78,000 pounds of formula arrives in US
INDIANAPOLIS – Since February Amanda Foster-Moudy has had a progressively harder time finding formula for her 8-month-old Leo.
She’s joined online groups where mothers share tips and photos of where to find the precious nutrition for their babies and share excess product. Sometimes, she said, her husband Dave Moudy has spent two to three hours driving around to different stores, only to find empty shelves.
“He’s my runner,” she said. “If he can’t find it, he goes to another place. Then another place, then another place.”
Sunday, the Moudys and young Leo watched with delight as a C-17 military plane with a belly full of formula produced in Europe landed at Indianapolis International Airport – the first shipment to hit the United States as part of President Joe Biden’s recently announced Operation Fly Formula initiative.
Importing formula from Europe would typically take about two weeks under the normal commercial process, said U.S. Department of Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack, speaking at the airport as the shipment was unloaded and packed on to FedEx trucks that delivered it to a Nestle distribution plant in Plainfield.
The C-17 that landed in Indianapolis Sunday contained 132 pallets of Nestle formula specially designed for infants and toddlers with cow milk allergies. That amounts to about 78,000 pounds of formula – enough to feed 9,000 babies and 18,000 toddlers for a week.
The formula was made in Nestle’s Zurich plant and trucked to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where a crew that had just completed an aid delivery to Ukraine brought it to the U.S.
The formula could benefit infants like 7-month-old Ensley Gendig, who has a dairy and soy allergy that makes finding the right formula challenging for parents Megan and Steven.
Ensley has had a mix of breastmilk and formula, but keeping the formula on hand has not been easy for her parents. The couple travels around Central Indiana for their jobs and look for formula around the region.
“This means a lot not only for our little one but also for so many others that are really banking on this to help provide meals for their kids,” Megan Gendig said.