Product Safety Counseling: Get CPSC Compliance Right Before Problems Begin
Product safety counseling from former CPSC lawyers helps manufacturers, importers, private-label brands, retailers, and marketplace sellers answer difficult compliance questions before a product reaches a customer. We help determine which federal safety rules apply, what testing and certificates are required, and whether warnings, instructions, labels, and import records are complete. We also help you review your product’s advertising claims (Made in the USA, etc.), warranty documents, and other essentials.
Whether you are preparing for launch, expanding a product line, changing suppliers, responding to a product change, or strengthening an existing compliance program, we help you identify what applies, document the right decisions, and create a practical path forward.
Product Safety Problems Are Easier to Solve Before They Become CPSC Problems
A product safety issue often begins with something that looks manageable: a supplier changes a component, a test report does not match the final product, a retailer requests documentation, a customer reports an incident, or a new rule takes effect before the next shipment arrives. But things can quickly spin out of control. Acting early and seeking help if you are uncertain will help to control and manage the situation. Prevention is always better than cure.
Handled early, these questions can often be addressed through better testing, clearer documentation, a labeling change, a supplier correction, or a prompt reporting analysis. Handled late, the same facts can lead to stopped shipments, expensive storage fees, delayed deliveries, marketplace removals, a CPSC inquiry, a recall, or questions about whether the company reported on time.
Product safety counseling gives your team a repeatable way to identify risk, make informed decisions, and preserve the records behind those decisions. The goal is to provide a compliance system that works with the way your company actually designs, sources, imports, and sells products.
BUILT FOR PRODUCT BUSINESSES
Who Product Safety Counseling Is For
Product safety counseling is useful whenever a business is launching a new product, improving its internal compliance systems and controls, or needs to understand and manage CPSC obligations to help prevent the risk of a regulatory or recall issue later. We advise:
- Manufacturers developing a new product, changing materials, or adding a new product category.
- Founders and product teams preparing to launch a first physical consumer product or sell their company.
- Importers and private-label brands that need testing, certificates, tracking labels, and import records to align.
- Private equity and VC firms looking to conduct due diligence when acquiring consumer product brands and product portfolios.
- Retailers and distributors evaluating supplier documentation and product safety responsibilities.
- General counsel and compliance teams building written procedures for handling complaints, negative reviews and other customer escalations; reporting of unsafe product hazards; and recall readiness.
- Companies changing factories, suppliers, components, packaging, warnings, or intended users.
- Amazon and marketplace sellers responding to compliance-document requests or preparing a catalog for growth.
You do not need to wait for a CPSC letter to involve product safety counsel. The most valuable time to ask the question is often well before tooling, inventory, packaging, importation, or launch; waiting until after a mold is paid for or after a product launch has happened can ultimately prove to be much more expensive than investing in getting it right the first time.
What Product Safety Counseling Covers
Pre-Launch Regulatory Review
We review the product, its intended users, features, materials, packaging, claims, and sales channels to identify the CPSC and other requirements that apply. The result is a go-to-market checklist and usable compliance roadmap, including what must happen before production, importation, or sale.
Testing and Certification Strategy
We help determine what testing is required, when third-party testing is necessary, whether a CPSC-accepted laboratory must be used, and how the supporting records should be maintained. We also review Certificates of Compliance for accuracy and completeness.
CPSC eFiling and Import Readiness
Imported products under CPSC’s jurisdiction and subject to a certification requirement now have to comply with CPSC’s (eFiling) electronic filing rules. We help importers coordinate product identification, rule citations, manufacturer information, testing records, certificate data, brokers, and supply-chain documentation before a shipment reaches the port.
Warnings, Instructions, and Labels
We review required warnings, use instructions, age grading, marketing claims, packaging, and even tracking labels for children’s products with attention to whether the final production complies with the applicable requirements.
Supplier and Manufacturing Controls
Product Safety Compliance Programs
Section 15(b) Reporting Analysis
Manufacturers, importers, distributors, and retailers may have an obligation to report certain product safety information to the CPSC. We help teams evaluate the facts promptly, preserve the analysis, and decide what action is required. When the issue has already escalated, see our CPSC 15(b) Letter page for the response process in greater detail.
Complaint Trends and Post-Market Monitoring
A single complaint may not tell the whole story. We help companies organize and evaluate complaints, returns, warranty data, incident reports, test results, and quality-control information so emerging patterns reach the people responsible for product safety decisions.
Recall Readiness and Corrective Action Planning
Retailer and Marketplace Compliance Demands
The least expensive time to answer a compliance question is before tooling, inventory, or a shipment makes the answer final.
