Shortage fuels spike in milk bank interest
NEW YORK, May 16, (AP): The US baby formula shortage has sparked a surge of interest at milk banks around the US with some mothers offering to donate breast milk and desperate parents calling to see if it’s a solution to keep their babies fed.
It’s a pathway that won’t work for every formula-fed baby, especially those with special dietary needs, and it comes with challenges because the country’s dozens of nonprofit milk banks prioritize feeding medically fragile infants. The organizations collect milk from mothers and process it, including through pasteurization, then work with hospitals to distribute it.
The shortage stemmed from a safety recall and supply disruptions and has captured national attention with panicked parents looking to swap and buy formula online and President Joe Biden urging manufacturers to increase production and discussing with retailers how they could restock shelves to meet regional disparities. Biden’s administration also said Friday that formula maker Abbott Laboratories committed to give rebates through August for a food stamp-like program that helps women, infants and children called WIC.
At the Mothers’ Milk Bank Northeast, based in Newton, Massachusetts, interest in donating and receiving milk because of the shortage has spiked. Typically, the milk bank gets about 30-50 calls a month from people looking to donate. On Thursday alone, 35 calls came in from potential donors, said Deborah Youngblood, the bank’s executive director.
“It’s interesting the first sort of response that we got was from potential donors - so people responding to the formula shortage with sort of an amazing, compassionate response of ‘how can I be part of the solution?’” she said.
Youngblood was talking about people like Kayla Gillespie, a 38-year-old mother of three from Hays, Kansas. Gillespie first donated to the Mothers’ Milk Bank in Denver six years ago, giving 18 gallons (68 liters) after the birth of her first child, and wasn’t planning to do it again.
“I thought 18 gallons was sufficient for one person,” she said. “If I hadn’t heard of the shortage, I wouldn’t be going through the process again, just because I have three kids and it’s a little chaotic around here.”
Nutrition
She has pledged at least 150 ounces of her milk, but said she expects to give much more than that.
“I’m very blessed with being able to produce milk, so I just felt I needed to do something,” she said.
She said in the past she has shipped her frozen milk in special containers to Denver, but this time, her local hospital is taking the donations and she can just drop them off.
It’s not only donors, though. Parents desperately seeking nutrition for their babies are pursuing milk banks as well.
At the Massachusetts milk bank, about 30 people called looking for milk because they couldn’t find their baby’s usual formula, Youngblood said. That’s up from nearly no calls at all, since the milk bank typically serves hospitals.
The Human Milk Banking Association of North America, an accrediting organization for nonprofit milk banks, is seeing a “major increase” in demand, according to Lindsay Groff, the group’s executive director. She estimates inquiries from parents seeking to fill the formula gap are up 20% in recent days.
Groff called the shortage a “crisis” and said it’s not as simple as parents just supplementing with donated human milk, because the vast majority of those supplies are earmarked for babies with medical conditions.
“If people can donate, now would be the time, because when we have more of an inventory we can look beyond the medically fragile,” she said.
Parents are also turning to online breastmilk-swapping forums to meet their babies’ needs.
Amanda Kastelein, a mother of three from Middlebury, Connecticut, has been supplementing the special formula she needs for 10-month-old Emerson with breast milk from a mom she found on a peer-to-peer Facebook page called Human Milk 4 Human Babies.
Kastelein stopped breastfeeding after getting recurring infections, but tried to begin re-lactating in March after the formula recall, with little success.
“Emerson is allergic to most of the formulas, so it’s been difficult to find something he’s not allergic to,” she said.
In stepped Hannah Breton of Naugatuck, Connecticut, who had been producing more milk than her 2 1/2-monthold son needs. She’s been giving Kastelein about 60 ounces of milk every two weeks. That’s enough to supplement her formula supply and keep Emerson fed.
“She asked a bunch of questions - what medications I’m taking, if any, that kind of thing,” Breton said. “So we decided, ‘OK, that’s perfect.’ So, she comes by every couple weeks and picks up the milk I’ve been saving for her.”
Rewarding
“I do feel helpful,” she added. “It’s exciting and rewarding that I can give to a mom that can’t find what she’s looking for, and if her son can’t take formula, I mean, it’s scary.
Rebecca Heinrich, director of the Mothers’ Milk Bank in Colorado, advises those looking for milk that searching for donors on their own can carry risks.
“We want to make sure that these moms are being as safe as they can and meeting the needs of their infant, so consulting with their health-care provider on how to meet those needs is the best way to go,” she said.
