Contaminated Baby Food EMERGENCY.
A congressional subcommittee has found major baby food brands, have been knowingly selling baby food and products contaminated with dangerous levels of heavy metals including cadmium arsenic and lead.
including organics.
Read the following excerpt below:
On November 6, 2019, following reports alleging high levels of toxic heavy metals in baby foods, the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy requested internal documents and test results from seven of the largest manufacturers of baby food in the United States, including both makers of organic and conventional products:
- Nurture, Inc. (Nurture), which sells Happy Family Organics, including baby food
products under the brand name HappyBABY - Beech-Nut Nutrition Company (Beech-Nut)
- Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (Hain), which sells baby food products under the brand
name Earth’s Best Organic - Gerber
- Campbell Soup Company (Campbell), which sells baby food products under the
brand name Plum Organics - Walmart Inc. (Walmart), which sells baby food products through its private brand
Parent’s Choice - Sprout Foods, Inc. (Sprout Organic Foods)
Specifically, the Subcommittee reports that:
ARSENIC was present in baby foods made by all responding companies.
- Nurture (HappyBABY) sold baby foods after tests showed they contained
as much as 180 parts per billion (ppb) inorganic arsenic. Over 25% of the
products Nurture tested before sale contained over 100 ppb inorganic
arsenic. Nurture’s testing shows that the typical baby food product it sold
contained 60 ppb inorganic arsenic. - Hain (Earth’s Best Organic) sold finished baby food products containing
as much as 129 ppb inorganic arsenic. Hain typically only tested its
ingredients, not finished products. Documents show that Hain used
ingredients testing as high as 309 ppb arsenic. - Beech-Nut used ingredients after they tested as high as 913.4 ppb arsenic.
Beech-Nut routinely used high-arsenic additives that tested over 300 ppb
arsenic to address product characteristics such as “crumb softness.” - Gerber used high-arsenic ingredients, using 67 batches of rice flour that
had tested over 90 ppb inorganic arsenic.
LEAD was present in baby foods made by all responding companies.
- Nurture (HappyBABY) sold finished baby food products that tested as
high as 641 ppb lead. Almost 20% of the finished baby food products that
Nurture tested contained over 10 ppb lead. - Beech-Nut used ingredients containing as much as 886.9 ppb lead. It used
many ingredients with high lead content, including 483 that contained
over 5 ppb lead, 89 that contained over 15 ppb lead, and 57 that contained
over 20 ppb lead. - Hain (Earth’s Best Organic) used ingredients containing as much as 352
ppb lead. Hain used many ingredients with high lead content, including
88 that tested over 20 ppb lead and six that tested over 200 ppb lead. - Gerber used ingredients that tested as high as 48 ppb lead; and used many
ingredients containing over 20 ppb lead.
CADMIUM was present in baby foods made by all responding companies.
- Beech-Nut used 105 ingredients that tested over 20 ppb cadmium. Some
tested much higher, up to 344.55 ppb cadmium. - Hain (Earth’s Best Organic) used 102 ingredients in its baby food that
tested over 20 ppb cadmium. Some tested much higher, up to 260 ppb
cadmium. - Sixty-five percent of Nurture (HappyBABY) finished baby food products
contained more than 5 ppb cadmium. - Seventy-five percent of Gerber’s carrots contained cadmium in excess of 5
ppb, with some containing up to 87 ppb cadmium.
MERCURY was detected in baby food of the only responding company that tested for it.
- Nurture (HappyBABY) sold finished baby food products containing as
much as 10 ppb mercury. - Beech-Nut and Hain (Earth’s Best Organic) do not even test for mercury
in baby food. - Gerber rarely tests for mercury in its baby foods.
These results are multiples higher than allowed under existing regulations for other
products. For example, the Food and Drug Administration has set the maximum
allowable levels in bottled water at 10 ppb inorganic arsenic, 5 ppb lead, and 5 ppb
cadmium, and the Environmental Protection Agency has capped the allowable level of
mercury in drinking water at 2 ppb. The test results of baby foods and their ingredients
eclipse those levels: including results up to 91 times the arsenic level, up to 177 times the
lead level, up to 69 times the cadmium level, and up to 5 times the mercury level.
Internal company standards permit dangerously high levels of toxic heavy metals, and documents revealed that the manufacturers have often sold foods that exceeded those levels.