How Product Safety Counseling Works
We learn what the product is, the intended users and use conditions, where it is made, how it enters the United States, and where it will be sold. Those facts shape the legal and operational analysis.
We map the product to applicable CPSC requirements and identify the decisions that need to be made before investing in product testing, packaging, importation, or launch.
We translate the regulatory analysis into concrete deliverables, including laboratory testing, certificates, labels, warnings, supporting records, eFiling data, and supplier documentation.
We establish practical procedures for complaints, incidents, product changes, reporting analysis, management review, and recall readiness.
Products, suppliers, standards, and agency requirements change. We can remain available to review new information and help the company adjust its compliance approach without rebuilding the process from scratch.
KNOW WHEN TO ASK
When to Call Product Safety Counsel
Consider seeking product safety counseling when:
You are designing, developing, or launching a new consumer product and do not know which CPSC requirements apply.
A recall needs to be conducted in coordination with CPSC.
A supplier changed a component, material, factory, process, or test report.
Your certificate, laboratory report, tracking label, warning, or advertising does not match the final product.
A retailer, marketplace, customs broker, or port official requests compliance documentation.
Complaints, reviews, returns, warranty data, or incidents suggest a possible safety pattern.
Your team is unsure whether information may trigger a Section 15(b) reporting obligation.
The company has grown beyond informal procedures and needs a written compliance program.
Early advice can narrow the issue, identify the missing facts, and give the company a defensible next step before assumptions harden into larger problems.
Already Facing a Problem or a Product-Specific Rule?
CPSC 15(b) Letter
CPSC Notice of Violation
Product Recall
Products Detained at Port
Amazon and Marketplace Sellers
Why Former CPSC Experience Matters
Product safety compliance is not just a list of regulations. It requires judgment about how product facts, test results, complaints, business records, and agency expectations fit together.
Neal Cohen and Boaz Green both served as lawyers inside the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Neal Cohen
- Led development of the CPSC Regulatory Robot
- Testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee
- Vice Chair for Research Liaison, ASTM International F15 Committee on Consumer Products
Boaz Green
- Senior Counsel then Chief Counsel to a CPSC Commissioner, 2014 to 2018
- Commission-level review of enforcement and policy
- Previously practiced at Keller and Heckman
- Writes and speaks regularly on CPSC enforcement
That experience informs how we counsel clients today. We understand the questions agency staff are likely to ask, the records that make an explanation credible, and the practical differences between a compliance issue that can be corrected and one that may require immediate escalation.
Clients receive direct guidance from lawyers who understand both the regulatory framework and the operational realities facing manufacturers, importers, sellers, and growing product companies.
ANSWERS ABOUT PROACTIVE COMPLIANCE
Product Safety Counseling FAQs
What is product safety counseling?
Product safety counseling is proactive legal guidance for companies to help prevent and avoid problems and issues with products before they occur. Part of product safety counseling helps a business identify applicable CPSC requirements and come up with the right “go to market” plan. Just as important, product safety counseling seeks to ensure that a company has a comprehensive safety and compliance program in place before it is needed. We help make sure that the program is effective in enhancing the company’s product safety and compliance procedures, that the program is designed to help meet or exceed the best practices for compliance with the Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA), and that the company understands and complies with its mandatory reporting obligations to the CPSC and other agencies.
Product safety counseling includes helping companies draft and review warnings and labels, evaluate and manage supplier documentation, ensure the correct testing and certification processes are in place and followed, evaluate customer complaints and negative reviews, create reporting procedures to identify, evaluate, and escalate concerns, and much more. Counseling can also help companies prepare for possible corrective action before an enforcement matter begins.
Do I need a CPSC lawyer before launching a product?
Not necessarily, but there are many items for consideration, some of which are product safety related and some of which relate to other regulatory requirements, like packaging, advertising, instructions, warnings, labels, warranties, and more. We can help with all of those.
A pre-launch review is especially valuable when the product is intended for a higher-risk population, like children, due to the many mandatory requirements for such products. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure and a pre-launch review can identify the applicable requirements before the company commits to costly production molds and other packaging, inventory, or marketing decisions.
You may also need additional experts on your team; it depends on the level of expertise and skills you already have with the people on your team.
How early should we engage an attorney for a safety and compliance pre-launch review?
