An advisory panel to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Monday suggested that companies enter into covenants with their customers regarding product quality and safety.
The proposed nonbinding behavioral codes would set out rules that companies would follow when selling products and ensuring product safety as well as safety in other areas of corporate activity.
The proposal comes in reaction to two high-profile corporate scandals -- one involving Snow Brand Milk Products Co. and the other involving Mitsubishi Motors Corp. -- that shook consumer confidence in 2000. It was made in an interim report adopted by the Consumer Policy Committee of the Quality-of-Life Policy Council, which took up the issue in October.