Rudy Callahan had dozed off by the time Maryland lawmakers took up the bill bearing his name, a proposal that would set state requirements on baby food testing that are stricter than the Food and Drug Administration’s.

The chubby-cheeked redhead, now 17 months old, was among hundreds of people who reported lead poisoning to federal agencies after eating apple puree pouches with contaminated cinnamon. His family traveled to the State House in Annapolis from their home in Calvert County this week to focus public attention on what experts described in testimony as a vulnerability in product safety.

Rudy’s blood-lead levels, caught by routine testing last summer, were at one point nearly six times the minimum risk threshold.

“Rudy’s lead poisoning carried many feelings: shock, anger, outrage, guilt, frustration, fear, worry and uncertainty about his future,” his mother, Sarah Callahan, told lawmakers Wednesday, as her son lay sleeping on his father’s lap. “As a parent, your instinct is to always protect your child and keep them safe.”

The proposal before lawmakers would require makers of baby food sold in Maryland to test for toxic heavy metals — part of a wave of state-level efforts to regulate food for children under 2 as the FDA works to establish voluntary limits for lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury. That plan, called Closer to Zero, was announced after 2021 congressional reports on toxic heavy metals in baby food raised awareness of the issue.

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Cailey Locklair, president of the Maryland Retailers Alliance, said she worked with Taveras, the lawmaker, to amend the bill to mirror California’s testing protocols. With the changes, she said, the alliance remained neutral on the bill.

State officials say the financial impact of the bill could be as high as $28,000 a year to pay one part-time contract employee to review heavy metal test results for baby food sold in Maryland and to make sure companies are posting the results. The cost to a small business making baby food sold in the state could be significant if the company does not already test for heavy metals, the analysis states.

A state Senate hearing on the bill is set for later this month.

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