FDA Knew About Potentially Deadly Bacteria in Baby Formula Months Before Issuing Recall
Baby formula continues to be hard to find. Meanwhile, House Republicans open investigation into Biden FDA’s response to baby formula shortage.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall that the baby formula shortage of 2022 began as the result of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) closing an Abbott Laboratories plant in Michigan.
It is reported that the FDA knew about a deadly bacteria detected at another facility in a type of baby formula months before the brand was recalled.
In November, the FDA inspected the Mead Johnson plant, where Enfamil ProSobee Simply Plant-Based Infant Formula is made, and was informed that Cronobacter bacteria had been detected at the Zeeland, Michigan facility, in September.
Despite the initial contaminated batch being destroyed, another 145,000 cans were recalled after the bacteria was found in the formula. No bacteria was found in the recalled cans of formula, according to the FDA.
The February recall came around five months after the discovery of Cronobacter, which the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says “can be deadly for young infants.” Symptoms in babies include fever, poor feeding, excessive crying, low energy, seizures, spine swelling, and bloodstream infections.
“As part of the FDA’s oversight to ensure safe and nutritious infant formula, the agency’s more recent engagements with manufacturers through inspections and ongoing meetings has limited the scope of these recalls and minimized disruptions to the market,” an FDA spokesperson told Politico regarding the recall.
Last winter, we reported “experts” predicted the baby formula shortage would be resolved by spring.
It looks like the experts were wrong…again.
One year later, the baby formula shortage continues to plague families nationwide – and relief from the Biden administration is seemingly nowhere in sight.
FOX Business Lydia Hu spoke with pharmacy owner Anil Datwani, who issued a warning to parents that demand for formula is growing, while supply is dwindling.
“It’s getting harder and harder,” the AR-Ex pharmacy owner said, adding that “it’s a struggle to find” Enfamil A.R., Enfamil Gentlease NeuroPro.
“[Mothers] go from one store to the next store to the next store” looking for these formulas, he explained.
House Republicans has started investigating the Biden Administration FDA’s “poor response.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf requesting all the administration’s communications relating to the shortage and its response. Califf notoriously announced in January that the FDA would not fire anyone over its response to the crisis.
Comer’s letter references a review of the FDA’s response by a third party, which found that the organization lacked urgency and motivation in responding to the shortage.
“Despite this report, and the acknowledged need for a major overhaul, you stated that there would be no reassignments nor firings over the administration’s response to the infant formula shortage,” Comer wrote in the letter. “We request documents and communications to understand the FDA’s response to the infant formula shortage.”
One former FDA regulator warns the American supply chain remains susceptible to more crises.
Zeroing in on “multiple microcultures,” Frank Yiannas, former FDA deputy commissioner for food policy and response, told the House Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services the agency is in need of a culture change.
“It is my view that the state of the infant formula industry today is not much different than it was then,” Yiannas told the committee.
He told bipartisan lawmakers, the FDA needs more than simple corrective action, adding the agency’s compartmentalized structure hampered its ability to respond.
Yiannas spent four years at the FDA, helping to lead the response to the baby formula shortage last year.
Professor Jacobson reviewed disturbing trends in American culture recently. Creating environments where it is difficult to find infant formula would certainly contribute to the plunging numbers for having children as a priority.
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Comments
Not everything is an emergency. Using “know” in a sense that’s not quite fit for the occasion. Probably there is a special reason for using it that way.
Cavell, The Claim of Reason:
But it is of the first importance to recognize that this is not a fully satisfying answer. For when are we “knowing something”? Do I know (now) (am I, as it were knowing) that there is a green jar of pencils on the desk (though I am not now looking at it)? If I do know now, did I not know before I asked the question? I had not, before then, said that or thought it; but that is perhaps not relevant. If someone had asked me whether the jar was on the desk I could have said Yes without looking. So I did know. But what does it mean to say “I did know”? Of course no one will say that I did not know (that I wasn’t knowing). On the other hand, no one would have said of me, seeing me sitting at my desk with the green jar out of my range of vision, “He knows there is a green jar of pencils on the desk”, nor would anyone say of me now, “He (you) knew there was a green jar . . .”, apart from some special reason which makes that description of my “knowledge” relevant to something I did or said or am doing or saying (e.g., I told someone that I never keep pencils on my desk; I knew that Mrs. Greenjar was coming to tea and that she takes it as a personal affront if there is a green jar visible in the room . . .). Perhaps one feels: “What difference does it make that no one would have said, without a special reason for saying it, that you knew the green jar was on the desk? You did know it; it’s true to say that you knew it. Are you suggesting that one sometimes cannot say what is true?” What I am suggesting is that “Because it is true” is not a reason or basis for saying anything, it does not constitute the point of your saying something; and I am suggesting that there must, in grammar, be reasons for what you say, or be point in your saying of something, if what you say is to be comprehensible. We can understand what the words mean apart from understanding why you say them; but apart from understanding the point of your saying them we cannot understand what you mean.
Could you please expand upon this?
I’ll contract on it. Clickbait headlines use words in a metaphysical register, which register is calculated to make non-problems into problems for philosophy by putting language on holiday. The trick is to bring the words back to their ordinary use, and the problem disappears.
Then Kamala must make all problems disappear because with her language takes a holiday.
Hodie natus est n.n frater.
Democrats: We investigated ourselves, and found we did nothing wrong.
Republicans: When we investigate Democrats we’ll find alot wrong – but no one will be held to account.
Good grief.
Proof again you’re nothing but fodder for the Parasite class.
Absolutely everything the government does these days is to increase our fatality rates, raise our cost of living and generally make life more complicated and inconvenient. This is the very definition of anti-progressive and anti-civilization. We are de-evolving into a lower life form.
Are we devolving, or is it Dems who have devolved? Or is it that humanity did not evolve equally? Those who left Africa migrated both west and east, and eventually north, becoming Asians and Caucasians, they developed much higher IQs than their African ancestors. Of course, all ethnic groups have members sitting on the left side of the Bell Curve, it appears that they flock to the left politically 🙂
Incompetence and or corruption happens all the time.
The big question is what exactly will the government do about it?
Rest assured your government will stop at nothing to do nothing about anything.