What Happened
Starting on January 1, 2025, California state law AB-899 required baby food manufacturers to post on their websites the results of testing each lot of their products for arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury that is offered for sale in the state. In January, blogs on the Consumer Reports and Unleaded Kids websites identified 30 baby food brands likely to be covered by the law. At the time, we noted that only a handful appeared to be making the results publicly available as the law requires.
Many brands did not have any website we could find. Other brands required people to enter a lot code or best by date to see the results, requiring the public to either buy the product or find it in the store and enter the lot code number. It also makes seeing results for multiple lots difficult. We don’t think this is consistent with the requirements to make the testing results publicly available.
In the months since, we continued working directly with the baby food brands to convince them to be more transparent. We settled on 40 that appeared to be offering baby food for sale in California.1 The brands had more than 1,000 different baby foods products on their websites. In our review, we did not include infant formula (it is exempt) or dietary supplements (we will cover later).
Of the 40 baby food brands, 19 were making testing results publicly available and 9 required lot code to see the test results. We could not find webpages for the remaining 12, including the house brands for Albertsons, Kroger, Walmart, and Whole Foods. The table below provides results for each brand. During the summer, Consumer Reports will publish more details including ratings for transparency and product test results for each brand based on more than 2,500 reports.
Toxic Element Test Results for Baby Food Brands
| Brand | Results | No. of Products | Comments |
| Amara Nutrition | Link | 14 | Lot code required |
| Beech-Nut | Link | 105 | Lot code required |
| Else Nutrition | Link | 14 | Lot code required |
| Good & Gather Baby @ Target | Link | 54 | Lot code required |
| Little Journey Organics @ Aldi | Link | 16 | Lot code required |
| Little Spoon | Link | 88 | Lot code required |
| Ready Set Food! | Link | 28 | Lot code required |
| Sprout Organics | Link | 32 | Lot code required |
| Yumi Nutrition | Link | 10 | Lot code required |
| Baby Gourmet Organic | None | 69 | No webpage found |
| Baby Mum-Mum | None | 13 | No webpage found |
| BabyLife Organics @ Whole Foods | None | 15 | No webpage found |
| Loco Bebe | None | 6 | No webpage found |
| Nature’s Path Organic | None | 12 | No webpage found |
| O Organics @ Albertsons | None | 31 | No webpage found |
| Parent’s Choice @ Walmart | None | 53 | No webpage found |
| Piko Provisions | None | 7 | No webpage found |
| Puffworks | None | 7 | No webpage found |
| Simple Truth @ Kroger | None | 31 | No webpage found |
| Tally | None | 4 | No webpage found |
| White Leaf Provisions | None | 13 | No webpage found |
| Brainiac | Link | 9 | Publicly available |
| Cerebelly | Link | 22 | Publicly available |
| Earth’s Best Organic | Link | 37 | Publicly available |
| Fresh Bellies | Link | 6 | Publicly available |
| Gerber | Link | 94 | Publicly available |
| Happy Family Organics | Link | 97 | Publicly available |
| Holle Organic | Link | 19 | Publicly available |
| Kekoa Foods | Link | 7 | Publicly available |
| Kendamil Nutricare | Link | 8 | Publicly available |
| Lil’ Gourmet | Link | 7 | Publicly available |
| Mission MightyMe | Link | 7 | Publicly available |
| Nestum/Cerelac | Link | 15 | Publicly available |
| Nurture Life | Link | 31 | Publicly available |
| Once Upon a Farm | Link | 83 | Publicly available |
| Plum Organics | Link | 64 | Publicly available |
| Pumpkin Tree | Link | 22 | Publicly available |
| Serenity Kids | Link | 28 | Publicly available |
| Square Baby | Link | 12 | Publicly available |
| Stonyfield Organic | Link | 9 | Publicly available |
| Total | 40 | 1,199 |
Why It Matters
FDA has been working to address cadmium, lead, mercury, and inorganic arsenic since 2017. Four years later, the agency launched its Closer to Zero program to improve children’s health by reducing their exposure to harm from contaminants in food focusing on these four toxic elements. The agency recognized environmental contamination from these toxic elements could be significantly reduced but not eliminated. The plan was a significant step forward but had room for improvement.
Recent activities include:
- In a September 2024 blog, Unleaded Kids described an FDA study showing children get too much lead and cadmium in their diet and called for greater action.
- In January, FDA published action levels for lead in many baby foods designed to keep products with the top 5–10% of highest levels that would reduce children’s lead exposure by an estimated 3.6%. In addition, despite requests to the contrary, the agency excluded snacks and beverages from the action levels. In February, Unleaded Kids and 12 other groups petitioned FDA’s Commissioner Makary to reconsider and strengthen the action level. The agency has not acted.
FDA’s approach to protecting children is important but has serious limitations because it:
- Focuses on removing only the 5–10% most contaminated products from the market. Once an action level is set, companies focus is on staying below it and not necessarily striving to get closer to zero.
- Considers each toxic element in isolation from the others, despite its commitments to the contrary and evidence that the cumulative effect of these and other toxins need to be considered.
- Relies only on the results of products it tests, failing to fully represent the products currently on the market.
- Takes too long. FDA often fails to meet its own deadlines.
In contrast, California’s approach of requiring companies to test products for toxic elements and then make the results publicly available empowers consumers and creates market incentives for companies to be closer to zero.
Our Take
We still need FDA to set strong action levels, but we also need states to complement the agency’s approach with mandatory testing and disclosure. We are pleased to see:
- Maryland and Virginia adopt laws similar to California’s AB 899 to capture regional brands and to strengthen oversight; and
- California’s legislature considering a bill to expand the AB 899 approach to prenatal multivitamins.