: SAGE: Beech-Nut Nutrition

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Beech-Nut Nutrition

ACCORDING TO JAMES S. BENSON, former Deputy Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the FDA works hard to ensure that the “companies that produce the products under the agency's jurisdiction comply with the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and other statutes enforced by the FDA.” When the FDA began studying the possibility that manufacturers of fruit juice products were misleading consumers in 1982, Beech-Nut ranked as the second-largest baby food company.The baby food industry was dominated by Gerber Products owning 70 percent of the jarred baby food market for 40 years; Beech-Nut and H.J. Heinz each had 14 percent of the market. Financial World reports that Beech-Nut began, in 1977, trying to gain a greater market share by selling a “cheaper adulterated product.”Steven Kindel reported, “Sales of that product brought Beech-Nut an estimated $60 million between 1977 and 1982, while reducing material costs about $250,000 annually.”When confronted by the FDA, Beech-Nut denied knowledge of any fraudulent conduct and refused to provide its records while sending FDA investigators on scavenger hunts to empty warehouses. [Source: Encyclopedia of White-Collar & Corporate Crime; Beech-Nut Nutrition]

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