Summary Statement of the Honorable Mary Sheila Gall on Vote

Today I voted to deny the petition submitted by the Consumer Federation of America requesting that the Commission require manufacturers, distributors, retailers or importers of children's products to include a product registration card (PRC) with their products. There are three grounds on which I base my decision to deny the petition. Following is a summary of these grounds; a more detailed explanation is provided in my full statement.

First, a PRC would not materially improve the ability of the Commission and of manufacturers, distributors and retailers to recall defective products, and would certainly not be worth the costs that it would entail. Studies have shown that the return rates on product registration cards, even for expensive safety-related products, are low. In contrast, the costs of generating the cards and maintaining them in a database would likely be substantial.

Second, neither the plain meaning of the Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA) nor the Federal Hazardous Substances Act (FHSA) provides the Commission with the legal authority to require the maintenance of a PRC database as requested by the petitioners. Furthermore, the legislative history of the CPSA demonstrates that Congress considered, and explicitly rejected, precisely the authority that the petitioners ask the Commission to assert.

Third, any rule requiring a PRC for such a broad category of products would likely violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution. Specifically, there is no rational basis for singling out children's products as products requiring PRCs, since there is no evidence that children's products are any more dangerous than other products.

Since I find the petition to be fundamentally flawed, I have decided that it should be denied, rather than merely deferred. I strongly support the ongoing effort of the staff to enhance recall effectiveness, and I recognize that PRCs may be helpful items for manufacturers to include for certain classes of consumer products.