The Consumer Product Safety Commission will vote on its final rule on bed rails at an open meeting on February 22, 2012. The final rule would establish a mandatory consumer product safety standard for toddler bed rails that adopts the voluntary ASTM F1821-09 standard, but with certain modifications to strengthen the standard. A live webcast of the meeting can be viewed here.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has posted the comments it received on its November 2011 proposed rule to require that periodic testing of children's products be conducted using representative, instead of random, samples to ensure continued compliance of children's products with all applicable rules, bans, standards, and regulations. Trade association comments submitted largely support the use of representative sampling, however, suggest ways CPSC could provide more flexibility for affected businesses.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is announcing the availability of its service contract inventory for fiscal year 2011, pursuant to the Consolidated Appropriations Act. This inventory provides information on service contract actions over $25,000 that CPSC made in FY 2011. Specifically, it includes a description of the services purchased by the agency and the role the services played in achieving agency objectives, the total dollar amount obligated for services under the contract, the name of the contractor and place of performance, etc. CPSC's Division of Procurement Services has also posted its FY 2011 inventory summary format, inventory standard format, and the FY 2010 analysis here.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is again extending the comment period on its October 2011 advance notice of proposed rulemaking on whether a mandatory performance safety standard is needed to address an unreasonable risk of injury associated with table saw blades. CPSC previously extended the comment period on this ANPR to February 10, 2012 and is now extending the comment period to March 16, 2012 so that the Power Tools Institute (PTI) can review Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests submitted to the CPSC.

The Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements has determined that certain faux suede bonded to faux fur pile fabric classifiable under HTS subheading 6001.10.2000 cannot be supplied in commercial quantities in a timely manner by Dominican Republic-Central America-U.S. Free Trade Agreement countries. The product will be added to the list in Annex 3.25 of the DR-CAFTA in unrestricted quantities. (See ITT's Online Archives 12011302 for summary of the "commercial availability" request by S. Rothschild & Co., Inc.)

Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Adler has voted against a request by the Power Tool Institute (PTI) for an additional extension of time to comment on CPSC's October 2011 advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) on table saw blade contact injuries. The ANPR had a December 12, 2011 comment due date, which CPSC extended to February 10, 2012. PTI requested comment extension due to its pending Freedom of Information Act requests, which it states it needs before fully commenting on the ANPR. Adler states this does not justify a further extension of the comment date. He notes that as of February 8, 2012, there are over 1,000 comments on the ANPR that have been uploaded to www.regulations.gov.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission published notice of the following voluntary recalls for February 8-9, 2012:

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is scheduled to vote on February 14, 2012 on a staff recommendation to accredit the Milliken Pyroanalytical Center and the Goodbaby Child Product Co., LTD. Central Laboratory as firewalled third-party labs for testing conformity with children’s product safety rules. Staff recommendations are available here and here.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission will vote on its final rule to amend the mandatory safety standard for all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) on February 14, 2012. CPSC established the standard, ANSI/SVIA 1-2007, as a consumer product safety standard in 2008, as required by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). This final rule establishes the 2010 version of the ANSI/SVIA standard as the mandatory standard for ATVs.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a proposed rule to establish a mandatory safety standard for infant swings. According to CPSC, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA) requires it to promulgate consumer product safety standards for durable infant or toddler products, including infant swings, that are “substantially the same as” applicable voluntary standards or more stringent than the voluntary standard if the CPSC concludes that more stringent requirements would further reduce the risk of injury associated with the product.