See:
http://www.chinafreechristmas.info/search/label/lego
and specifically:
http://www.chinafreechristmas.info/2007/08/legos-are-not-made-in-china_27.html
I went to Toys'Rus today to look at Mindstorm and was disappointed to find that it is labeled with, "Components made in China". My older boys really want to build Mindstorm robots like their cousin. What should I do?
Friday, October 3, 2008
Found this China-Free article
Reproduced here just in case that website disappears...
Americans Need China-Free Food
by Phyllis Schlafly August 15, 2007
The scandal of imported products from Communist China has accelerated to a level that the public should demand "China-free" labels on anything that goes into a mouth. This includes not only food, vitamins and medicines but toothpaste and toys which, as all parents know, go into children's mouths.
The U.S. recall of nearly a million toys already sold by Fisher-Price, because its paint contains excessive amounts of lead, is only the latest in a string of Chinese product safety scandals. Those toys are Fisher-Price's multi-million-dollar mistake, but the safety of our food and drugs is the responsibility of our government; that's why we have a Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The Communist Chinese government's response was, first, to deny the problem, then, to execute its top food and drug regulator. Sorry, that doesn't assuage our anxiety.
It would take a couple of generations and many billions of dollars to bring Chinese food up to U.S. health and safety standards. Nearly half of China's population lives without sewage treatment, and the water isn't safe, whether from the tap or in sea or pond.
The Chinese food scandal first came to public attention this spring when hundreds of U.S. cats and dogs died. The FDA discovered that our pet food used wheat flour from China contaminated with melamine, a chemical used to make plastics and fertilizers that fooled testers with false high protein readings.
The FDA announced an extensive recall of 100 pet food brands, but nobody asked the question, why is the United States importing wheat products? Can America possibly be short of wheat?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said that as many as 20 million chickens and thousands of hogs in several states may have been fed contaminated feed.
In May, 900,000 tubes of toothpaste imported from China were withdrawn because tests showed that glycerine had been replaced by diethylene glycol, a chemical used in antifreeze. This poisoned toothpaste has turned up in U.S. hospitals, prisons, and juvenile detention centers.
We import 80 percent of the seafood we eat, and China is our largest foreign source. The FDA says that a quarter of the shrimp coming from China contains antibiotics that are not allowed in U.S. food production and cannot be eliminated by cooking.
The FDA rejected 51 shipments of catfish, eel, shrimp, and tilapia because of contaminants such as salmonella, veterinary drugs, and a cancer-causing chemical called nitrofuran.
China raises most of its fish in water contaminated with raw sewage, and China compensates by using dangerous drugs and chemicals, many of which are banned in the U.S. The Chinese try to control the spread of bacterial infections, disease and parasites by pumping the food with antibiotics and the waters with pesticides.
Chicken pens are often suspended over ponds where seafood is farmed, recycling chicken feces as food for the fish.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to allow China to sell cooked (but not raw) chickens to the U.S. even though public health officials have warned for several years about a potential avian influenza pandemic. Doesn't the U.S. have enough chickens?
China exports more than 80 percent of the world's vitamin C, which is put in thousands of processed foods from fruit drinks to applesauce to granola, and is used as a key food preservative. There is no claim of contamination yet, but many worry about dependence on China, which has driven all U.S. competitors out of business.
Last year, China sold us $675 million in pharmaceutical ingredients and products. It is estimated that 20 percent of finished generic and over-the-counter drugs, and 40 percent of the active ingredients for pills come from China or India.
The United States long ago banned lead in paint because it can cause learning disabilities, kidney failure, anemia and irreversible brain damage in children. But lead is widely used in Chinese manufacturing, and 80 percent of toys sold in the U.S. come from China.
Every one of the 24 kinds of toys recalled for safety reasons in the U.S. so far this year was manufactured in China. Because of lead paint, the U.S. has recalled hundreds of thousands of children's necklaces, bracelets, earrings, charms, rings, toy drums, and 1.5 million Thomas & Friends wooden trains.
Other recalled products include a ghoulish fake eyeball toy filled with kerosene, Easy-Bake Ovens that could trap children's fingers and burn them, and 450,000 tires that lacked an essential safety feature called a gum strip to keep the belts of a tire from separating.
The FDA inspects only one percent of our imports from China. It's not realistic to believe that doubling or tripling the inspection rate would make any significant difference in the safety of foods or toys.
Nor would FDA on-site inspection of producers in China be practical. When FDA investigators visited China in May, they found the factories closed, the machinery dismantled, and all records destroyed.
Welcome!
Hi! I'm a mother for 4 boys, aged 1.5, 4.5, 6 and 8. Needless to say, our house is full of Duplos and Legos. We build all sorts of things with our Legos, not only according to the instructions, but many neat things.
About 2.5 years ago, I started noticing that Lego (the company) had done something really bad for consumers. They had betrayed us and started making Legos in China! China of all places!
I'm sure all of you will agree that Lego sets are not cheap. We pay for the quality. For the bricks to stay together and enable play when we build something. For safe products - no lead, no bad chemical, no hanky panky in the production.
I have brought it up with Lego (the company) about why and which products are made in China but all those who answer the phone just brushed me aside. They all tell me to 'be assured' that 'we have our special people overseeing the production'. They cannot and will not tell me if the factory in China uses all imported materials, which parts within a set is made in China, or even tell me if a particular set has components that are made in China. Yes, don't they sound like they are on top of things? Some of them tell me that 'all our bricks are made outside of China. Only the ones with electronics and fabric are made in China', 'sometimes the box is made in China, so we have to add China in our box', 'all our bricks are made outside of China, we just send them to China to be packaged'. To me, none of these are satisfactory answers.
Why am I anti-China? Well, I am not. I am for quality products. I am for protecting my boys. I am for not letting my sons get hurt just because some multinational multibillion-dollar company decides to cut cost so that it can have a bigger profit margin. Lead. Melamine. What else? The scary thing is that the production problems and 'issues' are occurring more often than ever. The devastation is here to stay.
Am I anti-Lego? I probably should, but I am not. 99.99% of toys are 'Made in China', even the Playmobil and Haba which are supposed to be made in Europe. I just can't buy Legos over the internet to get a deal because I want to inspect the box and make sure that the 'Components made in Hungary, Mexico....' does not include China.
Some of you will agree with me. And some will not. I am not going to please anyone. This is my crusade to keep one of my sons' favorite toys China-Free! I hope that I can help some parents who, like me, are paranoid about Chinese goods. I will be listing some of the sets I know are China-Free, but probably just the sets we own. It is definitely getting harder to find China-Free Legos at our local stores. And guess what, a box that was China-Free about 6 months ago had suddenly become non-China-Free. How scary is that?
Welcome to my blog!
Mom of 4 active, imaginative, fun-loving, healthy, smart, good boys.
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