China Recall & Our Garden Pottery

The Mattel Toy Company has been receiving a lot of media attention with it’s numerous product recalls. One of the recalls widely reported was due to lead usage in the painting of toys and the potential for lead poisoning.

Many metals are used in the production of our pottery; from the iron in the clay to the copper and cobalt found in some of our most popular glaze colors. All of these potentially hazardous materials have been rendered inert due to the extreme temperatures that they endure during the firing process. Any Lead or other potentially hazardous materials are rendered harmless and are essentially vaporized once the kiln reaches temperatures above 1200 degrees. Most of these hazardous materials have low melting points which is in part, why they are dangerous and volatile.

“Mattel has a China problem and a supply-chain problem,” says Jean-Pierre Lehmann, an Asia expert at IMD, a business school in Lausanne. And that is the nub of the problem. Western companies in China are operating in a largely lawless environment. There is hardly any effective regulation and little recourse to law. So western firms doing business in China have a responsibility to do their homework and keep a vigilant eye on their suppliers. Corruption, blackmail and counterfeiting are rampant.^1a

Chinese firms, for their part, complain that they are bullied by foreign purchasing managers to cut costs. This forces them to squeeze their own suppliers, with unpredictable consequences. Local firms also moan about having to meet the complex logistical demands of foreign customers in a country where such costs are typically 15% higher than in the West, according to Jürgen Kracht at Fiducia, a consultancy. ^1b

This is why we, at Dragon Gardens Northwest make a concerted effort to oversee our production sites, with spontaneous visits and consistent, independent quality inspections. Our staff inspects, our products during production and loading. We also investigate our manufacturers to make sure they are complying with our human rights and environmental impact statements.

Conscientious business practice should be the rule, not the exception.

^{1 a,1b} Taken from "Plenty of blame to go around" Article, Sept 27th 2007, The Economist