In response to the CPSC warning, Infantino LLC, the company behind one of the most controversial baby slings, has announced a recall of over one million baby slings that have been sold throughout North America.

“It does not matter how old your baby is at this point with the Infantino sling,” CPSC’s Scott Wolfson told ABC News. “Do not use it. This sling places the baby in a very deep part of the product. What is so dangerous is when the fabric covers nose and mouth or when baby is turned into the body of the mother and the airway is restricted.”

At least 13 babies have died while resting in the sling, including three this year, according to news reports. According to the CPSC, a child can suffocate when a sling’s cloth is covering its nose and mouth. Because of babies’ weak neck muscles, they are not always able to turn their head free.

In a statement, Infantino said, “We appreciate the actions by the CPSC today, and are committed to working with them as well as parents and caregivers to address concerns they may have with baby slings.”

The most common problems associated with Ortho Evra, Bloomberg notes, are:

According to the story:

J&J’s annual report cited “a significant decline” in Ortho Evra sales because of “labeling changes and negative media coverage concerning product safety.”

Worth noting, J&J has never actually gone to trial over Ortho Evra:

“Their exposure was pretty high, so they were willing to talk turkey about settling,” [one of the plaintiff's attorneys Russell] Rein said. “They have been settling out quite a few cases where the damages are significant and the causation is clear.”

Some groups, such as Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, question why the patch is still on the market and have petitioned the FDA to ban it within six months.

J&J disagrees, as Gloria Vanderham, a spokeswoman for J&J, says, “When used according to the FDA-approved label, Ortho Evra is a safe and effective method of hormonal birth control.”

The department found that 3M was shaving six percent off its tape products (the company’s advertised one-inch tape actually came out to 0.94 of an inch), violating the state and federal Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, according to the Fresno County deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case. As part of the settlement, 3M agreed to pay $600,000 in civil fees, $75,000 to a state trust fund benefiting various California weights and measures offices and $18,000 to the Department of Measurement and Standards, according to one report.

As with most settlements, 3M didn’t admit or deny guilty, but in this case it won’t be that easy to get off the hook: one only needs a ruler to figure out that they were, in fact, misrepresenting the size of their tape. The company agreed to remove the one-inch and other inaccurate labels from its tape products. Crisis averted.

For those unfamiliar with mulesing, it’s named after John Mules – the first to “accidentally” develop the practice – and involves cutting off pieces of wrinkle skin from around the rear of a sheep to prevent flystrike. Flystrike leads to infection and eventually death, however mulesing is extremely painful and often done with little or no painkillers for the sheep. Enter PETA.

PETA heavily fought the practice, commonplace in Australia, and reached a tentative cease-fire with the nation’s wool industry (AWI) last summer (the Australian Wool Industry agreed to stop mulesing, and PETA had to agree to “conduct itself within the law”). It appears that the AWI is now reneging on its promise, and PETA is again up in arms.

Many retailers have already stopped importing wool from Australia because of the practice. Sweden-based H&M is the latest of them, saying, “H&M does not accept mulesing. The company has decided to direct its buying towards other countries of origin and other suppliers in Australia that can guarantee mulesing-free merino wool.”

Motley Fool attributes some of the company’s success to consumers having “the attention span of the kids for whom they’re buying toys.” While that might be partly true, the company also did pro-actively work to fix the situation and ensure that the same problems don’t come up in the future. Whatever the reasons for its success, Mattel can be happy it didn’t go the way of Topps Meat Co., which suffered a recall around the same time and immediately went out of business.

Motley Fool also notes that Hasbro, obviously a big rival to Mattel, is expected to release very “upbeat” reports on its own fourth-quarter results, which will likely overshadow Mattel’s meager but important progress. Hasbro, which recently bought the Cranium board game, is predicted to announce “a 30% increase in profits on a 9% increase in sales to $1.2 billion.”

Polyvinyl Chloride is an extremely profitable substance for the chemical industry. Although there are fears that PVC releases toxins like mercury and dioxins – far traveling chemicals that can lead to immune system disorders or cancer – PVC is still commonly used by the construction industry because of its low cost and high durability.

Several companies have already eliminated PVC from their products, or are in the process of phasing it out. Microsoft addressed the problem a couple years ago and Wal-Mart has recently eliminated PVC from its in house brand products as well.

In the late 90’s, a former employee blew the whistle on the company and cited “dangerously high levels of estrogen” in the Ortho Evra patch. Later, in 2005, the FDA announced that the patch exposed women to about 60 percent higher levels of estrogen than the average daily oral contraception pill. High levels of estrogen can result in strokes, blood clots and heart attacks – which, as a matter of fact, are the very reasons that 2,400 other women have sued J&J. Most complained of blood clots in the legs and lungs, according to one Bloomberg report.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, the Associated Press obtained information from the FDA revealing that women on the Ortho Evra patch are three times as likely to experience a blood clot or die compared to those using oral contraceptives. Although not admitting guilt, J&J has required signed confidentiality agreements from each of the plaintiffs in the settlements.

