The Baby Formula Shortage Crisis Continues
Meanwhile, the FDA will undergo an overhaul in the wake of the shortage and the DOJ is launching a criminal investigation into the Michigan plant at center of crisis.
Late last year, my colleague Mary Chastain reported that industry experts thought the baby formula shortage would continue to spring 2023.
As we approach the spring, the formula shortage crisis appears to continue.
It has been more than one year since the initial crisis pertaining to the baby formula shortage around the nation, and not much has changed. Today, the issue continues to make its impact as parents find themselves walking up and down aisles of empty shelves, looking for the formula they need to feed their infants.
In February of 2022, the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began investigating the Abbott Nutrition plant in Michigan following the death of nine babies who had been given powdered infant formula.
Abbott initiated a recall of certain Similac, Alimentum and EleCare, three popular formulas among parents and their infants.
For months after, the supply of baby formula began to drop at grocery and other retail stores. Parents had to dig through Amazon and Facebook Groups in search of baby formula. More than one year later, the shortage is still being felt.
Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will undergo an overhaul due to the nation’s baby formula shortage, but no one at the agency will be reassigned or fired.
[Commissioner Robert Califf] announced a “new, transformative vision” for the agency which will consolidate the regulators responsible for food safety under a new “Human Foods Program.” However, this general restructuring of FDA agency components did not come with a specific plan to address the problems identified by an internal FDA review that hindered its response to the infant formula shortage. Additionally, when asked at a press conference, the commissioner said there were no plans to fire or reassign anyone involved for the agency’s failures.
Califf did acknowledge that there had been some “leadership changes” – the FDA’s top food safety official, Frank Yiannas, resigned last week. In his resignation letter, Yiannas wrote that the structure of the foods program “significantly impaired the FDA’s ability to operate as an integrated food team and protect the public.”
“But the short answer is no one’s going to be reassigned or fired because of the infant formula situation,” Califf told reporters, according to Politico.
Additionally, the federal government is launching a criminal investigation of the Michigan plant at the heart of the crisis.
The company that runs the plant, Abbott Laboratories, confirmed it was being investigated.
“The DOJ [Department of Justice] has informed us of its investigation and we’re co-operating fully,” a spokesperson said in a statement. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the investigation.
The company – one of the largest producers of baby formula in the US – was forced to recall several powdered infant formulas and stop production in February after health officials found bacteria at the plant that can potentially cause deadly infections in babies.
The Food and Drug Administration Agency (FDA) also said it found evidence of unsanitary conditions.
The shutdown and recall worsened a nationwide formula shortage that was already a problem due to global supply chain issues during the coronavirus pandemic.
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Comments
The democrat party solution- more abortions
How can there be a crisis? Our perfectly impartial, apolitical, and always truth-telling media hasn’t said anything about such a shortage in months!
This is what you get when you hire by intersectionality ladder rather than merit.
As usual, their response to their own incompetence is to form a new department and hire more affirmative action incompetents to
man“person” it.You beat me to it. This is the way government organizations always operate. When they screw up they reorganize and then they continue to screw up as before.
Truth rather than propaganda; several babies died, the first suspect was their baby formula. Abbot voluntarily recalled formula, but investigation could find no link of the pathogen to the formula. This should have cleared the plant to reopen.
Another pathogen, different from the one assumed to have caused the babies’ death was found in a non-product area of the plant (i.e in one of the offices). The FDA used this as an excuse to continue to shutter the plant until the formula shortage and public outrage cause enough pressure to force them to allow the plant to reopen.
The regulatory bureaucracy has virtually unlimited power over food producing plants.
I’m sure they following up with a full DOJ investigation will encourage others to open and operate formula plants in the United States.
That’s how I remember it too.
If there’s a fire, and you call in the arson squad, they’re going to find signs of arson. That’s their job
Same thing here.
“the DOJ is launching a criminal investigation into the Michigan plant at center of crisis.”
Screw that. They need to be launching a criminal investigation into the FDA unit that shut down that Michigan plant.
Jill Biden is hoarding the stuff to give to her suckling infant husband, lying Joe Zero. After his SOTU speech, his diapers are still on fire…
An excess of Mexican babies leads to a shortage of baby products.
We’ve pretty much emptied Mexico.
We’re working on South America and the Caribbean now.
And after that, I’m sure the Muslim world.
Europeans and Australians need not apply.
Well, yeah look at the previous LI story about the hospital in Yuma that is so overwhelmed with illegals they are about to close the hospital. And the main type of patients they are dealing with is pregnant mothers. Now multiply that by 10,000.
This looks like something intended to distract from FDA incompetence rather than one intended to find and correct wrongdoing. “Is launching” implies they have no evidence of wrongdoing yet, which after all this time implies there is no such evidence. Worse, now that they’ve put jail time on the table Abbott’s executives will be as uncooperative as they can be.