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Comment by Mirioron | Hacker News Reader

>Are you saying that smaller companies can't compete with Amazon if everyone has to check that they're not poisoning us?

Yes, because this adds cost to manufacturing. Imagine if you yourself wanted to make and sell children's jewelry. How difficult would it be for you to get a lab to test all of the stuff you make? Could you make any money after you subtract the cost of these kinds of lab tests?

A large company has economies of scale. Finding a lab is a much smaller portion of the cost for them compared to you.

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Well, I think most of us make due with just buying ingredients that aren't poisonous when we cook (with the assurance in part coming from independent quality control of said ingredients).

But I'm sure I must have missed why this general principle couldn't be used for other things that we don't want to be toxic.

But the whole argument is that buying parts/ingredients that aren't poisonous isn't enough. You still have to spend a lot of resources on testing. I think that these kinds of regulations should scale with the size of the company/revenue/profit. Smaller companies shouldn't have as great of a burden, so as to encourage competition. (There should still be punishments for them failing though. Eg you're not required to test if you're small, but you can still be punished for selling poisonous products.)

Most regions have prescribed safety standards to meet, for instance the kitemark or the CE mark (http://www.safekids.co.uk/toysafetymarks.html)[http://www.sa... show an item meets the regulatory safety requirements - these aren't added by stores, they are obtained by the manufacturer so that its products can be sold in stores across Britain and Europe.

Saying that the onus should be on stores is crazy, unless you accept that a company should have exclusive rights to your product at which point it become a licensed product and would probably be branded as such.

Oh, I completely agree that the onus shouldn't really be on the store. I was talking about manufacturers that sell it themselves.

Problem is even if you only use safe parts, legally you have to get a lab to test your product. Using lead free everything isn't enough to LEGALLY prove your product is lead free.

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