Baby formula shortage throws U.S. families into panic

WASHINGTON, May 17 (Xinhua) -- The recall of several major brands of baby formula by U.S. company Abbott Nutrition due to safety concerns has panicked parents and caregivers across the country, at a time when COVID-induced supply chain disruptions have already made nutrition products scarce on the market.

In February, Abbott Nutrition shut down its Sturgis, Michigan plant and recalled three brands of powdered infant formula produced in the facility, after four babies who consumed the formula were hospitalized with bacterial infections, with two of them dead.

For the week ending May 8, out-of-stock rate nationwide for baby formula hit 43 percent, up 12 percent from April, according to statistics from Datasembly, which analyzes about 11,000 stores.

Grocery chains have been placing caps on the maximum number of cans of baby formula each customer can purchase. Target, for example, has limited quantities of baby formula to four per guest.

Inside a huge four-storey Target store in Fairfax, Virginia, a sales assistant told Xinhua that a full lane of shelves on which baby formula used to be stacked have been empty "for months," and that the chain store's locations across a large swath of the state have all been running out of supply.

Compounding the situation were reports of price gouging. "It's been impossible to get our hands on it, and the only ones we can find online, people price-gouged," Jessi Whitesides, a 33-year-old mom from Advance, North Carolina, was quoted as saying in a Washington Post report.

"There were two cases on Ebay, which is eight cans, that was going for 800 dollars," said Whitesides, whose four-year-old girl can only eat a particular kind of unflavored formula because of food allergy.

The average price of the most popular baby formula products increased as much as 18 percent over the last 12 months.

Some parents, left with so few choices, have been even feeding their babies powdered oatmeal cereal and fruit juice.

Impoverished families have suffered tremendously due to the shortage and price hike of baby formula, with African American families most impacted. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows breastfeeding rate among black mothers is only 76 percent, below the national average of 84 percent, meaning they are more reliant on formula to feed their infants.

The Biden administration have been accused of taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the rolling crisis.

Asked if the administration should have acted sooner and loosen the import requirements for baby formula so that additional supplies will be available for desperate parents, Biden told a CNN reporter Friday the administration could have done that "if we'd been better mind readers."

His remarks were seized upon by another CNN reporter who challenged White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday, saying "this doesn't seem like a situation that would have required mindreading" given the Abbott's voluntary recall happened back in February.

Dating even further back, a whistleblower report raising the alarm of contamination at Abbott Nutrition's Sturgis plant was submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Oct. 20, 2021, U.S. House Representative Rosa DeLauro said in a press release recently.

"The FDA did not interview the whistleblower until late December 2021. According to news reports, FDA did not inspect the plant in person until January 31, 2022," DeLauro said.

It was only until Monday that the FDA finally put out a statement encouraging the "importation of safe infant formula and other flexibilities to further increase availability."

In fact, the near-complete dependence on domestic production and the extreme concentration of the production chain are the very reasons why the baby formula industry in the United States is so prone to events of catastrophic nature such as the current shortage.

Just three companies, including Abbott Nutrition, control 95 percent of baby formula sales in the United States, according to Amanda Starbuck, a research director at the Food &Water Watch group, a Washington-headquartered non-governmental organization dedicated to food safety research.

On Monday, Abbott and the FDA both confirmed they had entered into a consent decree in which the company and the agency agreed on a path forward for the Sturgis factory to reopen for production while safety protocols are obeyed during operation.

The FDA said it expected Abbott to restart production in about two weeks while Abbott said in a statement that from the time the Sturgis facility reopens, "it will take six to eight weeks before product is available on shelves."