What the law requires, by category
Heavy-metal testing and disclosure obligations are arriving category by category and jurisdiction by jurisdiction, rather than as one national rule. These guides orient a brand to the obligation that applies to its product, and show how Heavy Metal Tested & Certified helps turn the data the law already requires into correction, independent verification, and a claim a retailer or a consumer can check.
The boundary is the same on every guide: a certification helps a brand act on mandated data and produce a verified claim. It does not satisfy, replace, or discharge the legal obligation, and none of these pages is legal advice. A brand confirms its own duties with its own counsel and against the enacted text.
Published guides
- Heavy-metal testing requirements for baby-food brands: the overview of the federal layer (the FDA’s non-binding lead action levels; no federal testing mandate) and the widening state patchwork (California, Maryland, Virginia, Illinois, with more phasing in). Start here for the whole baby-food picture.
- California baby-food testing and disclosure (AB 899): monthly testing of each production aggregate for arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury, and public website disclosure of the results since January 1, 2025. Infant formula is excluded.
- Maryland baby-food testing and disclosure (Rudy’s Law): monthly testing from 2025 and public website disclosure from 2026, with a QR code on the label of a product subject to an actionable limit. Infant formula is excluded.
- Heavy-metal controls for supplements: no federal numeric limit specific to supplements; the USP General Chapter <2232> consensus standard for the four metals, and California Proposition 65 as the practical enforcement driver. Supplements were clarified out of the baby-food laws.
- Heavy-metal testing for private-label manufacturers: the statutory duty sits with the maker while the exposure is shared with the retailer whose name is on the pack. How a co-packer’s testing becomes a claim its retail customer can verify.
- Heavy-metal readiness for retailers: why the state laws and the litigation environment make heavy-metal certification a supplier-qualification and risk-management question, and how an independently verified claim beats a supplier self-report.
Further category guides are added as each is verified against its primary source. For the instrument-level record of the sovereign limits a standard adopts, see the regulation references.