ANSI Begins Accreditation Under Toy Safety Certification Program
October 30, 2009 // Published as a news service by IHS
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) accredited five certification bodies under the new Toy Industry Association (TIA) Toy Safety Certification Program.
ANSI accreditations under the TSCP were granted to:
- Bureau Veritas Consumer Products Services.
- Intertek Testing Services Hong Kong Ltd.
- NSF International.
- SGS North America Inc.
- STR-Registrar LLC.
These certification bodies were assessed based on the requirements in International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Guide 65 - General Requirements for Bodies Operating Product Certification Systems.
Guide 65 is the associated International Accreditation Forum Guidance Document and has program requirements for the TSCP.
Development of the TSCP began in August 2007 when TIA worked with ANSI to coordinate a public-private partnership to develop conformity assessment guidance regarding toy safety.
The resulting program includes, and will continue to integrate, input from U.S. government bodies, consumer groups, toy companies, retailers, toy testing labs and factory auditing companies, as well as officials and industry representatives from China and the European Union (EU). The program builds on the requirements of the new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.
Under the terms of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed in September 2008, ANSI was named as the official third-party accreditor of TSCP's product certification bodies. ANSI is accepting applications for further accreditations under the TSCP.
Source: American National Standards Institute (ANSI).