President Joe Biden met with baby formula manufacturers on Wednesday, June 1, and delivered some worrying news to parents. The commander-in-chief revealed after the meeting that it would be a couple more months until the supply of formula would be fully back to normal.
Biden said at the roundtable that they still have work to do, but they are making critical progress today. Biden said he was not notified about the baby formula shortage concerns until April, while company executives said they knew back in February that closing the Abbott Nutrition plant in Sturgis, Michigan, would lead to major supply issues.
Biden told NBC News, "They knew, but I didn't." The timeline conflicts with the Biden administration's insistence that it has been focused on the baby formula shortage with an "all of government response" since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) closed an Abbott manufacturing plant in February because of safety concerns in the facility.
Biden administration's response to baby formula shortage questioned
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked repeatedly at a press briefing after the meeting about the Biden administration's reaction time given the baby formula industry's earlier awareness of the problem.
Jean-Pierre insisted that they had been working on this for months and months. She said she had not seen Biden's earlier comments to reporters or spoken to the President about his remarks. Jean-Pierre added that Biden's team at the high level, who runs his policy offices and departments, had been working on this problem since day one.
Biden discussed the steps his administration had taken to increase formula production through the Defense Production Act and to import the much-needed goods from abroad during the roundtable, while company executives provided updates on their efforts to ramp up formula production in the United States.
Robert Cleveland, a top executive at Enfamil manufacturer Reckitt, said the efforts of the administration to help them procure the necessary supplies have helped them speed up production and the time it takes to get the formula on store shelves across the country.
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More "Operation Fly Formula" flights organized by the Biden administration
Cleveland said they believe they are now delivering product to market 40 percent faster than they were before the Abbott recall that spurred the baby formula shortage. He added that the industry took action on its own after the Abbott facility was shuttered, a remark that other executives in the meeting echoed. Cleveland said they were aware of the general impact that this closure would have.
Other participants in the round table included representatives from Perrigo, Bubs Australia, ByHeart, and Gerber, along with Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra. Abbott was not involved in Wednesday's meeting.
The White House announced ahead of the meeting additional "Operation Fly Formula" flights bringing imported formula to the United States.
