Online retail giant Temu has been approved to join Australia's voluntary Product Safety Pledge — just as the family of a 10-year-old burns victim pursues legal action against the platform and accuses it of deflecting responsibility onto an unreachable Chinese supplier.
Daniella Jacobs-Herd suffered burns to 13 per cent of her body in July 2024 while wearing a fluffy hoodie her grandmother had purchased as a birthday present through Temu. Four months after the incident, Temu recalled the hoodie for non-compliance with mandatory Australian safety standards. Now, nearly two years on, the retailer has voluntarily signed up to the Australian Product Safety Pledge — a move her mother, Hannah Jacobs-Herd, says has left her furious.
A family still fighting for answers
The physical and emotional toll on Daniella has been profound. The young girl now refuses to attend school most days, traumatised by taunting over the scars visible on her face, neck and arms.
"She's still really into trying to make herself look beautiful with perfume and makeup because she just doesn't feel pretty," Ms Jacobs-Herd said. "She's a trooper, but she has her scars, and it's very hard."
The family is currently engaged in legal proceedings against Temu. According to their legal representative, Taylor Hamilton of Shine Lawyers, Temu has consistently maintained it is merely an intermediary platform and that any claim relating to the non-compliant hoodie should be directed at the supplier. Despite repeated attempts by the family's lawyers to contact that supplier, no response has been received.
"It makes me so angry; it's sickening because they're targeting families that are low-income earners and want to give their children the best of the best at a cheaper price," Ms Jacobs-Herd said. "And it [can come] with the cost of significant trauma for the rest of their life."
The situation reflects a broader concern around Australians seeking bargains through offshore online platforms, where the question of who is ultimately accountable for product safety can become deeply murky.
What the safety pledge actually means
The Australian Product Safety Pledge was introduced by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in 2020 as a set of voluntary commitments designed to proactively prevent unsafe products from reaching consumers. Participation is not mandated by law.
The ACCC has said it will hold Temu to standards of enhanced transparency and accountability that go beyond existing Australian consumer law. In a statement, Temu described its membership as reinforcing its "ongoing efforts to strengthen product safety and compliance on the platform."
However, Temu did not respond to specific questions about what improved standards it had implemented since joining, whether it had blocked the supplier of Daniella's hoodie from its platform, or whether it or its suppliers bear legal responsibility for the safety of products sold through the site.
Consumer advocates call for stronger laws
Consumer advocacy group Choice says it continues to see a "substantial volume" of unsafe products sold by retailers who are already signatories to the pledge, raising doubts about whether the voluntary framework carries sufficient weight.
Choice is calling for the introduction of new consumer protection legislation to address the gaps that voluntary commitments cannot fill — particularly as offshore platforms like Temu account for a growing share of the Australian retail market.
For Ms Jacobs-Herd, the pledge offers little reassurance while her daughter continues to suffer the consequences of wearing a product that should never have been on sale.
"Joining the Australian Product Safety Pledge reinforces our ongoing efforts to strengthen product safety," Temu said in a statement — words that ring hollow, the family says, when no one has yet accepted responsibility for what happened to Daniella.
