Spotlight on America Details 'Groundbreaking' Baby Food Lawsuit

"It made me really angry…to think that these heavy metals are in baby food. And I immediately thought we don't have autism in our family. I instantly knew this is it. This is what I'm talking about." - Melissa Cantabrana, who is taking on the industry in a first-of-its-kind baby food lawsuit

News provided by

Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman

Feb 24, 2022, 12:59 ET

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 24, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The award-winning investigative journalism series Spotlight on America released a new report detailing a first-of-its-kind baby food lawsuit that alleges Gerber, Walmart, and other major companies knowingly selling toxic products that have "wreaked havoc on the health of children."

Melissa Cantabrana on Spotlight on America

Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman represents Melissa Cantabrana, who is taking on the baby food industry for allegedly causing her son Noah's autism. Cantabrana says she connected her son's diagnosis to the foods he ate as a baby after reading a scathing government report titled "Baby Foods Are Tainted with Dangerous Levels of Arsenic, Lead, Cadmium, and Mercury." The baby food report specifically called out Nurture (Happy Baby), Gerber, Hain (Earth's Best Organic), Parent's Choice (Walmart), Plum Organics, Sprout Organic Foods, and Beech-Nut for knowingly selling products that pose serious health risks to babies.

Cantabrana enlisted the legal help of attorneys Pedram Esfandiary and R. Brent Wisner to hold the baby food companies accountable in court. The attorneys are all too familiar with David vs. Goliath legal battles, having won billions in jury verdicts against Monsanto Company in the Roundup litigation.

"I'm not concerned about the fact that these guys are Goliaths," Esfandiary told Spotlight. "All that matters is what the truth is. And the facts say these metals should have never been in baby food. They should have never ended up in the bodies of American children."

Parents across the country agree. Esfandiary and his firm now represent over 1,000 families in the baby food litigation.

According to Esfandiary, if the judge overseeing Cantabrana's case rules that there is sufficient science underpinning the allegations, a trial could proceed with haste and the case would enter discovery, potentially allowing documents from the defendant companies to enter the public record.

As the litigation progresses, Cantabrana continues to work tirelessly with Noah in therapy. "I'm hopeful that we will get to share this information out there to other moms and other families that it's time for this to stop," she says.

Watch the Spotlight on America Report.

SOURCE Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman