The Texas attorney general has sued baby food maker Gerber and its corporate sibling Nestlé USA in a Collin County district court, accusing the companies of telling parents their products were safe and rigorously tested while their own records showed toxic metals in ingredients.
The petition was filed Oct. 9 with the Collin County District Clerk, under cause number 494-08253-2026, and Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the case Wednesday. The state is suing under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and has asked for a jury trial.
Why Collin County
According to the petition, investigators from the attorney general's Consumer Protection Division bought Gerber products, including rice cereal and 2nd Foods purées, at retail stores in Collin County in October. The state says venue is proper here because the companies advertised and sold their products to consumers in the county.
What the state alleges
The state's claims rest largely on internal Gerber test results that a congressional subcommittee made public in 2021. The petition says that from 2017 through 2019 Gerber used 67 batches of rice flour with more than 90 parts per billion of inorganic arsenic, sweet potatoes with up to 48 parts per billion of lead, and carrots with up to 87 parts per billion of cadmium.
For comparison, it cites federal bottled-water limits of 10 parts per billion for inorganic arsenic and 5 for lead and cadmium. It also says Gerber rarely tested for mercury and for most of that period tested selected ingredients rather than finished food.
The petition contrasts Gerber with Beech-Nut, which it says recalled its infant rice cereal after a 2021 state laboratory test. Gerber issued no recall for heavy metals, the state says. It also argues that a QR code Gerber began printing on labels in 2025, which links to test results, does not fix claims on the front of the package.