The recall, one of the largest beef recalls in U.S. history, was initiated because the meat was potentially contaminated with E. coli. It was the first recall for the company, founded 67 years ago.

Although only 87 employees officially worked for Topps, it was considered one of the largest suppliers of frozen hamburger patties in the country. Ten of the employees will stay on to assist the USDA in its investigation, the company said.

Thirty people are believed to have become sick from eating Topps’ meat, although none have died.

Commentary: You can’t get a more blatant example of why quality controls are a necessity.

Topps Meat, Co. recalled the meat, which included ground beef and those packages that have either a “sell by” or “best if used by” date between September 25, 2007 and September 25, 2008 on the casing.

Additionally, all recalled products will have a USDA establishment number of EST 9748, according to a press release issued by the company. The number can be found on the back panel of the package and/or in the USDA legend.

This marks the ninth E. coli related outbreak in the United States since 1990.

Commentary: Topps Meat made sure to note in their press releases that the recall was voluntary. All in all the company has done a good job of handling the issue by taking such steps as posting information about E. coli on their website and listing the UPC codes of at-risk products.

Tuesday’s incident at a school near London, Ontario revealed that sometimes students perform the act on each other.

“This is a fairly common thing around the province,” said Middlesex Ontario Provincial Police Constable Doug Graham.

Police believe that the victim consented to being lit on fire, although they have found the person who used the lighter.

Graham had this to say:

“It certainly wasn’t a case of bullying, but under the law it doesn’t matter if you agree to it or not. You can’t just say to somebody ‘Hurt me real bad.’”

Commentary: Ugh… We can only imagine the user warning labels that attorneys at Unilever are going to have to grapple with now: “WARNING: do NOT spray on yourself and set yourself on fire!” Not to mention this will have to be on top of Axe’s anti-huffing campaign already in place.

A restraint strap hanging from a changing table on the ‘Sesame beginnings’ play yard was responsible for the death. Kolcraft instructed consumers to stop using the changing tables and contact the company in order to obtain a new strap.

Read the article from the Chicago Tribune.

Judge Sue Pullen said the company had “insufficient” safety conditions in place and lacked adequate training for its employees. The court took into account the company’s guilty plea as well as its cooperation with the investigation, Pullen said.

Read the story as presented The Daily Telegraph.

The study began in 2004 by the University of Southampton and tested the effect of specific additives on children aged 3-4 and 8-9 years old. One of the additives brought into question is known as sodium benzoate which is found in “soft drinks, jams and salad dressings.”

Check out Financial Times for the full article.

A team of Australian scientists from the Queensland University of Technology found that almost a third of all business laser printer models emit dangerous levels of toner particles into the ambient office air. In an open office environment, this resulted in a 5x increase in particulates in the air during office hours.

Read more about it over the BBC.

Commentary: We wonder if any lawyers are ’starting their engines’ over this one.

The worldwide recall affects 967,000 Nickelodeon and Sesame Street toys, including such popular items the Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters.

In an interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday, David Allmark, general manager of Fisher-Price, said the problem was detected by an internal investigation and self-reported to the consumer product safety commission (CPSC).

Under current U.S. regulations, children’s products found to have more than .06 percent lead accessible to users are subject to a recall.

Commentary: Understandably, Fisher-Price spun the positives hard to this: an internal probe discovered the contamination and they were able to ‘quarantine’ two-thirds of the toys before they reached store shelves, and that the company would use the recall as an opportunity to put even better monitoring systems in place.

Six weeks ago, Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay $5.5 million in damages in a Florida lawsuit over a defective pain-killing patch that resulted in the death of a Florida man. While initially the company looked like it would appeal the judgment, they instead tried to settle it quietly for $2.5 million.

An excerpt from Bloomberg provided details on the J&J suit:

Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay more than $2.5 million to settle claims that its Duragesic pain-killing patch caused the death of a Florida man, three people with direct knowledge of the accord said.

The agreement means Johnson & Johnson, the world’s largest medical-device maker, won’t have to pay $5.5 million in damages awarded by a jury in June to the family of Adam Hendelson, the people said. The jury concluded Hendelson overdosed on opiate fentanyl when his pain patch leaked the substance in 2003…

The jury in federal court in West Palm Beach, Florida, found that officials of the Johnson & Johnson units knew about defects in the patches and failed to properly warn doctors and consumers about their risks…

MacDonald, a partner in the law firm of MacDonald Rothweiler Eisenberg, said Johnson & Johnson ultimately may have to work out a global settlement of the 300 to 400 wrongful-death suits over the Duragesic patches. “They’ve lost the only two cases that have gone to trial so far,” he noted. “That should be an indicator to them of things to come.”

Commentary: J&J lost another case on the pain patch in Houston two weeks ago as well. This case reminds of the widely-read article in the Q2 edition of Ethisphere Magazine about the ethical lapses and mishaps which seem to be plaguing Johnson & Johnson – and which can be read here.

Gary Shipman, a Wilmington lawyer who led the suit, countered by arguing that the order was error-ridden, served out of the blue (as the case is two years old), and that Tennille did not have jurisdiction to rule on the case.

The class action suit accused Sears of overcharging patrons – charging each for four-wheel alignments on cars that can only be serviced with a less expensive two wheel alignment. Although the inflation only amounted to a few dollars per customer, it meant millions of dollars in revenues for the retail giant. Tennille claimed in his order that for each plaintiff that received a $10 check or a $4 coupon, their counsel would pocket nearly $3,000.

Medtronic has been facing approximately 2,000 claims over battery defects in the defibrillators which are potentially fatal and had tried to keep the settlement confidential. The corporation, however, did reserve the right to pull out of the agreement if 90% of claimants did accept it.

In the past Medtronic recalled 87,000 defibrillators because of battery failures – but said that no deaths were linked to any failures of the devices. Plaintiff lawyers contend that Medtronic officials, despite know of the defects, continued selling flawed products for two years after learning in 2003 about the battery-failure glitches.

Commentary: Medtronic is hardly the only company having trouble with defibrillators however. Guidant (now owned by Boston Scientific) did a 2005 recall of over 100,000 defibrillators (and like Medtronic, the plaintiff bar is arguing that the company knew of the defects but hid them to protect sales – but unlike Medtronic, the Guidant defibrillators were linked to at least seven deaths). Just two weeks ago, Guidant agreed to pay $195 million to settle roughly 4,000 claims (which probably set the dollar range and motivation behind this similar settlement). The third-largest heart device maker, St. Jude, also conducted a monster recall of 75,000 defibrillators in 2005.

Care to know an interesting (and spooky) thought? The St. Jude recall was in part due to battery failures resulting from interference from cosmic rays!!! Better call Dr. Spock.

The company, who pled guilty to charges that it violated food and hygiene regulations at an earlier hearing, was fined for selling an unsafe product and for offenses at their factory. This came after the city-based confectioner revealed that he had not notified authorities when tests revealed traces of bacteria in the chocolate. More than 40 people have been affected by the contamination.

According to the International Herald Tribune (read an interesting background piece about this story here), Mr. Zheng had talked tough during his tenure…

“The crimes of making and selling fake drugs haven’t been uprooted,” he said in a speech in 2001. “And criminals and corrupt officials in the system should be severely punished according to the law.”

But in reality, according to a confession he wrote while in prison this March, through a series of dealings he was actively soliciting bribes. Under one arrangement, he set up his wife and son into a consulting business that firms would have to contract with in order to gain government approvals.

Going forward, to try and cut down on fraud the Chinese government has announced that it will begin carrying out surprise inspections on the more than 4,700 drug manufacturers in China, as well as increasingly rotate officials in key posts to prevent them from becoming too close to companies.

Commentary: Well, there are plenty of executives here in the U.S. who are thanking their lucky stars that updated Federal Sentencing Guidelines don’t include ‘execution’ for fraud, graft and general incompetence.

While FTS said it will replace as many of the tires as it can, it will be forced to declare bankruptcy after only replacing approximately 10% of the tires impacted.

Background story: Last week, the NHTSA ordered FTS to recall the light truck/SUV radials produced by China-based Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co. Apparently, the tires were either missing gun strip or it was deemed insufficient. The failure by the manufacturer to place these adhesive strips between the tire belts caused the tires to degrade and eventually separate, resulting in fatal crashes. Some of the brand names under which the tires have been sold include Compass, Telluride, Westlake and YKS.

Tires which have been marketed as designed to last 40,000 miles are actually coming apart after only 25,000 miles. Some tests allegedly have found that the Zhongce tires also had dangerously thin inner liners, permitting air to leak and damage the outer walls of the tires.

Commentary: It gets worse. The lawyer behind the recall (he sued FTS, who then notified NHTSA, who then ordered the recall) say that there may be five other similar distributors of these tires… and that there are up to five million on the road. Read about in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Memo to procurement: when they said buy “exploding Chinese fireworks for the holiday” they did not mean for you to confuse “fire” with “tire.”

Commentary: The impetus for this additional recall effort was a Toshiba laptop catching on fire (yes, it had a Sony battery pack) six weeks ago (a full eight months AFTER the recall began). Another fire occurred back in April in Japan as well.

With all the news around recalls these days (pet food, toys with lead, exploding Chinese tires, etc.), this case serves an interesting reminder that, even with great publicity, it is difficult to get consumers to participate in recalls. This begs the question of when is enough effort enough, and the responsibility/liability is shared with the non-participating consumer?

Ultimately it of course it depends on the potential liability for of the product failure itself. We are cringing at the thought of one of these non-recalled laptop setthing an in-transit airplane on fire (experts say that a burning laptop will bring down a jumbojet in less than 15 minutes).

We’re happy to see Toshiba showing some responsibility on this (where’s Sony?) and wonder if some of the other laptop makers have skeletons in their closets – as the disclosure on recall participation has been dismal by all the major players. We hope we are not the ones on THAT flight.

Some following the case, however, have raised questions about just how proactive this plan was. While companies are generally advised to be as forthcoming as possible during a crisis, RC2 has been quiet since disclosing the issue. Company representatives reportedly did not return phone calls about the recall, and a New York Times reporter was detained by an RC2 factory manager for over nine hours after security had allowed him on the premises to ask questions regarding the facility’s operations. Not to mention that it took nearly two years to discover that the paint was contaminated – another fact that RC2 hasn’t offered an explanation for.

Commentary: This case is quickly going to be a case study in how NOT to handle crisis management. We have spoken to a number of parents and they are very upset about it and have sworn off all things Thomas-related. Some of the missteps in handling this crisis including: (a) ignoring media inquiries trying to get more information about the problem; (b) playing down the problem and not mentioning that it was their own quality control that allegedly found the problem; and perhaps most damaging and angering to parents: (c) failing to reimburse parents (at least initially – they have changed their policy now) for the cost of sending these trains in for a replacement (the trains are already very expensive to begin with). We are surprised that the stock of RC2 has not suffered terribly yet but it still may as we suspect some of the “buyers” of the Thomas the Train products in recent years have parents who are lawyers.”

Apparently, this product does not contain fluoride. Instead, it contains Diethylene Glycol (DEG). DEG is often described by its more layman’s term: antifreeze.

Doug Arbesfeld, an FDA official, said that testing had found the chemical in a product bearing Colgate label, but that the FDA was unsure whether it really was Colgate or a counterfeit.

The FDA pointed out an important method of distinguishing the bogus toothpaste:

For alert consumers it should be easy to identify the problem tubes as the counterfeit packages examined so far have several misspellings including: “isclinically” “SOUTH AFRLCA” “South African Dental Assoxiation.”

The Company said in a statement that it does not use Diethylene Glycol as an ingredient in Colgate toothpaste anywhere in the world nor does it import toothpaste from South Africa into the United States.

Commentary: DEG is a deadly substance that has been found in many other products over the years, often with fatal results. There are a number of questions surrounding this recall, including some asking why Colgate was slow in making an announcement once they learned of the problem.

Perhaps Colgate is due for a check-up. Say AHHHH.

The plan is detailed in a New York Times report:

The voluntary changes, which will be put in place over the next year and a half, will apply to about half of the products that Kellogg currently markets to children worldwide, including Froot Loops and Apple Jacks cereals and some varieties of Pop Tarts.

The president and chief executive, David Mackay, said those products would either be reformulated to meet the nutrition guidelines or would no longer be advertised to children.

“It is a big change,” Mr. Mackey said. “Where we can make the changes without negatively impacting the taste of the product, we will.” And if the product cannot be reformulated, the company will either market it to an older audience or stop advertising it.

Last November, for instance, 10 of the largest food and beverage companies, including McDonald’s, General Mills and Kellogg, vowed that at least half of their advertising directed at children under the age of 12 would promote healthier foods or encourage active lifestyles.

The companies also agreed not to advertise in elementary schools and to reduce the use of licensed characters to promote food. Those companies are expected to complete individual plans for how they will address the guidelines in the next 60 days or so.

In a related initiative, Kellogg said that it would introduce new “Nutrition at a Glance” labels on the top right-hand corner of cereal boxes this year to make it easier for consumers to glean nutrition information. The new labels will show consumers the percentage of calories, total fat, and sodium in a single serving, based on a 2,000-calorie daily diet. The label will also disclose the amount of sugar and specific nutrients like fiber and calcium contained in a serving.

Commentary: Let’s put aside the fact that Kellogg was subject to a lawsuit about its marketing practices from the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (an action which was dropped as part of this announcement) and simply applaud them for demonstrating leadership.

Kellogg was among the 93 global companies honored several weeks back by Ethisphere Magazine and the Ethisphere Council as one of 2007’s World’s Most Ethical Companies. In reformulating products and highlighting nutrition, Kellogg has the opportunity to profitably deepen and improve loyalty in its customer relationships – which is the epitome of the Ethisphere Council’s slogan: “Good. Smart. Business. Profit.”