Unpacking Lesser Evil’s Public Response (June 2024) to Unsafe Levels of Lead Found in Children’s Food Products

  

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For those new to the Lead Safe Mama website:

Tamara Rubin is a multiple-federal-award-winning independent advocate for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety, and a documentary filmmaker. She is also a mother of Lead-poisoned children (two of her four sons were acutely Lead-poisoned in 2005).

• Tamara owns and runs Lead Safe Mama, LLC — a unique community collaborative woman-owned small business for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety.
• Since July of 2022, the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC has been responsible for five product recalls (FDA and CPSC).
• All test results reported on this website are science-based, accurate, and replicable.
• Please check out our press page to see some of the amazing coverage of our work so far this year!

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Published: June 15, 2024
Saturday

Earlier this month, Consumer Reports published their own follow-up testing of children’s snack products — with a focus on cassava-flour-based products in response to laboratory test results of similar products that Lead Safe Mama, LLC published (and reported on) back in March of this year. (Here’s the link to our original article.) You can see two images from Consumer Reports‘ June 5, 2024 Instagram post (referencing their new article) at the top of this page.

We worked closely with Consumer Reports on their investigation following-up on the testing we conducted. Consumer Reports considered testing several specific children’s snack products based — in part — on input and suggestions from the greater Lead Safe Mama community.  

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I do want to take a moment to share a big “Thank You!” to the investigative journalism team at Consumer Reports. Thank You, Lauren. Thank you, Joel. Thank you, Jen. Everyone here at Lead Safe Mama, LLC HQ (and extending into our active online volunteer advocacy community of more than 100,000 parents [& others!] around the world) are so thankful for Consumer Reports’ collaboration and partnership on this and other “breaking news” stories. A Consumer Reports’ partnership with Lead Safe Mama, LLC confers an additional layer of credibility to our work, that is invaluable in terms of our efforts to get the public on board with the general (and broad) concern for Lead in consumer goods (including foods). From the Bindle Bottle, to the Stanley Quencher Tumblers, to glass baby bottles — and now to cassava-flour-based snack foods — Consumer Reports’ partnership has played an important role in amplifying the reach and impact of this work. I cannot wait to see what the future holds — the difference we can make in our efforts to protect families around the world — simply by combining our intellectual resources and ideas!

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In March 2023, Lead Safe Mama, LLC tested (using independent lab testing) and reported on five cassava-flour-based snack products, including one cassava-flour-based product from Lesser Evil. The Lesser Evil product we tested was found to test positive for extremely high levels of Mercury. This product, while typically consumed by children (as there is no warning on the package that it should not be consumed by children), was not specifically marketed (or packaged) as a product intended for children’s consumption.

Consumer Reports went ahead with follow-up testing on cassava-flour-based products from this same brand (in addition to follow-up testing on another brand Lead Safe Mama had tested as well: Serenity Kids — more on that at this link here), focusing their follow-up testing on Lesser Evil’s products that are expressly marketed (and packaged) as a children’s snack (Lesser Evil Lil’ Puffs — a product that is apparently a very popular snack among Lead Safe Mama community members). With this testing, Consumer Reports also (consistent with Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s findings) found unsafe levels of heavy metals in Lesser Evil’s cassava-flour-based products. You can read the June 5, 2024 Consumer Reports article here.

On June 13, 2024, Lesser Evil responded to this testing by making an announcement (on Instagram) that they would be “phasing-out” the use of cassava flour — but only in their children’s products. Below, we share the three panels of their announcement as posted on Instagram (so you can read their full statement), with the expectation that you (as a reader of this website — LeadSafeMama.com) can see clearly through the greenwashed double-speak and hypocrisy of Lesser Evil’s public statement, in spite of what we consider a very “small victory” (their promise to remove Lead from their children’s products at some unspecified point in the future).

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Some specific points (related to the statement from Lesser Evil, below) to highlight:

1. Even with the publication of findings from both Lead Safe Mama, LLC and Consumer Reports, Lesser Evil is not issuing a recall for any of their Lead-contaminated or Mercury-contaminated cassava-flour-based products…
   • The company has stated that they are “phasing out” the use of cassava… only in their children’s products.
   • What this appears to indicate is that Lesser Evil likely plans on selling through all of the (contaminated) cassava inventory they have “in the warehouse,” and keep selling their inventory of contaminated children’s products until they run out of cassava for those products (and/or until they run out of the pre-made inventory of packaging for those children’s products)! “Why waste the plastic packaging, if they can still sell it!”
2. We searched online today (June 15, 2024) and found the Lesser Evil brand’s Lead-contaminated children’s products still available/ for sale on many platforms (including Amazon).
3. Lesser Evil has made no promise to otherwise clean up their supply chain — a promise and/or action which would have also included removing the Mercury-contaminated cassava from their products made for adults (products not expressly sold and marketed to children, but which are often typically also consumed by children!).
4. Lesser Evil’s statement is clearly dismissive of both the testing Lead Safe Mama, LLC and Consumer Reports conducted, instead doubling down on the empty boast that they “regularly test products to ensure they are safe.”
   • If they “regularly test” as they so state — and if that testing is completed down to the appropriately low levels of detection (single digit parts per billion, in this case) — then their statement (that they test regularly) means they are aware (and have been aware) of the contamination in these products.
   • Alternately, if they were not aware of the contamination uncovered by Lead Safe Mama, LLC and Consumer Reports, this statement indicates Lesser Evil is either not completing the testing they claim to be (including possibly not testing at a meaningful frequency/ batch interval), or — more likely the case — is not testing down to an appropriate and meaningful low threshold of detection (single digit ppb) for Lead, Mercury, Cadmium, and/or Arsenic.
5. Lesser Evil asserts their products meet safety standards, when (in fact) there currently are no consistent/ comprehensive/ enforceable relevant federal safety standards for this type of snack food product made for consumption by young children! (In context, this statement means next to nothing.)
6. Given they cite their “founding principles” as the reason for removing the contaminated cassava flour from their children’s products, it is unadulterated hypocrisy that the company does not apply these same “founding principles” to their products made and sold for consumption by adults (especially given the number of parents who have reported to Lead Safe Mama, LLC that parents often give their kids a whole bag of the [exact-same-ingredients] “adult” snack to eat in one sitting).
   • Obviously, no honest, sane person could contend that mere labelling and/or marketing distinctions should serve as the sole safeguard protecting children against real-world dietary exposure to Lead and other potent metallic toxicants present at high concentrations in these products.
   • And again… children consume snack foods, regardless of whether they are explicitly labelled as a “children’s” snack, so Lesser Evil should stop using cassava flour in ALL of their products until they can find a safe/ uncontaminated source (or until they can establish safer/ Lead-free and Mercury-free manufacturing processes in their factory).

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And with that, here’s Lesser Evil’s public statement
as published on Instagram on June 13, 2024:

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