Quality begins with what goes into our products.
If you use protein powder, you may have heard concerns about heavy metals in products on the market. Here’s how we manage them.
Every ingredient we use is evaluated against our high standards for quality and safety.
Heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury occur naturally in the environment and can be present at trace levels in soil, water, and the crops grown in them. Their presence alone does not determine whether a food is safe; the level matters.
Our job is to manage this risk throughout our supply chain and production—and verify through rigorous testing that our products meet our standards and applicable food-safety requirements.
Our Standards.
Every lot of Beyond Starmatter nutrient-boosted protein powder is tested against a fixed specification that follows California Proposition 65 safe harbor levels, which are the most stringent U.S. regulatory levels for our product categories that we could identify. These levels are also the benchmark the Clean Label Project applies to this category. If a lot’s test exceeds any one of those limits, it isn't released.
We’re a founder-led company of mission-oriented teammates, many of whom, along with their families, consume our products at a higher rate than the general public. That personal connection drives our intense focus on quality, testing, and safety, including our work with the Clean Label Project.
Testing details
See our limit for each metal and the laboratory methods behind them.
How we manage heavy-metal risk.
Our program relies on multiple layers of control, not a single checkpoint.
We take a risk-based approach across the raw materials we source, the suppliers we work with, and the finished products we make. We assess every raw material.
Different ingredients can carry different levels of heavy metals. We evaluate each one based on its individual characteristics and other relevant factors to identify where risk may be higher. That assessment determines the appropriate quality requirements, supplier controls, and testing for each raw material.
We hold our suppliers to our standards.
We work only with qualified suppliers, and we set requirements for every material they send us. Where the risk warrants it, those requirements include stringent heavy-metal specifications.
We also dig into their own controls and testing so we can verify what's arriving.
We test raw materials ourselves.
Based on each ingredient’s assessed risk, incoming raw materials are tested against our established specifications before they become part of a finished Beyond the Plant Protein product.
We test finished products, lot by lot.
Control doesn’t stop at the ingredient. Our controls continue through manufacturing. Every lot of finished product undergoes heavy-metal testing as part of our verification program. It’s the final check our controls are working as intended, and how we monitor what actually reaches you.
Our approach
at a glance.
Quality gets built at every step.
Please do not hesitate to contact our team at ethanandteam@beyondmeat.com if you have questions or would like further information on our food safety and quality programs.
- Assess the risk
- Select and qualify raw materials and suppliers
- Set stringent requirements
- Test raw materials based on risk
- Manufacture and control the finished product
- Test finished products lot by lot
- Review and verify the results