Recent cot recalls and CHOICE

Many of you will know that CHOICE has always tested babies’ and kids’ products, but did you know how much we do to monitor the industry and ensure that safe products are sold to consumers?

Our expert testers including @AntonioBonacruz and Matthew Tung sit on Standards Australia committees for children’s products, and these groups have been instrumental in bringing about many safety changes. This includes a voluntary mattress firmness test for mattresses supplied with cots, which the ACCC is now considering making mandatory (side note: join our campaign if you want this to happen at http://e-activist.com/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1965&ea.campaign.id=49124&ea.tracking.id=kjxlfdzp ).

When you read a review from us, you can be confident that the results are robust. We run fully-accredited labs and test cots (and strollers) to both the mandatory and the more recent voluntary standards. All failures are reported to the ACCC. Our involvement has directly led to a number of cot recalls, the most recent being the All 4 Bubs cot which is one of the worst that we’ve ever seen.


That’s not all our babies’ and kids’ testers do. On behalf of regulators we also test off-the-shelf toys for choking and durability hazards, and help businesses (through our test research arm) who want to launch safe products. All that revenue goes straight back in to CHOICE.

Are there any safety issues that you’ve encountered when you’ve been out shopping, or when you’ve used a babies’ product? We are always keen to learn more about any potential pitfalls, particularly for emerging categories, or categories where there is actually no Australian Standard (eg bassinets). In those cases, we adopt our own method based on existing Australian standards and other recognised international standards.

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