But cinnamon is a flavouring agent, making up a small proportion of the pouch products. Lead salts taste sweet; cinnamon isn't supposed to taste sweet on its own. So I have to wonder how much lead was in these cinnamon "raw material"? This isn't the usual long-term lead poisoning you get from lead water-pipes; this was acute poisoning.
It seems to me more likely that Austrofood was using apples that weren't sweet enough, so somewhere in the supply chain some bozo added lead salts. People expect apples to be sweet, but not cinnamon.
Austrofood appears to be an Ecuadorian company:
https://advanceglobalcap.com/astrofood-a-sustainable-busines...
It's Austrofood that makes these products, and bags them up in pouches. They started selling into the US market in 2019.
[Edit] Austrofoods started out farming "guanabana", a product I'd never heard of before today. Apparently it has a taste like apples and strawberries, with sour, citrus notes. It's texture is like bananas; so perhaps it's good for making apple sauce, if you sweeten it a bit, maybe with lead.