137 Reports of Glass in Gerber Jars : All-American Firm Focus of Chain Reaction of Fear
For Gerber Products, a quiet, rural Michigan company with an all-American image, the nightmare began on St. Valentine’s Day in Schenectady, N.Y.
Broken glass was allegedly found in some Gerber baby food there, so local store owners, responding to an outburst of consumer fear and media attention in the wake of the Tylenol-cyanide scare, briefly cleared their shelves of Gerber jars.
Local tests quickly exonerated Gerber’s products, and they were soon back on Schenectady shelves.
But that wasn’t enough to stop what seems to have become a nationwide chain reaction of fear, which in just two weeks has brought 137 complaints in 30 states about glass found in Gerber jars, a ban on certain Gerber baby food products in one state, and at least one criminal investigation of tampering in another.
Gerber has vainly tried to diminish the importance of the scare, and the Food and Drug Administration, after extensive tests of thousands of Gerber jars and several visits to Gerber plants, has backed up Gerber’s claims that there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with its manufacturing or distribution system.
The FDA says that of the 137 complaints, it has found glass in 21 cases. And in all of those incidents, the glass apparently had been placed in the jars after they left Gerber’s plants. Gerber and FDA officials say it is possible some breakage could occur during shipment to stores, but they attribute most of the problems either to copycat tampering or publicity-seeking consumers making false claims.
“In a lot of these cases, people are calling and saying there is glass, but then we find nothing,” FDA spokesman James Greene said this week. Greene said the Gerber controversy is similar to other scares in recent years that have been fueled by unsubstantiated claims widely reported in the media.
Criticism of FDA
As a result, the FDA has endorsed Gerber’s decision not to announce a nationwide recall of any of its baby food jars, despite criticism from consumer advocates who believe the FDA is not doing all it could to protect infants.
“I think the FDA is being very stubborn” in not ordering a recall, said Mark Silbergeld, director of the Washington office of Consumers Union. “And I think the company is making a mistake in not staging a voluntary recall.”
In fact, Gerber’s strategy of keeping a low profile--in stark contrast to the highly visible manner in which Johnson & Johnson has dealt with the latest Tylenol tragedy by taking the capsules off the market--has so far failed to stem the tide of complaints or reported incidents of tampering around the country.
Image Tarnished
And Gerber officials acknowledge that the company’s wholesome image, so valuable in a market in which the customers are parents of infants, is rapidly being tarnished by the ongoing crisis.
“We’re the victims of this thing; this has definitely harmed our image,” said James Lovejoy, director of corporate communications for the company. “We understand that the concerns of parents are highest when the safety of their children is involved, but we’ve got a situation where we are being judged guilty before we are able to prove we are innocent.”
Gerber’s crisis intensified Tuesday when Elizabeth Holtzman, Brooklyn’s district attorney, held a press conference to announce a criminal investigation into reports of glass in Gerber jars there, and to warn parents to strain Gerber baby food before feeding it to their children. She also banned the sale of Gerber products by one independent grocery store where glass had reportedly been found, and called on the FDA to begin a more systematic review of Gerber products in Brooklyn.
Holtzman took the action after receiving two reports of glass in Gerber jars in Brooklyn, including one in which a 1-year-old baby was reportedly cut on the tongue after eating food from a Gerber jar. Gerber officials said they have offered to cooperate with Holtzman’s investigation.
Maryland has taken the most serious step, banning the sale of Gerber strained peaches in jars after 12 complaints about glass were received in that state. Maryland officials investigating the reports said they found one sealed jar of Gerber baby food containing glass shards, according to an aide to Maryland Gov. Harry Hughes.
Gerber responded to the ban last week by suing the state for $150 million, arguing that there was no reason for such harsh action. The suit has been delayed pending an investigation into the reports in that state.
Meanwhile, complaints from the rest of the country, including California, have been spreading. One Ohio couple has sued Gerber, alleging that their child was injured by eating from a Gerber jar.
Four complaints have been reported in California, but none has been verified, according to Al Bloch, program coordinator with the food and drug branch of the California Department of Health Services.
So far, Gerber has been forced on the defensive. Traditionally close-mouthed with the news media, the company has refused to make its executives available for interviews on network television or in the press, and has decided against launching a national advertising campaign to back up its products.
The company, still headquartered in the small, remote northern Michigan hamlet of Fremont where it began as a canning company, has not held a single press conference since the crisis began.
Lovejoy says the firm has made a conscious decision not to follow the example set by Johnson & Johnson, which staged a media blitz--including national press conferences and network television appearances by James Burke, the company’s chairman--and quickly recalled its capsule products during the recent Tylenol scare. Eventually, it decided to stop manufacturing the capsules.
Johnson & Johnson has been widely praised for taking such prompt action, and may have averted long-lasting image problems as a result.
But Lovejoy argues that Gerber, unlike Johnson & Johnson, is currently dealing with dozens of incidents scattered around the country, many of which may be copycat acts, and nationwide attention would only worsen the problem.
“There’s a syndrome created by the Tylenol case that the top guy in the company ought to be the one to deal with the press,” Lovejoy said. “But we’ve had so many isolated cases that no one guy could be up to speed on all of them.”
He also notes that Gerber did agree to recall juice jars when similar reports of glass were received in late 1984, but says the recall unnecessarily heightened consumer fears about Gerber products.
Dominant Position Intact
Despite the crisis, food industry analysts don’t believe that Gerber’s dominant position in the baby food market, or its profitability, will be seriously threatened.
Gerber, which has been feeding America’s babies since 1928, still commands an overwhelming 70% of the market for jarred baby food--No. 2 Beechnut has about 17%--and is so dominant in the field that a temporary scare isn’t likely to put much of a dent in its market share, the analysts say.
Lovejoy adds that Gerber’s sales have not been significantly hurt by the scare yet, except in markets where the company’s products have been pulled from shelves.
Gerber also has expanded beyond baby food by making acquisitions that have given it a presence in the children’s apparel, furniture and related baby products markets, and by establishing chains of day-care centers around the country. Now, only about 45% of its sales comes from baby food, according to Eric Larson, food analyst with Paine Webber.
“The company is in very good shape, they have a very clean balance sheet,” Larson said. In fiscal 1985, which ended last March 31, Gerber earned $56.4 million on sales of $929 million, up from the previous year’s profits of $50.1 million on sales of $805.4 million.
Larson also expects Gerber to report a slight increase in earnings for the 1986 fiscal year, which ends this month.
But now that Gerber is embroiled in its second glass scare in two years, Larson believes the baby food industry may be forced to look for new methods of packaging in order to get away from glass jars.
The industry has continued to use traditional glass containers because they retain the vitamins and nutritional qualities in food much better than plastic, allowing much longer shelf life for baby food. Baby food can also be heated while it is in the jar, which wouldn’t be possible with plastic.
But Larson says alternative packaging technology may soon make glass jars--and hopefully glass scares--a thing of the past.
