Aside of all that, they were also poisoning babies in Eastern Europe as recently as 16 years ago. Their Gerber brand of baby food had two tiers of meat products for babies as young as 6 m.o… The ones sold in Western Europe were 100% meat. Identical looking jars manufactured for Eastern Europe had only 50% meat. The rest was indigestible for babies “mechanically separated meat”, which is industry term for whatever’s left after thinly minced bones, feathers and claws are forced through a sieve. Babies don’t produce enzymes necessary to digest any of that. They eat very little, so nutritionally empty “food” isn’t something that can be easily compensated for, and it impacts their development. Oh, and before anyone brings up the economical differences between Eastern and Western Europe: the better quality foods made for western markets were on average sold slightly cheaper than their Eastern counterparts.
Explaining it all with pure greed is actually generous. Because it also fits a pattern of neocolonialism and a concerted effort to make Eastern Europeans slightly weaker, dumber and easier to exploit. Even greedy people would usually stop short of actually poisoning babies, right? It wasn’t a mistake or a manufacturing error. Labels were printed with the ingredients listed (however misleading, because “mechanically separated meat” contains little to no meat at all). It was a deliberate choice, made by well informed people. But also merely a blip on a long list of their crimes.
Aside of all that, they were also poisoning babies in Eastern Europe as recently as 16 years ago. Their Gerber brand of baby food had two tiers of meat products for babies as young as 6 m.o… The ones sold in Western Europe were 100% meat. Identical looking jars manufactured for Eastern Europe had only 50% meat. The rest was indigestible for babies “mechanically separated meat”, which is industry term for whatever’s left after thinly minced bones, feathers and claws are forced through a sieve. Babies don’t produce enzymes necessary to digest any of that. They eat very little, so nutritionally empty “food” isn’t something that can be easily compensated for, and it impacts their development. Oh, and before anyone brings up the economical differences between Eastern and Western Europe: the better quality foods made for western markets were on average sold slightly cheaper than their Eastern counterparts.
Explaining it all with pure greed is actually generous. Because it also fits a pattern of neocolonialism and a concerted effort to make Eastern Europeans slightly weaker, dumber and easier to exploit. Even greedy people would usually stop short of actually poisoning babies, right? It wasn’t a mistake or a manufacturing error. Labels were printed with the ingredients listed (however misleading, because “mechanically separated meat” contains little to no meat at all). It was a deliberate choice, made by well informed people. But also merely a blip on a long list of their crimes.