The shortage creates difficulties particularly for lowerincome families after the recall by formula maker Abbott, stemming from contamination concerns. The recall depleted many brands covered by WIC, a federal program like food stamps serving women, infants and children, though it now permits brand substitutes.
On Friday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack sent a letter to the head of Abbott Laboratories expressing what he called his “grave concern regarding the accessibility of safe infant formula,” noting Abbott holds infant formula contracts in the federal WIC program. Vilsack asked that Abbott continue a program that provides rebates for alternative products including formula for competitive brands, which it had been doing on a month-to-month basis. The White House said Friday Abbott committed to the rebates through the end of August.
The Biden administration said it’s working with states to make it easier for WIC recipients to buy different sizes of formula that their benefits might not currently cover.
Abbott has said that pending Food and Drug Administration approval, it could restart a manufacturing site “within two weeks.”
The company would begin by producing EleCare, Alimentum and metabolic formulas and then start production of Similac and other formulas. Once production begins, it would take six to eight weeks for the formula to be available on shelves.
On Tuesday, the FDA said it was working with US manufacturers to increase their output and streamline paperwork to allow more imports.
Discovery Profs push ‘pee for peonies’:
A pair of University of Michigan researchers are putting the “pee” in peony.
Rather, they’re putting pee ON peonies.
Environmental engineering professors Nancy Love and Krista Wigginton are regular visitors to the Ann Arbor school’s Nichols Arboretum, where they have been applying urine-based fertilizer to the heirloom peony beds ahead of the flowers’ annual spring bloom.
It’s all part of an effort to educate the public about their research showing that applying fertilizer derived from nutrientrich urine could have environmental and economic benefits.
“At first, we thought people might be hesitant. You know, this might be weird. But we’ve really experienced very little of that attitude,” Wigginton said. “In general, people think it’s funny at first, but then they understand why we’re doing it and they support it.”
Love is co-author of a study published in the Environmental Science & Technology journal that found urine diversion and recycling led to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and energy.
Urine contains essential nutrients such as nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus and has been used as a crop fertilizer for thousands of years.
Love said collecting human urine and using it to create renewable fertilizers - as part of what she calls the “circular economy of nutrients” — will lead to greater environmental sustainability.
Think of it not so much as recycling, but “pee-cycling,” Wigginton said.
“We were looking for terms that would catch on but get the idea across, and ‘peecycling’ seems to be one that stuck,” she said.
As part of a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation awarded in 2016, Love and Wigginton have not only been testing advanced urine-treatment methods, but also investigating people’s attitudes about the use of urine-derived fertilizers.
That is what brought them to the muchloved campus Peony Garden, which contains more than 270 historic cultivated varieties from the 19th and early 20th centuries representing American, Canadian and European peonies of the era. The garden holds nearly 800 peonies when filled and up to 10,000 flowers at peak bloom.
Love and Wigginton plan to spend weekends in May and June chatting up visitors. One important lesson they learned is about the precision of language. (AP)
Tortoise doesn’t need protection:
Federal officials have concluded that Sonoran desert tortoises native to Arizona have a relatively stable population that doesn’t need protection from environmental threats but conservation groups say they’re still not convinced that the reptiles’ well-being is a sure thing.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the tortoise doesn’t warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act because a scientific study “determined that it is not at risk of extinction in the foreseeable future.”
While threats such as development and drought “may increase in scope or severity over time, the species and its associated habitat are projected to remain at levels that do not threaten the survival of the Sonoran desert tortoise in the foreseeable future,” the agency’s Southwest regional office said in a statement.
The agency’s decision capped a review ordered by a federal judge after conservationists sued to block a previous decision in 2015 against listing the tortoise as a threatened species.
The tortoises are native to the Sonoran Desert that stretches across much of Arizona and in northern Mexico. In Arizona, they’re found in suitable habitat in all Arizona counties except for Apache, Coconino, Greenlee and Navajo, according to the federal agency.
Conservation groups reacted to the latest development by saying they remain concerned that the tortoise’s habitat is being degraded by invasive species, livestock grazing, fire risk, housing development, off-road vehicles and other factors that deplete vegetation, hinder the tortoise’s movement and directly injure the reptiles.
“A decision to forego ESA listing must be based on the best available science, and we will make sure the (Fish and Wildlife) Service complied with that duty here,” said Joe Bushyhead, endangered species policy advocate for WildEarth Guardians.
Conservationists said multiple uses of public lands will continue to affect the tortoise’s habitat.
“We worry that the Service has put the tortoise on a collision course with extinction by minimizing the threats from livestock grazing throughout the tortoise’s habitat,” said Cyndi Tuell, the Arizona and New Mexico director for Western Watersheds Project. (AP)