A European advokat has been encouraging the European Commission to update the General Product Safety Directive, or GPSD, and to investigate how effective the current consumer protection laws are. This is becoming a big concern because of the high number of product safety recalls and scandals concerning hazards in products. The latest is the tainted milk powder in China that has sickened more than fifty thousand infants and been fatal to a few of them. In this case, melamine was introduced into the whole milk to hide the fact that water had been added. The melamine is the same substance that contaminated pet food and toothpaste, among other products, last year, and caused thousands of family pets to die and millions of tubes of toothpaste to be recalled. An advokat for consumer protection laws and business liability laws point out that products from China and a few other countries have been proven to be risky to the health of the consumer, and that stricter guidelines should be put into place to ensure harmful products are immediately recalled in a very efficient manner, and that no cover ups are allowed to happen, as is the case with the milk powder.

The advokat, and many law firms point out that the GDSD requires companies who produce or distribute consumer products to ensure these products are safe. The definition of safe is a product that poses no consumer risks when used as intended, or in a way that can be reasonably foreseen. Any product that does not meet this definition is classified as a dangerous product. The GPSD also states that any producer or distributor of a product must report and share any risk information they uncover, and to take any necessary actions up to recalling a product to minimize the risk to the public and consumers. Some information and data available to the advokat and the commission was the data from previous years, which backed up the claims that the number one product recalled was toys, at twenty four percent of all recall notices, and that Asian countries make up the majority of recalled product origins. Because of this, several advokater and law firms are encouraging the commission to review and revise the safety regulations that are currently in place to protect the health and safety of consumers.