Hearings

which are not apparent to all. Such hazards must be controlled and limited not at at the option of the producer but as a matter of right to the consumer. Many hazards described in this report are unnecessary and can be eliminated without substantially affecting the price to the consumer.

Unfortunately, in the absence of external compulsion it is predictable that there will continue to be an indecent time lag between exposure to a hazard and its elimination. Other advanced nations apparently have discovered this flaw in the output of competitive free enterprise and have made safe products an ongoing governmental objective.

This report proposes means which afford American industry an opportunity to progress voluntarily toward product safety and which, at the same time, should guarantee a new dynamism to that effort. Our suggested procedures are equitable to the consumer and producer alike. The goal is clear. This Nation's safety standards and practices must have an exemplary quality consistent with the primacy of American technology.

The operative processes responsible for the unacceptable conditions we found are truly impersonal. Producers, sellers, and buyers have been trapped by complex economic forces which have been understood by too few and addressed all too seldom.

A major concern of our recommendations has been to provide government with an adaptive instrumentality for protecting the consumer from product hazards for a reasonable time to come. The historic stream of product safety flows swiftly and erratically. The quality of protection appropriate at a given time depends on technology, the economy, and the temper of our humanitarian concern. If acted upon, this final report will be a beginning to an era of consumer protection rather than an end to our endeavors.

Although this report is directed to the President and Congress, we earnestly hope that consumers, businessmen, and the professional and academic communities will find its contents useful in the common search for methods to protect human life and safety in an environment which seems progressively to magnify the challenge to "live and be well."

Libros