Gerber Products Co

The world's largest food and beverage company turned its attention to the younger set Thursday. Nestle agreed to pay $5.5 billion in cash for Gerber Products Co., which has 80% of the U.S. baby food market. Parsippany, N.J.-based Gerber, best known to parents for the charcoal drawing of a wide-eyed, chubby-cheeked infant on its products since 1931, is a unit of Novartis, another Swiss giant, which is focusing on healthcare and pharmaceuticals.

A Gerber research plant is retooling to resume production for a market of one: a profoundly allergic 15-year-old boy who cannot live without a special baby formula the company stopped making five years ago. For a few days this month, one quarter of the production space at the Gerber Products Co. research center in Fremont, Mich., will be devoted to making MBF, a formula that only Raymond Dunn Jr. needs and which Gerber is providing free.

Nestle is expected to announce a $5-billion deal to acquire baby-food maker Gerber Products Co. from Novartis, sources familiar with the situation said Wednesday. Novartis, the world's fourth-biggest pharmaceutical company, declined to comment. Nestle could not be immediately reached for comment. Although Swiss firm Nestle is the world's biggest maker of infant nutritional products, it lacks a baby-food brand in the U.S. and has been keen to buy Parsippany, N.J.

Gerber Products Co., Fremont, Mich., named Carl G. Smith acting CEO to replace Leo D. Goulet, who died Sunday.

Gerber Recalls Oatmeal: Gerber Products Co. issued a nationwide recall for four-ounce jars of oatmeal after glass particles turned up in the baby food in the Minneapolis area. Gerber recalled one day's production of 2nd Foods Oatmeal with applesauce and bananas after receiving two consumer complaints. No injuries were reported, a Gerber spokesman said. The affected jars are marked with a freshness date of Jan. 20, 1995, and carry the code number 469 F.

Gerber Recalls Pacifiers: The action involves about 10 million pacifiers that could cause choking because the nipple can break off. No injuries have been reported, Gerber Products Co. said in a news release. NUK Orthodontic Pacifiers made between July 1, 1993, and June 30, 1994, are being recalled. No other Gerber pacifiers or products are involved. Date codes on the back of packages range from 070193 to 063094.

Baby Food Burns: Gerber Products Co. was sued in Los Angeles Superior Court in a case alleging strict liability, negligence and breach of warranty. Chrislee V. Gedeon, who filed the case, says that when she heated two jars of beef and carrot baby food, the jars appeared stable and were not bubbling or boiling. As soon as she put a plastic spoon in one of the jars, "the contents exploded all over plaintiffs' face, neck, back and chest," causing severe burns, the suit says.

Gerber Products Co. said it is launching a line of powders, oils and other toiletries for infants and toddlers, a move that pits the king of baby food against baby-care products giant Johnson & Johnson. In all, Summit, N.J.-based Gerber has developed 14 new baby products, including shampoos, diaper rash ointment and vitamin drops. They include an apple-banana-flavored tooth and gum cleaner and a lavender-scented baby wash.

Gerber Products Co., the largest U.S. maker of baby food, didn't conspire with other manufacturers to fix prices, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia has ruled. The U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision to throw out a class-action lawsuit filed by wholesalers and supermarket chains alleging executives of Gerber, Pittsburgh-based H.J. Heinz Co.'s baby food unit and other baby food makers exchanged information about price increases before making them public.

Gerber baby food products were pulled from the shelves of Southern California Target stores Thursday after a Huntington Beach woman reported discovering a slip of paper inside a jar while feeding her 20-month-old son. Unlike two recent cases in Irvine -- where threatening notes and an ingredient of the deadly poison ricin were found in baby food jars -- the product did not appear to be contaminated. "There was nothing written on the paper," said Huntington Beach police Lt. Janet Perez.

Baby food company Gerber Products Co. must face a price-fixing suit brought by smaller rival Beech-Nut Nutrition Corp., the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday. The appeals court in San Francisco said a lower court erred when it threw out claims by Beech-Nut, a unit of Kraft Foods Inc., that Gerber routinely underbid for contracts to supply jarred baby food and cereals to a welfare program for low-income mothers.

Gerber is changing the packaging of some of its baby food. Gone are the single-serving glass jars used since the 1940s to package applesauce, bananas and pears. Now those three products will come in cube-shaped plastic containers, Gerber Products Co. officials were to announce today. The new containers will come in four-packs and have plastic lids that snap on and off with a foil seal to prevent tampering.

Gerber Products Co. said it is launching a line of powders, oils and other toiletries for infants and toddlers, a move that pits the king of baby food against baby-care products giant Johnson & Johnson. In all, Summit, N.J.-based Gerber has developed 14 new baby products, including shampoos, diaper rash ointment and vitamin drops. They include an apple-banana-flavored tooth and gum cleaner and a lavender-scented baby wash.

Gerber Products Co., the largest U.S. maker of baby food, didn't conspire with other manufacturers to fix prices, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia has ruled. The U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision to throw out a class-action lawsuit filed by wholesalers and supermarket chains alleging executives of Gerber, Pittsburgh-based H.J. Heinz Co.'s baby food unit and other baby food makers exchanged information about price increases before making them public.

Like a baby taking those first shaky steps, Gerber Products Co. is finally toddling into the lucrative area of organic baby food, where it will compete with Heinz USA's popular Earth's Best. With its Tender Harvest line, Gerber, long the industry leader, faces an interesting marketing challenge: how to sell an upscale organic product without implying that its regular brand is riddled with farm chemicals and therefore less healthful.

Gerber Products Co. has promised to halt "deceptive" claims that four out of five pediatricians recommend its baby food, the Federal Trade Commission said. The agency said Gerber relied on a survey of 562 doctors that found only 67 out of 408, or 16%, recommended its baby food. Fremont, Mich.-based Gerber, a unit of Swiss pharmaceutical and chemical company Novartis, acknowledged problems with its ad.

Gerber Products Co., the dominant maker of baby foods in America, will stop adding starch and sugar to most of its main products in an effort to grab a bigger chunk of the health-conscious-parents market. Gerber said the move, to be formally announced today, is unrelated to criticisms by a consumer advocacy group that the company diluted its baby foods with water, sugar and chemically modified starch and deceived the public about the foods' nutritional value.