On February 4, 2021, the United States House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy issued its “Baby Foods Are Tainted with Dangerous Levels of Arsenic, Lead, Cadmium, and Mercury” report,
On February 4, 2021, the United States House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy issued its “Baby Foods Are Tainted with Dangerous Levels of Arsenic, Lead, Cadmium, and Mercury” report,[1] which revealed that several brands of baby foods sold in the United States are contaminated with highly elevated levels of toxic heavy metals, including arsenic, lead, and cadmium.
Following this report, numerous class action cases were filed, challenging these manufacturers’ failure to warn consumers about the presence of heavy metal contaminants in their products. Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP has a leadership role in two of these cases: the first, In Re Plum Baby Food Litigation, Case No. 1:21-cv-02417-NLH-KMW, challenges Campbell Soup Company’s Plum Organics baby food; and the second, Wilson v. Walmart, Inc., Case No. 3:21-cv-00082-DPM, challenges Walmart’s Parent’s Choice baby foods.
While these cases are ongoing, progress has been made in improving baby food products for consumers in other avenues. Specifically, on January 27, 2022, the California Attorney General’s Office announced that it reached an agreement with the Perrigo Company to reduce the level of lead in Perrigo’s infant formulas. Under the agreement, Perrigo will change the supplier of various ingredients to ensure that these products are well under the acceptable amount of lead under Federal guidelines. A copy of the agreement can be found here. Based on these private and public actions, further changes to baby food in America are on the horizon.
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[1] Baby Foods Are Tainted with Dangerous Levels of Arsenic, Lead, Cadmium, and Mercury, Staff Report, Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, at 2, Feb. 4, 2021, https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/2021-02-04%20ECP%20Baby%20Food%20Staff%20Report.pdf (accessed February 9, 2022).
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Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP focuses on complex civil litigation, including securities, antitrust, wage and hour and consumer class actions as well as shareholder derivative and merger and transactional litigation. The firm is headquartered in New York, and maintains offices in California, Georgia and Pennsylvania.
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