Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing two major baby food companies, accusing them of “misleading” consumers with products containing dangerous metals, including arsenic and lead.
While still campaigning for the 2026 midterm elections as the Republican Senate nominee in Texas, Paxton announced a 68-page lawsuit accusing Gerber Products Company and its parent company, Nestlé USA, of misleading practices.
The lawsuit alleges that the companies advertised Gerber baby food as “safe, pure, and rigorously tested,” despite products containing dangerous levels of toxic heavy metals, including arsenic, lead, mercury, and cadmium. The manufacturers allegedly knew some of their products exceeded federal regulations but continued selling without issuing a recall or disclosure, according to the lawsuit.
“Federal health agencies rank arsenic, lead, mercury, and cadmium first, second, third, and seventh on the national priority list of substances posing the most significant potential threat to human health, and there is no established safe level of inorganic arsenic or lead for a baby,” the lawsuit reads.
Nestlé acquired Gerber in 2007, and from 2017 through 2019, Gerber allegedly rarely tested for mercury and primarily tested ingredients rather than finished products, creating the risk of understating metal contamination, the lawsuit states. Internal testing showed that 67 batches of rice contained more than 90 parts per billion of inorganic arsenic, sweet potatoes contained up to 48 parts per billion of lead, and carrots contained up to 87 parts per billion of cadmium.
In context, that is nine times more arsenic and lead and 17 times more cadmium than federal guidelines allow in bottled drinking water, according to the lawsuit. Infants and young children also absorb ingested metals at higher rates than adults, and even low exposures can harm their development, according to the National Library of Medicine.
Nestlé USA and Gerber are headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, but sell and distribute products across Texas retailers.
A 2021 congressional subcommittee concluded that the baby food manufacturer would “knowingly sell these products to unsuspecting parents” after publishing Gerber’s internal documents.
The same year, a Texas state public health lab tested infant rice cereal and reported results to manufacturers and the Food and Drug Administration, the lawsuit states. Gerber averaged 87.43 parts per billion of inorganic arsenic, with two samples exceeding the federal limit of 100 parts per billion. A competitor, Beech-Nut, issued a recall for its products despite having a lower average. Gerber didn’t offer up a disclosure or recall to consumers, the lawsuit states.
Instead, the lawsuit accuses the company of continuing false marketing, asserting that ingredients and final products were “specifically tested for heavy metals” and deceiving parents into believing it’s a clean and safe choice.
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In 2025, to comply with California law, Gerber added QR codes linking consumers to heavy metal reports, but Paxton’s lawsuit alleges the company did not change its practices at all, and continued to advertise misleading information.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Gerber and Paxton’s office for comment.