Soup’s on, executive out.
The iconic red and white labeled soup brand has been in the soup (baseball reference meaning “big trouble”) themselves as of late. That’s because Vice President Martin Bally was caught on a secret recording sharing some incredibly disturbing and offensive remarks.
It’s been a big-time controversy for the company that’s one of the largest processed food manufacturers in the United States. Campbell’s parent company owns the soup brand in addition to other iconic food brands like Pepperidge Farm, Swanson, V8, Prego pasta sauce, Pace salsa, and even Snyder pretzels. It’s one of those situations where one of the brands making headlines (not in a good way) could potentially negatively affect all the others.
Campbell’s is likely hurting from the controversy after they reported revenue of over $10.3 billion for the fiscal year ending in August 2025. It wasn’t too long ago that Campbell’s actually joined a campaign that butted against a California law making it mandatory for food producers to label products that contained genetically modified ingredients. Shortly after doing that, Campbell’s decided to drop the opposition and announced they’d be labeling their products that contained GMOs.
That’s great and all… but what about any sort of law that requires brands to disclose that their product contains 3D printed meat?
As wild as that might sound, the quality and contents of Campbell’s has been called into question as of late after a recording surfaced of a Campbell’s employee talking about the ingredients in their soup. The secret recording was taken by Robert Garza, a former Campbell’s Soup Company employee who said he was fired after complaining about Vice President Martin Bally. Garza has since filed a lawsuit claiming the company retaliated him for his complaints after Bally was caught making racist remarks and trashing the company’s product and customers.
In the recording, Bally can reportedly be heard saying that their soup contains “bioengineered meat” from a “3D printer,” saying their products are for “poor people.”
“We have s*** for f***ing poor people. Who buys out s***? I don’t buy f***ing Campbell’s products barely anymore. It’s not healthy, now that I know what the f***’s in it.
Even in a can of soup, I look at it, bioengineered meat. I don’t want to eat a f–king, a piece of chicken that came from a 3-D printer.”
After a brief investigation, that recording and subsequent news story was enough for Campbell’s to fire Vice President Martin Bally. He was originally put on administrative leave, but now the soup company has officially decided to cut ties with the man who said some truly horrible things about customers and claimed that the meat in the soup products were 3D printed, which might be one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard.
I sure hope it’s not true, and based on Campbell’s official statement on Bally’s firing, they are suggesting that everything Bally spewed in the recording was false:
“The comments were vulgar, offensive and false, and we apologize for the hurt they have caused. This behavior does not reflect our values and the culture of our company, and we will not tolerate that kind of language under any circumstances.”
And all of this couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Campbell’s soup brand. Families all across the country typically incorporate Campbell’s products into Thanksgiving dishes, and even if the 3D printed stuff is fabricated… it might be enough to encourage consumers to reach for a different can in the aisle.
