Hershey Lawsuits: Heavy Metals in Chocolate and Sourcing Claims

Two Separate Claim Types

Consumer litigation involving large chocolate manufacturers falls into two unrelated groups. The first concerns heavy metals, principally cadmium and lead, detected in dark chocolate products.

The second concerns sourcing representations, alleging that claims about ethical or sustainable cocoa sourcing did not reflect conditions in supply chains, including the use of child labour on West African cocoa farms.

The Legal Framework

California Proposition 65 requires warnings for exposures above set levels to listed chemicals including lead and cadmium, and is the most common vehicle for heavy metal claims because it does not require proof of individual harm.

Elsewhere, state consumer protection statutes are used, generally on the theory that consumers would not have purchased, or would have paid less, had contamination been disclosed. Preemption arguments based on federal food labelling rules feature in the defence.

Sourcing claims proceed as false advertising where specific certifications or standards were represented, and are considerably harder where the language used was aspirational rather than a specific verifiable claim.

What Consumers Should Know

Levels reported in testing are generally low, and risk relates to cumulative exposure over time rather than a single serving. Dark chocolate tends to show higher levels than milk chocolate because it contains more cocoa solids.

A Proposition 65 warning indicates that exposure exceeds a threshold set with a wide safety margin, not that a product is unsafe. Treating it as a binary safety signal misreads what it means.