Gerber Baby Foods Concerning Levels of Toxic Heavy Metals Class Action

The complaint for this class action quotes a Congressional Subcommittee report to assert that “baby food manufacturers and federal regulators have broken the faith” with parents who believe that baby foods are safe for their infants and small children. This class action brings suit against Gerber Products Company, alleging that Gerber’s baby foods contain concerning amounts of heavy metals, as alleged in the Congressional Subcommittee report.

The Nationwide Class for this action is all persons who bought one or more of Gerber’s products containing toxic heavy metals in the US, for personal or household use. A New Jersey Subclass has also been proposed, for those in the above class living in New Jersey. A long list of the products at issue can be found on page 5 of the complaint.

The report in question was published on February 4, 2021 by the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, Committee for Oversight and Reform of the US House of Representatives, entitled Baby Foods Are Tainted with Dangerous Levels of Arsenic, Lead, Cadmium, and Mercury. It found that major brands of baby foods contained concerning amounts of toxic heavy metals, including arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury.

An earlier report on toxic metals in baby foods was issued in April 2019 by a group called Healthy Babies Bright Futures. That group checked 168 baby foods products and found that 95% of them contained one or more toxic heavy metal.

After that, in November of that year, the Subcommittee took up an investigation of its own. It asked for internal documentation and test results from seven of the largest makers of baby foods in the US, one of which was Gerber. Gerber and three other companies cooperated with the request.

However, the complaint alleges that the findings were alarming:

• Self-regulation by baby food companies does not work, because Gerber “set its own dangerous high internal standards” for levels of toxic metals.
• Gerber “routinely ignored established standards and continued to sell products with high levels of” these metals.”
• Gerber only tested the ingredients for the baby foods and not the finished products.

The complaint alleges that these metals are especially harmful to infants and small children “because they are developmental neurotoxins, meaning that exposure can significantly harm a baby’s developing brain and nervous system, both in utero and after birth. The effects often cause permanent loss of intellectual capacity, behavioral issues, such as Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (‘ADHD’), and intelligence quotient (‘IQ’) loss.”

This case is associated with the consolidated case In Re: Gerber Products Company Heavy Metals Baby Food Litigation, Master File No. 1:21-cv-00269-LO-TCB.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Contaminated with Harmful Substances, Deceptive Advertising, Deceptive Labels, Heavy Metals