Serenity Kids now requires suppliers of purees — including farmers — to pre-test their products for heavy metals and provide certificates of analysis before the company will purchase them, and has dropped suppliers who were unwilling to comply.
California baby food labels will soon reveal levels of lead and mercury in their products
- Jenny Gold, Los Angeles Times
- 9 hrs ago
LOS ANGELES — Beginning Wednesday, baby food makers that sell products in California will have to make a major shift toward transparency and provide a QR code on their packaging that takes consumers to test results for the presence in their product of four heavy metals: lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium.
Even low levels of exposure to these compounds can cause serious and often irreversible damage to young children's brain development.
The change, required under a California law passed by the Legislature in 2023, will impact consumers nationwide. Because companies are unlikely to create separate packaging for the California market, QR codes are likely to be present on products sold across the country, and consumers everywhere will be able to view the heavy metal concentrations.
Carr said all of that testing gets expensive, and it was difficult to find a spice supplier that was even willing to pre-test. But the process has led them to swap out certain high-risk ingredients, like a particular type of mushroom, yielding an even safer baby food product for consumers.
"The baby food industry has been waiting for FDA guidance for years. I have petitioned them myself. So it feels good that California has taken the first step towards a set of requirements to keep babies healthy," Carr said.
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