For the full story, go to Marcy's blog and read her post about it. For the jist, read below:
A new law will go into effect Feb 2009 giving strict guidelines for the manufacturing and testing of toys, to make sure they're safe. This is great, except that it will force small toy makers - especially handmade toy manufacturers, such as independent toy makers on Etsy - out of business, because they cannot afford all the third-party testing and labeling of the toys.
Small toy manufacturers in the US, Canada and Europe already comply with all the safety regulations, they just can't pay a third party to test all their toys to verify that their toys don't contain harmful chemicals used in large-scale (corrupt) toy-manufacturing.
To get more info, you can visit The Handmade Toy Alliance; on their site you will find a letter template to send to your Congresspeople, an online petition, and a proposal for safety guidelines for handmade toys that will not destroy independent toy makers.
If you're lazier, like I am, you can go here and enter your info, and they'll send the letter to your Congresspeople for you.
Thank you for taking action!
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