Following remarks in the White House Rose Garden, Biden rebuffed when asked if the administration should have responded more quickly to the shortage of baby formula across the country, telling CNN’s Jeremy Diamond: “If we were better thought readers “I guess we could do that.”
The president later said that solving the problem required the federal government to “move with caution as well as speed”, adding that it was important “to make sure that what we receive is in fact a first-class product”.
Manufacturers said they were producing at full capacity, but that was not enough to meet current demand. Last week, grocery store shelves in the United States had even less baby food than last week, according to a new report by Datasembly, a real-time data tracking agency that measures how much product is available.
New actions of the administration
The Biden administration announced on Friday several moves aimed at tackling the severity of the shortage.
After White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Thursday struggled to answer the administration’s guidelines for a concerned parent who can’t find formula to feed his baby, she announced Friday that the Ministry of Health and Social Services The United States has launched a new website to help parents search for baby food amid a shortage of national supplies. Individuals can visit HHS.gov/formula, which Psaki said would provide “resources and places for parents to go to get the formula, including contacts with companies, food banks (and healthcare providers).” .
Psaki seems to have speculated that the website was created in recent days amid growing concerns.
“We wanted to make (information) easily accessible and accessible to people. But before that time, we had obviously not seen what we had seen in the last few days, “Psaki added.
U.S. Commissioner for Food and Drug Administration Dr. Robert Calif also said the FDA is “working around the clock” to deliver more formula to the shelves and will announce plans next week to streamline formula imports. Although the commissioner did not specify when the formula stocks will return to normal, he wrote that the new and ongoing steps “will help drastically improve supply in the United States in a few weeks.”
Caliph also said the FDA continues to work with existing manufacturers to increase production. The FDA data, he said on Twitter, “shows that inventory rates in retail stores are stabilizing, but we continue to work around the clock to further increase availability.”
The move comes after the White House on Thursday unveiled a series of limited steps to tackle the shortage, including importing more formula from abroad, calling on states to allow government food aid recipients more flexibility in infant formulas, who can buy, and calling on the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to deal with rising producer prices. Administration officials noted that production has increased since the mass withdrawal in February of a formula produced by Abbott Nutrition exacerbated the current problem.
A White House spokesman said on Friday that Abbott was committed to providing critical flexibility to states by the end of August in response to a letter sent by Agriculture Secretary Tom Wilsac.
“This means that families in (Special Program for Supplementary Nutrition for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC) can purchase any product available in the coming months, and states and retailers can plan ahead while working to maintain supplies, and most importantly, security for families, “he said.
Abbott said the company directs supplies from a manufacturing facility in Ireland to serve WIC families. He also said that working with the US Department of Agriculture, the Similac formula is not available.
Abbott is the exclusive provider of infant formula for about half of the babies enrolled in the WIC.
However, discounts may not be helpful in situations where all products are out of stock or if the baby cannot easily switch to another product.
Abbott said it is working to increase the supply of customized formulas by boosting production at other facilities. In addition, the company says it is offering more and more generous coupons so that consumers can buy its products at a reduced price.
Reference to the Defense Proceedings Act in question
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klein told a member of Congress this week that the White House was “absolutely” and “firmly” considering President Joe Biden to invoke the Defense Manufacturing Act to address the urgent problem of shortages. baby adapters that torment the country.
The Democratic Republic of Virginia Abigail Spanberger told CNN on Friday morning that she had spoken to Klein twice in the past two days to discuss the shortage, saying Klein had told her the White House saw it using the law as a potential ” a really important step. ” The possibility of deploying the Defense Proceedings Act – which allows the government greater control during emergencies to direct industrial production – to tackle the formula problem was one of many things they discussed, Spanberger said.
“I think the White House fully understands the seriousness and urgency of the problem,” Spanberger said. “But while there is more food on the shelves, I’m not happy.”
Spanberger said she and Klein also discussed the fact that invoking the law could provide a long-term solution, but would not be the quickest way to get baby formula back on the shelves.
“We discussed the fact that the DPA, while potentially a really important thing to consider,” Spanberger said, “may not be as fast as simply loading planes and ensuring that baby food from the Netherlands or other European partners can be obtained here quickly. “
“I think the White House fully understands the seriousness and urgency of the problem,” Spanberger added. “But while there is more food on the shelves, I’m not happy.”
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Friday that the use of the DPA to address the shortage of local baby milk remains “under consideration”.
“So at the moment, of course, we’re keeping that option in mind, but our focus is mainly on two things: one is to increase supply, and the other is to make it easily accessible,” Psaki told reporters at a White House briefing.
The White House refuses to call the shortage a crisis or set a timeline
Although optimistic about the increased levels of production, Biden employees have repeatedly refused in recent days to predict when store shelves will return to normal.
On Friday, Kate Bedingfield, director of communications at the White House, told Kate Baldwin of CNN that she could not say when the shortage would end.
“I’m not going to stand here and tell your audience that I can give you a difficult timeline that I can’t give you,” she told Baldwin when she was pressed several times when parents can expect a return to more shelf formula. in stores. “We are open to moving as fast as we can. And we are relentlessly focused on that. “
Bedingfield also declined to call the shortage a crisis.
“Well, I don’t think it’s a label. “I think it’s about directly addressing the needs of families across the country,” she said. “Listen, I’m a mother. I have two small children. I’m not far from the days when I fed my children formula. I know … and the president knows how stressful that is for families across the country. ”
The shortage sparked hearings in Congress
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday outlined the House’s plans to tackle the shortage next week.
In a letter to colleagues in the House, she wrote that the House “will suspend a bill to give emergency powers to the WIC program to deal with supply chain disruptions and withdrawals.” The House Committee on Appropriations, she said, would “bring urgent additional funding to the floor to deal with infant shortages immediately.”
At least three committees of the House announced this week that they are investigating the issue.
A spokesman told CNN that the House of Representatives’ oversight and reform committee on Friday morning sent letters to four separate baby formula companies asking for information about supply chain problems.
A spokesman for the House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee announced a hearing on baby formula on May 25 and told CNN they plan to call representatives of the FDA and Abbott, a major producer of formula, to testify.
And the Committee on Appropriations will also hold two hearings related to the shortfall, including one next week with Caliph on the request for the FDA budget for 2023 and the supervision of infant food.
The chairman of the committee, the representative of the Democratic Party in Connecticut Rosa DeLauro, told CNN that she believes that the FDA is “dragging its feet” in dealing with the problems with Abbott Nutrition, but that it does not blame the Biden administration for the shortage.
“Abbott Nutrition was a bad actor, it produced an infected product,” she said. “They had a report from the whistleblower, which was sent to the FDA in October.
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Patty Murray, Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. Bob Casey and 30 Senate Democrats sent a letter to the President of the American Infant Nutrition Council, “urging infant food manufacturers to every effort is made to provide parents and families with the formula they need to feed their children. “
This story was updated with additional developments on Friday.
CNN’s Daniela Diaz, Sam Fosom, Jeremy Diamond, Nicki Carvajal, Ryan Nobles and Jasmine Wright contributed to this report.
Add Comment