The earlier, the better. This is a big investment and you want to ensure your project is in good shape before you place an order or design a product mold for mass production. Since it is natural for a product’s designer or seller to overlook the potential drawbacks, risks, and limitations of their own effort, it is critical to have an outside perspective to assist you in honestly appraising the safety and possible consumer uses (and misuses) of a product. Early investment in product safety and compliance is critical to the long-term success and viability of your project.
What does a CPSC compliance review include?
For a product, a CPSC compliance review examines the product, its intended users and use cases, instructions, labels, warnings, reasonably expected use and misuse, bill of materials, product features, packaging, claims, supply chain, and sales channels. The review identifies potentially applicable rules and standards, required testing and certificates, labeling and tracking-label issues, import and eFiling needs, supporting records, and post-market procedures. The scope depends on the product and the company’s role in the supply chain.
A broader review of a company’s overall product safety, compliance, and CPSC regulatory program is typically conducted as part of the review or drafting of a company-wide Compliance Program.
What is a CPSC Compliance Program?
Great question! For years, the CPSC has required some companies who have failed to report issues to the CPSC as required by Section 15(b) to have and maintain a compliance program to ensure that consumer product safety issues are properly identified, escalated, and reported to the CPSC as required by law. The CPSC has also required other companies voluntarily conducting a recall to have a compliance program in place.
CPSC has, to put it mildly, been vague on the precise details of its expectations. That’s where we come in. We have carefully studied the CPSC, its regulations, its policies, its insider-statements, and other key documents for years. We can help put together a written CPSC Compliance Program that meets CPSC’s expectations and which also includes best practices that help protect your company, your customers, and your brand, and reduce your legal liability.
What should a product safety compliance program include?
An effective product safety compliance program should define how the company receives and evaluates safety information, identifies potential safety risks, meets its legal obligations, establishes systems and authority to escalate concerns, delineates how reporting decisions are made, controls how suppliers are selected and product changes are controlled, and provides a clear value statement of support for safety and compliance from management.
At a minimum, it should assign clear responsibility to a senior person or committee, with management accountability and board oversight. It should also include written policies and procedures, and systems for collecting and reviewing safety information such as consumer complaints, warranty claims, returns, lawsuits, and foreign incident reports. The program needs a documented process for promptly evaluating whether information must be reported to the CPSC under Section 15(b), along with procedures for meeting applicable mandatory and voluntary standards, including testing, certification, and (for importers) eFiling of certificate data. Other necessary components are recall and corrective-action procedures, including controls to keep recalled products out of commerce; employee training and a confidential way to raise concerns; and periodic audits.
The CPSC considers whether a company had a reasonable and effective program when it sets civil penalties (16 C.F.R. § 1119.4). The company bears the burden of proving that its program exists and works, so a program should be tailored to the company’s products and supply chain and documented as it operates.
Do you provide due diligence for companies that are acquiring or selling consumer product brands and product portfolios?
Yes. Due diligence to review a company’s risk of a safety issue that could ultimately lead to expensive product liability claims and/or CPSC product recalls is critical when assessing the purchase of a consumer products company. Even though insurance for “reps and warranties” is often offered in these private equity and venture capital deals, insurers will still demand that a proper assessment and review of the product portfolio and data room has been completed to help them assess these potential risks.
Does product safety counseling include providing help in dealing with a challenging customer, product review, social media, or similar situation?
Yes, we often provide counseling when the situation has potential safety or regulatory implications. We often help you craft responses that help to address a customer’s safety or quality concerns without creating unnecessary admissions.
We also counsel you through the options where a customer complaint, online review, or social media post describing an injury, malfunction, or hazard may provide your company with information to evaluate to help decide whether to report to the CPSC under Section 15(b) (16 C.F.R. § 1115.12(f)). The same is true of consumer reports posted on SaferProducts.gov, where companies have a limited opportunity to comment or seek correction of materially inaccurate information (16 C.F.R. Part 1102). Counseling in these situations can include:
- assessing whether the complaint signals a broader product issue
- advising on how to respond to the consumer without creating unnecessary admissions
- preserving relevant information
- reviewing the product itself and documenting the company’s evaluation under attorney-client privilege
- coordinating with insurers, litigation counsel, or communications staff where appropriate
Do you provide label drafting and review for hazardous substances under Federal Hazardous Substances Act (FHSA)?
Yes. A household product is a “hazardous substance” under the FHSA if it is toxic, corrosive, flammable or combustible, an irritant, a strong sensitizer, or generates pressure, and it may cause substantial injury or illness during reasonably foreseeable handling or use, including ingestion by children (15 U.S.C. § 1261(f)). Such a product must bear cautionary labeling. Without it, the product is misbranded and cannot lawfully be sold. The required elements include the use of signal word (“DANGER,” “WARNING,” or “CAUTION”), statements of principal hazard, common or chemical names of the hazardous component, precautionary measures, and first aid instructions where appropriate, handling and storage instructions, and the name and place of business of the manufacturer, packer, distributor, or seller, among others.
