to us, to what extent you think that by specifically calling out and telling them OK, you've entered everything you're required to enter [inaudible] encourage consumers to figure oh OK well, I'm just going to stop there and stop at that point, as opposed to the additional information. I don't know whether anybody has any thoughts on that.
James: Rachel.
Rachel: You know, that, with that comment which I thought which was very interesting, but it made me think about what to me suggested that this is exactly what's right for a focus group. To figure out what is that right balance. How do you encourage people to report, to report information that helps the commission, helps other consumers, helps manufacturers identify the product and the harm and take action if it's necessary, without [inaudible] a consumer. So I think you know, I think you as an expert in human factors, as well as folks you know in the focus group situation, would help guide the commission in finding that right balance.
James: OK. Next question.
[Inaudible], I'm with GE Appliances. This is for Tim. You talked about a specific recall information, related information, one thing you know as an engineer, you know we might make one model for ten years and if there is some kind of excursion, it's usually you know, a narrow window. So it'll be a model and a serial that will identify what was actually recalled. So if because the customer types in a model number, it may not actually be on the recall, just because it matches, matched the time window too. So you might think about how to present that to the customers. That you might say, this might be under recall. Click here to see the notice. And then they can go look that up. Because one thing it would make, it would just make, make a lot of work for us, the manufacturer to think the customer may be under recall and it's really not. So just think about how you might convey that to the customer. I think the related information is great. About the product category. If you have other, if there's been a GE recall, if you want to list that with the other type of products that are there, that seems fine. It probably wouldn't make sense to talk about Whirlpool dishwashers if they were searching for GE dishwashers. So if it's related to us it makes sense and the general thing makes sense too. Thank you.
Tim: Thanks.
James: Any other comments or questions from the audience? Or from our panel? Nothing more at this point? All right, well then I think that wraps up our final workshop. This one was fairly brief. But thanks, Rachel, did you have something you wanted.
Rachel: Sorry. [
laughter ]
James: No, it's all right.
Rachel: I wasn't sure if you were ending this and going to another topic. I would just like to thank you very much. Thank the commission. Thank the staff here. I mean, I think these past few days have been incredibly productive and the commitment to which the commission and the staff are showing to this issue, is impressive and gratifying and I wanted to thank you for holding these meetings so that we could express our views on this very important issue. So thank you very much.
Again, we want to thank everyone that attended over the last few days, and the panel members. We've gotten a lot of good information. I do want to remind you that we're going to continue to accept comments on these topics through January 29th. So if you think of anything and you want to add something or you know, just continue to send those comment to us. We're going to review everything and I think as Melissa and as Pat Wadel [assumed spelling] has mentioned earlier, we want to make sure we have as much information as possibly can to present to the commission, so that they can make as informed a decision as they possibly can. So we appreciate everyone's input. Thank you.
James: I think that concludes it. Thanks everyone for your participation.