Federal Act
on Foodstuffs and Utility Articles
(Foodstuffs Act, FSA)

¹ Only safe util­ity art­icles may be placed on the mar­ket.

² A util­ity art­icle is deemed to be safe if it presents no danger or only min­im­al danger when used nor­mally or in a reas­on­ably fore­see­able man­ner or only such danger as is com­men­sur­ate with its nor­mal use and which is reas­on­able while pre­serving of a high level of pro­tec­tion for the health of con­sumers and third parties.

³ In or­der to guar­an­tee the health of con­sumers and third parties, the fol­low­ing as­pects of the util­ity art­icle must be con­sidered in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

its prop­er­ties, its com­pos­i­tion, the con­di­tions for its as­sembly, its in­stall­a­tion and its ini­tial op­er­a­tion;

b.

its main­ten­ance and its ser­vice life;

c.

its ef­fect on oth­er products or the ef­fect of oth­er products on it if it is reas­on­ably fore­see­able that it will be used with these oth­er products;

d.

its present­a­tion, its pack­aging, its la­belling, if ap­plic­able warn­ing no­tices, its in­struc­tions for use and op­er­a­tion and the in­struc­tions for its dis­pos­al as well as all oth­er product-re­lated in­form­a­tion;

e.

the spe­cial risks that it presents to spe­cif­ic groups of con­sumers, in par­tic­u­lar chil­dren and older people.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall stip­u­late the safety re­quire­ments for util­ity art­icles.

⁵ In or­der to guar­an­tee the safety of util­ity art­icles, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may also:

a.

re­quire con­form­ity as­sess­ment pro­ced­ures or re­port­ing re­quire­ments for spe­cif­ic util­ity art­icles;

b.

provide that tech­nic­al stand­ards must ap­ply to spe­cif­ic util­ity art­icles, which, when ob­served, lead to the pre­sump­tion that the util­ity art­icle is safe;

c.

re­strict or pro­hib­it the use of cer­tain util­ity art­icles or the use of cer­tain sub­stances in util­ity art­icles;

d.

re­quire the gen­er­al pub­lic to be in­formed about the prop­er­ties of cer­tain util­ity art­icles;

e.

stip­u­late hy­giene re­quire­ments for util­ity art­icles;

f.

stip­u­late re­quire­ments for the spe­cial­ist know­ledge of per­sons hand­ling util­ity art­icles.