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are other organizations ready to serve the market.

UL has incentives to do its job quickly, accurately,

and efficiently.  If those incentives break down for any

reason, the critical point is that even a malfunctioning UL

cannot make consumers suffer.  Consumers are still able to

use the information at hand and make an informed choice.  UL

tests products and certifies their safety, providing consum-

ers with accurate, timely information, and no more.  Consum-

ers can decide for themselves, based on good information, if

they want to buy a riskier product or not.  No monopolistic

government agency prevents their making their own choices.

UL Standards for Safety

How does a "standard for safety," a product standard,

get written?  The process begins after a product has been

submitted for testing to UL.  UL then issues an outline of

its planned investigation to interested parties and solicits

comments and criticisms.  Based on that feedback, UL amends

the outline and issues the proposed standard to repeat the

process.  That reiteration produces the published standard

in a timely fashion.

The whole process usually takes only three to four

months, and amendments to the standard can be published and

made available within a day.  Based on a standard, UL engi-

neers can write a certification program within a couple of

weeks.22  Moreover, UL standards are flexible in that they

are designed to accommodate manufacturing innovations, in a

manner consistent with the original intent of the standard.

"[B]uilt into UL Standards are requirements that facilitate

changes and eliminate undue restrictions on design."23

Government Agencies Use UL

Private consumers are not the only beneficiaries of

UL's services.  Government agencies also depend on the

company.  UL is an active participant in development of

"building codes" in over 40,000 local jurisdictions around

the country.  The UL mark is accepted in all 40,000 of those

jurisdictions.24

OSHA recognizes UL as one of its 13 Nationally Recog-

nized Testing Laboratories (NRTLs).  OSHA's guiding docu-

ments specifically state that an NRTL shall certify all

electrical workplace products.  Many of the standards for

certification were developed by other third-party certifica-