Child Caps
Butterfly Express is returning to the top had lid on almost all of their products starting today.
In a press release dated December 22, 2022, the Federal Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) falsely stated that Butterfly Express “has not agreed to recall the essential oils or offer a remedy to consumers.” Our customers know that this is simply not true.
You can view the Child Caps Recall and the CPSC warning here.
1. On August 7, 2019, Butterfly Express was notified by the CPSC that two of its products—Wintergreen and Birch—contained methyl salicylate that government regulators had determined require special child resistant and senior friendly lids. Out of concern for the safety of its community of customers, Butterfly Express immediately embarked upon a program to replace the lids on all of their products—not just those identified by the CPSC—with child resistant and senior friendly lids. In their press release, CPSC correctly points out that the child resistant caps are only applied to our consumer sized products. The larger sized bottles do not have child-resistant lids. As we pointed out to CPSC, their jurisdiction only applies to consumer products and the larger bottles can hardly be considered a consumer product, but are manufactured and sold to commercial users only.
2. This project coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns, and therefore finding and testing the new lids was a difficult project indeed. Nevertheless, Butterfly Express, at a great monetary expense and a substantial expenditure of man hours, located lids and made the necessary tests to see that they complied with the requirements of both child safety and Senior friendliness, and certified that information to the CPSC.
3. In addition to that, we provided samples of the child resistant lids to the CPSC and requested confirmation that the lids met with their expectations. Months passed with no response from CPSC. Finally, at their request we sent another sampling of the lids to CPSC. We have yet to receive any communication from CPSC suggesting that our lids do not meet the goal of child safety and senior friendliness.
4. As an alternative to a massive recall of the Birch and Wintergreen products, we suggested to CPSC that, since the products themselves were not defective, we contact all of our customers who had purchased Wintergreen and Birch products, offering them free replacement lids for all of their products. CPSC never objected to that approach. Having located the lids and revamped our manufacturing facility at great expense to install child-resistant lids on all our products, and not wanting to further delay improvement to our customers, we began the recall.
We contacted any customer who had ever purchased Wintergreen or Birch and offered them the free replacement lids. We prominently posted notices on our website of the CPSC notice and warning, and announced to any customers or potential customers the free replacement lid program that was not limited to the Wintergreen or Birch, but was available to any of our customers no matter what product they purchased. That notice and program is still in effect. For CPSC to make the false claim that we have “not agreed to recall the essential oils or offer a remedy to consumers” is nothing short of slanderous.
5. In addition to the formal testing, we now have over three years of experience with our customers who now have child resistant lids on all of our products. Our experience continues to show that the new lids are indeed child resistant.
6. The CPSC indicated in their press release that their concern is with Wintergreen and Birch, blends that contain Wintergreen or Birch, and all products that have more than 5% per weight of methyl salicylate. We have decided, based on customer concerns, to stop putting child resistant caps on any product that does not have methyl salicylate in quantities exceeding 5% per weight.