Biden puts on pressure as formula plight bites
United States President Joe Biden stepped up his administration’s response to a nationwide baby formula shortage yesterday that has forced frenzied parents into online groups to swap and sell to each other to keep their babies fed.
The president discussed with executives from Gerber and Reckitt how they could increase production and how his administration could help, and talked with leaders from Walmart and Target about how to restock shelves and address regional disparities in access to formula, the White House said.
The administration plans to monitor possible price gouging and work with trading partners in Mexico, Chile, Ireland and the Netherlands on imports, even though 98 per cent of baby formula is domestically made.
The problem is the result of supply chain disruptions and a safety recall, and has had a cascade of effects.
Retailers are limiting what customers can buy, and doctors and health workers are urging parents to contact food banks or physicians’ offices, in addition to warning against watering down formula to stretch supplies or using online DIY recipes.
The shortage is weighing particularly on lower-income families after the recall by formula maker Abbott, due to contamination concerns.
The recall wiped out many brands covered by WIC, a federal programme that serves women, infants and children, though the programme now permits brand substitutes.
The Biden administration is working with states to make it easier for WIC recipients to buy different sizes of formula their benefits might not cover.
About half of infant formula nationwide is purchased by participants using WIC benefits, according to the White House.
Clara Hinton, 30, of Hartford, Connecticut, has a 10-month old daughter, Patiennce, who has an allergy that requires special formula.
Hinton, who has no car, has been taking the bus to the suburbs, going from town to town, and finally found some formula at a box store in West Hartford. But she said the store refused to take her WIC card.
Hinton said her baby recently ran out of formula from an already opened can she got from a friend.
“She has no formula,” she said. “I just put her on regular milk. What do I do? Her paediatrician made it clear I’m not supposed to be doing that, but what do I do?
Parents are also using social media to bridge supply gaps.
Ashley Maddox, a 31-year-old mother of two from San Diego, started a Facebook group after failing to find formula for her 5-month-old son, Cole, at the commissary on the Navy base.
“I connected with a gal in my group and she had seven cans of the formula I need that were just sitting in her house that her baby didn’t need anymore. So I drove out, it was about a 20-minute drive and picked it up and paid her. It was a miracle.”
She said there was already a stigma attached to being a non-breastfeeding mother and the group had become supportive. “To not be able to have that formula, it’s scary,” she said.
Shortages of basic goods have been a problem since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Access to medical supplies, computer chips, household appliances, cars and other goods has been hurt by closed factories and virus outbreaks, as well as storms and other weather events.
Doctor Navneet Hundal, a paediatric gastroenterologist at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital, said she and other paediatricians had been grappling with the formula shortage for months.
“It kind of blows my mind that just now it is becoming more talked about. We’ve been struggling with this since February. It’s like putting out fires every day.”
Formula companies stopped giving out samples she could pass on to parents, Hundal said.
Supply is still very patchy and she advises new parents to talk to their paediatricians to see if there are other brands of formula that they can safely give their newborns.
A safety recall compounded the challenges.
The Food and Drug Administration warned consumers on February 17 to avoid some powdered baby formula products from a Sturgis, Michigan, facility run by Abbott Nutrition, which then initiated a voluntary recall.
According to findings released in March, Abbott failed with plant sanitary conditions and procedures.
The FDA launched its investigation after four babies became sick with a rare bacterial infection after consuming formula made at the plant. All four were hospitalised and two died.
Chicago-based Abbott said in a statement, “there is no evidence to link our formulas to these infant illnesses”. Samples of the bacteria collected from the infants did not match those found in the company’s factory, it noted.
Abbott said that pending FDA approval, “we could restart the site within two weeks”. Once production began, it would take six to eight weeks for the baby formula to be available on shelves.
Biden, in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, pressed the independent agency to “bring all of the commission’s tools to bear” to investigate and act on reports of fraud or price gouging due to supply disruptions.
“It is unacceptable for families to lose time and spend hundreds of dollars more because of price gougers,” he told FTC chair Lina Khan.