The Cookware Industry Has a Major Fight Brewing Over PFAS Claims

Caraway is facing a lawsuit over advertising claims related to forever chemicals, also known as PFAS. Groupe SEB USA and Meyer sued Caraway in February in the Southern District of New York, alleging that Caraway’s marketing harms their reputations and the broader cookware industry. The complaint says Caraway markets products as free of “toxic” chemicals without scientific support and that the marketing has caused ongoing harm to consumers, the plaintiffs, and other companies. Caraway launched a marketing campaign in response, while its legal position frames the dispute as an attempt to silence the company. The case follows earlier industry efforts to oppose PFAS bans through an industry advocacy alliance.

"Caraway recently launched a marketing campaign in response to a lawsuit filed in February by two large pan makers, which claims that Caraway is harming their reputation by marketing its products as free of "toxic" chemicals-despite never mentioning either company by name."

"The lawsuit, filed by Groupe SEB USA and Meyer in the Southern District of New York, claims that Caraway's marketing around forever chemicals, a colloquial term for per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS), is harmful to the industry as a whole. Caraway's marketing materials, the two companies say in the suit, is not grounded in scientific fact and "has caused immense and continuing harm to consumers, to Plaintiffs, and to other cookware and bakeware companies in the marketplace.""

""Claiming to be a smaller company is no defense to false advertising-all companies large and small have the same rights and obligations under federal and state false advertising laws," Zarlenga said in the release."

"The lawsuit is the latest attack on anti-PFAS advocacy by two of the largest companies in the global cookware industry. In 2024, as more than two dozen state legislatures weighed bans on consumer products with PFAS in them, Groupe SEB, the parent company of Groupe SEB USA, and Meyer formed the Cookware Sustainability Alliance, an advocacy group for the industry."

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