China defends its brand as Mattel recalls toys

By James Pomfret

GUANYAO, China (Reuters) - China leapt to the defense of its products on Thursday after Mattel Inc. of the United States said it was recalling 1.5 million Chinese-made toys worldwide because their paint may contain too much lead.

The recalled toys made for Mattel's Fisher-Price unit include popular preschool characters like Elmo and Big Bird and dozens of other items. The case is the latest in a deluge of product safety scares that have tainted the "made in China" brand.

Vice Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng repeated the government line that Chinese products were overwhelmingly safe, and called on foreign media not to hype the problems of a small minority of goods or companies.

"When problems occur, we never shirk, have always sought truth from the facts and responsibly deal with them," Gao said in a statement on his ministry's Web site (www.mofcom.gov.cn).

Mattel has two sprawling plants in Guanyao, an hour's drive south of Guangzhou, capital of the booming southern Chinese province of Guangdong, but it was not immediately clear if they were connected to the tainted toys.

"I've heard others talking about this," one young worker told Reuters as heavy lorries, cement mixers and cargo containers rushed by on the dusty road between Guangzhou and Foshan. She did not elaborate.

Mattel said on Wednesday the toys were made by a contract manufacturer using a non-approved paint pigment containing lead.

Lead paint has been linked to health problems in children, including brain damage.

Mattel is asking U.S. consumers and sellers to return 967,000 plastic toys and is recalling another 533,000 from other countries, including Britain, Canada and Mexico.

Mattel's senior vice president of worldwide quality assurance, Jim Walter, said the recall could hit all its markets and traced the problem to a single manufacturer.

"The disappointment here was we had a single contract manufacturer that we had a long-standing relationship with, who did not do what is required by Mattel," Walter said.

"PR NIGHTMARE"

The recall comes amid heightened concern worldwide about the safety of China's exports. Many of the previous problem products have involved smaller manufacturers, but now a major company in a sensitive sector has been hit.

"Nobody wants to face that PR nightmare," said Kent Kedl, the Shanghai head of Technomic Asia, which advises companies sourcing out of China. "But the reality is that things slip through the cracks. And the cracks are a little bit bigger here in China."

Walter said the toy maker had launched an investigation. Mattel had stopped producing and shipping toys from that manufacturer, but said it would wait for the findings of the investigation to decide whether to keep doing business with it.