Campbell’s Soup, yes, the people who make those famous tins, is suddenly at the centre of a scandal after a former employee dropped an hour-long secret recording that appears to feature one of the company’s top executives trashing Campbell’s products, its customers, and even its own staff.
Credit: Unsplash/ Anastasiya Badun
Robert Garza, a Michigan employee hired in September 2024, filed a lawsuit on Thursday and handed the mystery audio over to Detroit’s Local 4 News, who broadcast clips of it. If the voice on the tape is who Garza says it is, it’s a bit unhinged.
Garza claims the recording captures Martin Bally, Campbell’s Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer, ranting for more than an hour at a restaurant meet-up that Garza thought would be about his salary. Instead, the voice identified as Bally is heard allegedly insulting the company’s products, saying things like: “We have s**t for f**king poor people… Who buys our s**t? I barely buy Campbell’s anymore.”
He also appears to complain about “bioengineered meat,” declaring: “I don’t wanna eat a piece of chicken that came from a 3D printer.”
Credit: Martin Bally, via Linkedin
For the record, while bioengineered foods are legal in the US, Campbell’s says the claim about their meat isn’t true, and that their labelled GMO ingredients come from crops like corn and canola, not lab-grown chicken. A spokesperson for Campbell’s told the Daily Mail the comments were “patently absurd” and stressed that Bally, an IT exec, has “nothing to do with how we make our food”,
Campbell’s also told the Daily Mail Bally has been placed on temporary leave while the company investigates the recording.
The lawsuit doesn’t stop there. Garza claims Bally allegedly made racist remarks about Indian employees, with the recording including the line: “F**king Indians don’t know a f**king thing.”
Garza claims he reported the comments internally in January 2025, and was abruptly fired soon after. The lawsuit accuses Bally and Garza’s supervisor of being responsible for the termination and says Garza has suffered emotional and financial damage as a result.
Meanwhile, the audio has now made its way into politics: Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier posted on X that his office is launching an investigation, because of the state’s ban on lab-grown meat.
Bally, who has worked at Campbell’s since 2022, has not commented publicly.
Garza summed up the whole situation like this: “They say, ‘We treat you like family at Campbell’s.’ That’s not the case.”
The Tab has reached out to Garza and Campbell’s for comment.
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Featured image credit: CJ Gunther/Shutterstock