These elements are set out at 15 U.S.C. § 1261(p). The regulations also govern the placement, type size, and prominence of the labeling (16 C.F.R. § 1500.121).
We draft and review FHSA labels and the hazard assessments behind them, including:
- art materials subject to the chronic-hazard labeling requirements of 16 C.F.R. § 1500.14(b)(8)
- small parts, balloon, and marble choking-hazard warnings for toys and games (16 C.F.R. § 1500.19)
- whether child-resistant packaging is required under the Poison Prevention Packaging Act (16 C.F.R. Part 1700)
We also check that FHSA labeling is consistent with state warning requirements such as Prop 65 and with any marketing claims about the product.
Do you review advertising claims such as “Made in USA,” “non-toxic,” "PFAS-free" or “BPA-free”?
Yes. Marketing claims raise their own legal risks, and they can also affect a product’s CPSC obligations. Under the FTC’s Made in USA Labeling Rule (16 C.F.R. Part 323) and the FTC’s longstanding policy, an unqualified U.S.-origin claim generally requires that “all or virtually all” of the product be made in the United States. Some states, such as California, have their own requirements. Under the FTC’s Green Guides, marketers making non-toxic claims should have competent and reliable scientific evidence that the product, package, or service is non-toxic for humans and for the environment or should clearly and prominently qualify their claims to avoid deception (16 C.F.R. § 260.10). “Free-of” claims such as “BPA-free” or “PFAS-free” likewise need test data or other substantiation tied to the product actually being sold.
Marketing claims also matter to the CPSC. How a product is marketed and promoted is a factor in deciding whether it is a children’s product (16 C.F.R. Part 1200). Safety-related claims can also conflict with required cautionary labeling or become evidence in a defect analysis. We review claims, packaging, and supporting documentation together so that what the company says about a product is consistent with its testing, labeling, and regulatory status.
Do you review supplier and manufacturing agreements for compliance and product safety?
Yes. When a factory or sub-supplier changes a material, component, or process without telling the brand owner or importer, the products can fall out of compliance even though the paperwork still looks correct. Under U.S. law the importer or domestic manufacturer generally carries the certification obligation, not the foreign factory (16 C.F.R. Part 1110). Supplier contracts must support the supplier’s obligation. We review and help draft manufacturing, supply, and quality agreements so that they address:
- compliance with applicable U.S. safety rules and standards
- testing and certification responsibilities, including component part testing (16 C.F.R. Part 1109)
- advance notice and approval of material, component, or factory changes
- access to test reports, production records, and facilities
- flow-down of these requirements to sub-suppliers
- prompt notice of incidents, complaints, and quality failures
- cooperation with reporting evaluations and CPSC inquiries
- allocation of recall and corrective-action costs, indemnification, and insurance requirements
Do you advise on whether state laws such as California Prop 65, state chemical restrictions, or chemical of high concern reporting requirements apply to my product?
Yes. There are state-level product safety law obligations and they often differ by chemical, product category, and threshold. California’s Proposition 65 requires a clear and reasonable warning before a business knowingly exposes California consumers to a listed chemical, unless an exemption applies (Cal. Health & Safety Code § 25249.6; OEHHA). Private enforcers actively bring claims, including against products sold online.
Several states also restrict specific substances in consumer or children’s products, such as PFAS, certain flame retardants, and heavy metals. Some require manufacturers to disclose chemicals of concern. For example, Maine, Oregon, Washington and Vermont currently require manufacturers to report the presence and use of certain chemicals in children’s products sold in the state.
We help companies:
- identify which state laws apply based on the product, its materials, and where it is sold
- evaluate supplier chemical disclosures and test data
- determine warning, restriction, and reporting obligations
For PFAS-specific requirements, see our PFAS Product Compliance page.
Do you offer trainings on product safety, product integrity, safety, QA, and customer service best practices?
Yes. We offer a wide range of safety and compliance-related trainings. Please reach out so we can determine if our expertise is a good fit for your company’s needs.
If you are launching, importing, or scaling a consumer product, we can help you identify the CPSC requirements that apply and build a practical compliance plan around them.
Book a confidential call with Neal Cohen Law to discuss the product, the questions your team is facing, and the next steps that make sense.