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US retailing giant Target announces recall of PRC toys

US retailing giant Target Corp announced a voluntary recall of Chinese-made toy gardening tools and children's lawn furniture containing "excessive levels of lead," the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

The recall affects some 350,000 toys bearing the "Happy Giddy Gardening Tools" and "Sunny Patch Children's Chairs" logos, the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based retailer said, in the latest of a spate of recalls that have sullied the "Made-in-China" brand in the US.

Meanwhile, the RC2 Corp on Wednesday announced that it too would voluntarily recall five "Thomas and Friends" wooden toy train items made in China, due to lead paint levels that exceed US Consumer Product Safety Commission standards.

The new recalls, RC2 said, affect up to 200,000 toy units distributed domestically and some 69,000 units sold outside the US.

China reacted yesterday to the Target recall by saying it took all problems seriously.

"The Chinese government retains a consistent attitude towards any new recalls or new product quality problems," commerce ministry spokesman Wang Xinpei (王新培) told reporters.

"We will take every effort to resolve the problems seriously and responsibly according to the facts, even if there has only been one problem in a thousand products," he said.

The US banned the use of lead paint on toys in 1978 on health grounds and earlier this month US lawmakers questioned industry executives over what was being done to stop dangerous Chinese-made toys being imported.

The US toy industry is vying to ward off a mounting political storm and increasing public fear about the safety of Chinese-made products following a series of mass recalls in recent months.

China produces most of the world's toys and operates around 20,000 toy-making plants, according to some estimates.

Concern over Chinese toy exports -- some with lead paint, some with other safety defects -- have led to the recalls now numbering in millions of items and affect some of the US' more popular brands, including Barbie dolls, and some of its marquee companies and retailers like Mattel, Fisher Price, and Toys "R" Us.
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