There's a fairly short list of companies I could see doing something like this, and Boeing is on that list. I could see Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Exxon Mobil, JPMorgan Chase, McKinsey, ...
Corporate serial killers are everywhere really. The tobacco industry knew their product was giving people cancer and tried to hide that from the people they were poisoning. Philips knew their CPAP machines were filling people's lungs with poison and killing them but hid that as long as they could so they could sell more machines. Baby food companies like Gerber and Beech-Nut Nutrition knew/know that their baby food contains dangerous levels of lead and other heavy metals but continued to sell them to parents who unknowingly spooned that poison right into the mouths of their babies. DuPont and 3M knew that the PFOA and PFOS they produced were highly toxic and causing everything from cancer to deformed babies but they lied to cover that up so that they could keep profiting and now every single one of us has that shit in our blood and there is literally no place or creature on earth that isn't contaminated with it. It's in the rainwater. Johnson & Johnson knew for decades about the asbestos in their baby powder. The Sackler Family knew they were pushing dangerous levels of opioids, but they lied and even bribed doctors to overprescribe their products leading to millions of deaths and countless addictions. Car manufacturers have killed people for higher profits too.
Every single one of these companies were already pulling in a massive amount of wealth but they knowingly killed people just so that they could make even more money. They all put additional profits over human lives. There is no reason to think they wouldn't put a bullet into someone's head if they thought it would make them more money. In many cases it would have been much more humane if they had.
I'm really sorry to hear that.
There were a few internet articles and even two congressional reports on the problem showing that both the baby food companies and the FDA knew about unsafe levels of heavy metals, but did not address it.
In light of the scandal the FDA started a "Closer to Zero" program (https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/clo...) because I guess zero poison in baby food is asking too much. The website shows that the FDA hasn't continued to outright ignore the problem at least, but you can see that they haven't come close to doing anything meaningful in terms of action levels and don't expect to until Dec 2024.
Some foods are worse than others (rice is a common culprit) so if you're stuck using any kind of baby food off the shelf you might be able to reduce exposure if you're careful about what you buy, but I wouldn't have much confidence in any of it. Once a company has proven that they're willing to poison babies for profit trust shouldn't come easy.
I'm sorry that I was the one to tell you about this, but I'm really glad that you now know and if beech-nut has been hurting your kid I hope the damage done is small and that you're able to get some kind of compensation for the harm they've caused your family. Until companies know that they'll face significant and meaningful consequences if they knowingly hurt us for profit they'll never stop hurting us.
