By Brenda Bouw, The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER, B.C. - The head of a British Columbia crib manufacturing company behind a massive recall says his products are safe - if used properly.

Jim Moore, president and chief executive of Stork Craft Manufacturing Inc., said the four U.S. deaths announced alongside the recall of his drop-side cribs happened over the past nine years, and were found to be a result of improper use.

"The actual cribs are safe. If the assembly instructions are followed correctly and the warnings are adhered to, there is no problem with any of these," Moore told The Canadian Press in an interview.

He said it's when cribs are bought second-hand or installed incorrectly that they can be dangerous.

The North American recall covers more than 2.1 million cribs and comes after at least 15 infants, including three in Canada, were trapped in the drop-side part of the product. In the U.S., four babies have died of suffocation as a result between 2001 and 2009.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which announced the recall late Monday, followed by Health Canada and Stork Craft on Tuesday, said they are aware of 110 incidents causing the drop-side piece to detach.

Of those, 67 incidents occurred in the U.S. and 43 in Canada. They include 20 incidents in which babies fell from their cribs - 12 in the U.S. and eight in Canada. The commission said injuries ranged from concussions to bumps and bruises.

The cribs had plastic drop-side hardware that broke, was missing, or involved other issues including consumers installing the drop sides upside down.

The recall involves about 1.2 million cribs sold in the U.S. and about 968,000 in Canada, manufactured between January 1993 and October 2009. About 147,000 of the recalled Stork Craft drop-side cribs had the Fisher-Price logo.

It's the second recall this year for Stork Craft, which has been making drop-side cribs since 1953.

In January, the company recalled about 535,000 cribs due to faulty metal support brackets that could crack and break, causing the mattress to collapse. The commission said at the time that it knew of 10 incidents in which one or more mattress support brackets broke.

The cribs involved in the latest recall ranged in price from about $200 to $500. This recall does not involve any cribs with metal rod drop-side hardware.

Moore said his Richmond, B.C.-based company stopped making the drop-side cribs last month because of increased safety concerns.

He said the company faces one outstanding legal suit at this time around one of the U.S. deaths mentioned as part of the recall. In that case, he said the crib was bought at a yard sale, with parts missing and modified. He also said it was sanded and repainted.

"From a product liability point of view I don't think there is anything at issue there," Moore said.

Moore said the recall is part of an overall industry move to ban the manufacture of drop-side cribs.

He said the recall wasn't announced until now because it took time for Health Canada and the U.S. commission to come up with a solution, including a retrofit kit that is being offered as a fix.

"It's better off if you do an orchestrated approach to look after .. the overall issues," Moore said. "It's not an overnight process."

As part of the recall, consumers are being told not to return the cribs, but instead contact Stork Craft to receive a free repair kit that converts the drop side of the crib to a fixed side.

Parents jammed Stork Craft's phone lines and crashed its website Tuesday, scrambling for more information on the recall.

In Canada, the latest cribs being recalled were sold at Sears Canada, Wal-Mart Canada and various other specialty retailers.

Sears Canada spokesman Vincent Power said any cribs his company has shipped since mid-October have had fixed sides.

"We took this action based on reports starting to come out of the U.S. and decided the best move was to ship fixed sides," Power said.

He said Sears will also try to contact customers who bought the old cribs to let them know about the recall.

Wal-Mart Canada spokeswoman Susan Schutta said the company started pulling the Stork Craft cribs off shelves early Tuesday.

Class-action lawsuit proceedings against Stork Craft, Fisher-Price, Sears and Wal-Mart have started in Alberta and British Columbia by the Merchant Law Group.

The Merchant group also says it plans to file claims in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Ontario and Atlantic Canada on Wednesday.