The Food and Drug Administration is blocking the sale of baby formula it knows is perfectly safe, even as baby formula has run out in many grocery stores, and even entire communities. Shortages of baby formula afflict many states, reducing the amount available by 40 percent or more. Reason magazine reports:
The baby formula shortage in the U.S. is likely to continue for several weeks, as it will still take some time to get Abbott Laboratories’ shuttered Michigan plant back up and running once the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) OKs the reopening. That means families who rely on the product will still be contending with greatly reduced availability—as much as 40 percent in many states—for the time being.
Reason‘s Elizabeth Nolan Brown and Eric Boehm have both highlighted the disastrous government policies that have worsened the crisis….Another issue is the FDA itself, which has made it illegal for Americans to buy many kinds of baby formula that are widely available in Europe.
In an interview on my YouTube show, Rising, former FDA associate commissioner Peter Pitts confirms that the agency doesn’t view this as a safety issue, strictly speaking: U.S. health inspectors know the European products are safe. Their problem is that the products are labeled in a manner that does not meet the expectations of the U.S. government.
“The difference between European baby formula and American baby formula, more or less, is that the labeling is different,” says Pitts. “The knot in getting that product into the U.S. isn’t safety, it’s a regulatory issue. I don’t want to say it’s a nitty issue, but it’s certainly something the FDA could have jumped on a lot quicker.”
President Biden recently claimed that his administration would have to be “mind readers” to see the infant formula shortage coming. That’s wrong, says the National Review — the growing shortage has been discussed in the media for months:
President Biden and his team didn’t need to be mind-readers, they just needed to be news readers. The Wall Street Journal had a prominently-featured in-depth article on January 12, 2022:
Baby formula has been hard to find in many parts of the U.S. for months, sending parents searching for Enfamil, Similac, Gerber and other brands….“The shelves are just bare,” said Derval Kenny, 65, of Rye, N.Y., who has been trying to help find Similac formula for two infant grandsons who live in Connecticut and New Jersey. “To me, there should be an uproar.”
