craftgrrl | Change for the better?

I don't know if this falls under the no pimping rule or not, but I hadn't heard about this before today and thought other people might be interested/horrified by it too.

http://www.change.org/ideas/view/save_handmade_toys_from_the_cpsia

Apparently, because so many large companies have been hiring lead paint weilding Chinese companies to make their toys, the US government has decided to pass a blanket law that "mandates third party testing and certification, and requires manufacturers of all goods for children under the age of 12, to permanently label each item with a date and batch number."

This mandatory testing costs as much as $4000 an item and a whole lot of small businesses will die because of this. After Feb 10, 2009 any uncertified/handmade toys in for sale will be required by law to be distroyed or land filled.

The link is to the change.org website where you vote for the petition and it gets to go up in front of a non-idiotic (hopefully) judge that will think a minute or two about the little people before passing down a blanket law like this. Please vote. It'd be horrible if this actually happened.

(And I apologize for interrupting the flow of cheerful creativeness)