With all the recalls this year of toys made in China -- due to lead paint and other hazards -- TheDailyGreen was kind enough to publish a list from Toys "R" Us marked "not made in China."

The list includes the item numbers on the Toys "R" Us web site. And unfortunately, there are no guarantees that all the products are really not made in China. Even if the toys are made in countries other than China, that does not necessarily mean that the toys are safe.

To be sure, you'll need to check the safety of the toys yourself by calling the manufacturer. It would be nice if the government could help make toy shopping safe for Americans. But it won't so you'll have to take responsibility for protecting your children from toy manufacturers.

For safe holiday shopping here are 500+ toys not made in China originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

BusinessWeek reports that some companies are now making it possible for people to buy products that are NOT made in China. For example, Swiss ingredient maker DSM Nutritional Products launched a "premium" Vitamin C that's made in Scotland rather than China, which provides 80% of the world's supply. Now DSM's Quali-C Vitamin C brand is benefiting from consumer's reluctance to buy Chinese products in the wake of the contamination incidents.

Here are three other companies likely to benefit from this anywhere-but- China sentiment:

• Fairway, an upscale New York grocery, reassures consumers that none of its seafood is Chinese;
• International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) is pushing systems to trace the food supply from source to market so that people will know where their products come from;
  
• Freshpet, a Secaucus, NJ all-natural producer of premium dog food blended from meat and vegetables has seen its distribution increase from 200 stores to 1,000 stores, with another 1,000 coming by the end of 2007, tripling its sales to $50 million.

I sense an opportunity for a publicly-traded purveyor of anywhere-but-China consumer products -- maybe Freshpet can do an IPO. It looks to me like IBM's offering will not grow to be big enough to make a significant boost to its corporate profits.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in IBM.

Buying from anywhere but China originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.