Business Ethics: product safety standards, concept of negligence

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Standards to product safety

Increasing world-wide integration of the markets for many types of product has led to a drive by all participating states in the world trading block to remove actual and perceived trade barriers wherever possible. Many types of electrical, mechanical, medical and other products may now be manufactured in one country and sold without modification in any other country. Product safety legislation has been necessary for the exchange of the products.

Mandatory product standards

There are two types of mandatory product standards:

? Safety standards - goods must comply with particular performance, composition, contents, methods of manufacture or processing, design, construction, finish or packaging rules.

? Information standards - prescribed information must be given to consumers when they purchase specified goods (e.g. labeling for cosmetics, tobacco products and care labeling for clothing and textile products).

Various Product Safety Standards

? Product safety legislation: There are three aspects to the acceptance of a product as being safe in any particular market. The first of these are the legal obligations of a manufacturer or supplier not to supply a product which could cause damage or injury.

? Product standards: Clearly it is not the job of legislators to lay down detailed requirements for the design of every type of product on the market so a wide range of standards have been developed to support the Directives which enforce the CE mark requirements. These are the second aspect of product safety. It is these standards which contain the details of safe product design and they may include specifications for insulation strength, material compatibility, limits of rise in temperature and many other safety related specifications.

? Type Tests: These standards are laid out with the intention of providing a format for type testing the appliances to which they apply. They may be used by manufacturers during the design of their products but are principally aimed at providing an independent third party with a benchmark against which products can be assessed comprehensively and fairly.

? The international application of standards: In order to make this system work, the participating countries have also had to devise schemes of accreditation to ensure that test house results obtained in one country are acceptable in another, and so a Europe wide system of accreditation for such test authorities has been developed.

? Special national ...