Beech-Nut Nutrition Corporation is a baby food company that is currently owned by the Swiss branded consumer-goods firm Hero group.
Beech-Nut's roots go back to 1891, to the Mohawk Valley town of Canajoharie, New York. It was founded there as The Imperial Packing Company; its first product was Beech-Nut ham. Ham and bacon were the company's main products for its first seven years.
The company was incorporated as the Beech-Nut Packing Company in 1899. In 1900, the company's sales were $200,000. Engineers from Beech-Nut patented the first vacuum jar with a design that included a gasket and top that became a standard of the industry and could remain intact in transit.
During the first 25 years of the 20th century, the company expanded its product line into peanut butter, jam, pork and beans, ketchup, chili sauce, mustard, spaghetti, macaroni, marmalade, caramel, fruit drops, mints, chewing gum, and coffee.
It is well within the reach of most white-collar criminals to assume an air of irreproachable virtue, especially when they're about to be sentenced. But there was something unusually compelling about the bearing of Niels L. Hoyvald and John F. Lavery as they stood before Judge Thomas C. Platt of the United States District Court in Brooklyn last month - especially in light of what they were being sentenced for. As president and vice president of the Beech-Nut Nutrition Corporation, Hoyvald and Lavery had sold millions of bottles of apple juice that they knew to contain little or no apple juice at all - only sugars, water, flavoring and coloring. The consumers of this bogus product were babies.
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