Nature’s One
Organic infant formula manufacturer Nature’s One is continuing to minimise and reduce the number of environmental contaminants in its products.
The company’s “expanded purity initiative” – part of the firm’s zero tolerance arsenic goal – is trying to eliminate the contaminants such as arsenic, other heavy metals, pesticide residues and hidden chemicals that are known to be in the US food supply.
The decision comes just a few months after the company were furious at a report that claimed that toddler formulas had arsenic levels in them becoming a cause for concern.
Jay Highman, the CEO of Nature’s One, said that it is not enough to talk about what is added to a formula to make it advantageous.
He said: “Instead, we need to talk about what is not in the formula or baby’s first foods. Unfortunately, many of these chemicals go undetected because they are not tested routinely, or are concealed under current labelling regulations”.
The firm has developed on a current US Department of Agriculture (USDA) organic compliance process in order to reduce arsenic in organic brown rice syrup with the use of modern test equipment and methodologies.
The firm has also encouraged other infant formula and baby food makers to do the same.
Nature’s One first came into existence when it introduce its first organic formula in 1999 with the purpose of cutting out the use of pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, corn syrup, bisphenol-A and other contaminants.
Highman also said: “The company’s founding goal has always been to identify and eliminate toxins that may negatively impact human development.
“Our purity initiative has no ending point; eliminating or minimising these toxins should be a goal for all companies who want to provide the very best in nutritional and development health”.
Highman was not pleased with reports published earlier this year about arsenic levels in some of the firm’s toddler formula products.
A study examined the seventeen samples of infant formula being on sale in the US including two of Nature’s One products for arsenic levels.
The other fifteen formulas were found to have relatively low arsenic concentrations of between two and 12ng per gram. However, the other two products – belonging to Nature’s One – were found to include more than twenty times the concentration of the other tested products.
The report highlighted the lack of regulatory limits surrounding the presence of arsenic in organic brown rice syrup (OBRS) in the US and the European Union (EU).
OBRS is used to sweeten organic foods and gluten free products such as infant formula.
Momentarily, there are no regulations for inorganic arsenic in food in the US and the EU but, however, China has a fixed regulatory limit at 150ng of inorganic arsenic per gram of rice.
