Toys 'R' Us has stopped ordering drop-side cribs because of safety concerns, the company's Chairman and Chief Executive Jerry Storch told the Wall Street Journal. The decision comes as new safety standards for cribs are being considered by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

A record number of cribs have been recalled over the past few years and five infant deaths have been associated with faulty cribs. Drop-side models figured in many of the recalls in which missing or loose hardware caused the drop-side to separate from the crib, creating a gap in which a baby can become trapped or strangle. "There are enough concerns raised about drop-side cribs that we're moving forward and we're going to phase them out," Storch said in the Wall Street Journal interview.

To help parents identify recalled cribs, the CPSC has set up a crib information center on its Web site that lists recalls made over the past two years plus other safety information.

As we've written before, although cribs are regulated by the CPSC, there are no federally mandated durability test requirements. In a meeting at the CPSC yesterday, crib makers and consumer safety advocates, including Don Mays, senior director of product safety for Consumer Reports, began discussions on how to improve the safety of cribs.  We will write about our recommendation for better crib safety standards in a future blog posting.

In March, the group that sets voluntary safety standards on cribs, ASTM-International, accepted a proposal that could effectively eliminate drop sides on full-size cribs. The proposal also took into account the needs of shorter caregivers who may have difficulty reaching over a fixed side by including a design in which most of one side is stationary but a top section folds down giving a parent better access to the baby.  The proposal still needs to be balloted and approved before it can become a voluntary standard for industry to follow.

Consumers Union has been advocating for the elimination of conventional drop sides from cribs pending the development of comprehensive durability tests that can predict the failures that we've been seeing in the field.  For now, we think there are better and safer design alternatives and our first recommendation is for cribs with stationary sides.  See our most recent crib report (free) and Ratings (for subscribers).