The US President also used a Cold War law to oblige producers to supply the ingredients needed to make baby milk.
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Posted on 5/19/2022 9:37 AM Updated on 5/19/2022 9:57 AM
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The White House has milk on the fire. In an attempt to solve the baby milk shortage in the US, Joe Biden resorts to great means. The American President announced on Wednesday May 18 that an airlift would be set up. The Department of Defense will “use its contracts with commercial cargo airlines to ship products from factories overseas, as it did in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic,” the US government said.
Joe Biden also uses a Cold War law, the Defense Production Act, to oblige producers of the ingredients necessary for the production of infant milk to supply priority to the manufacturers of this raw material, which is indispensable for parents and young children. This project, called Operation Fly Formula, will “accelerate the import and distribution of baby milk” and “support manufacturers who continue to increase their production”.
Originally caused by problems in those same supply chains and a shortage of workers due to the pandemic, the baby milk shortage was exacerbated by the closure of a Michigan-based Abbott factory in February after a recall of suspect products that caused the deaths of two infants.
The US Food and Drug Administration eventually cleared the milk, but it took until Monday for Abbott to reach an agreement with the US judiciary to resume production at the plant. This very rare shortage of this product, which is vital for many parents, has turned into a political crisis for the Democratic President, which has been heavily criticized by the Republican opposition.
The food company Nestlé, which operates two factories in the USA for the production of baby milk, had already announced on Tuesday that it wanted to send additional quantities by plane from Switzerland and the Netherlands to the USA. According to data provider Datasembly, the infant formula inventory rate in the United States hit 43% late last week.