The troubled formula plant at the center of recent shortages in the United States has been coming back to life over the previous month, shipping out small batches of specialty formula produced after the company's February recall.
Abbott Nutrition, the company that owns the Sturgis, Michigan facility, has told medical suppliers and healthcare providers that the amount of formula coming out of the plant is still very limited. They hope to release a new tranche of the specialty formula EleCare in the coming days to help address the ongoing shortage.
Retailers, parents, and administration officials are all anxiously watching the Sturgis facility's operations as an indicator of when the formula shortages across the United States will finally ease. Formula industry sources and Biden administration officials do not expect that to happen until the Michigan plant has produced all of its formulas for more than a month.
Abbott's Michigan plant producing formula once again
Three sources, including a Biden administration official, told Politico that Abbott began shipping EleCare produced in its Sturgis facility after the February recall early last month, around July 7. It is the first formula made at the facility since the company shuttered the plant in mid-February after inspectors from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) detected strains of a bacteria that can be deadly to babies.
The shutdown and recall of much of the formula produced at Abbott's Michigan plant, which was estimated to manufacture about one-fifth of the country's infant formula supply at the time, triggered national shortages that have continued to drag on in some parts of the United States, despite the emergency measures that the Biden administration implemented.
Abbott has been shipping free cases of some of its specialty formulas, which generally require a doctor's order and are not sold in regular retail stores, directly to caregivers and parents on an emergency basis, at the request of their physicians, since late April.
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Families to benefit with return of Sturgis facility
The initial shipments comprised of formula produced before the Michigan plant was shuttered but not part of the recall. Abbott spokesperson John Koval confirmed in an interview that some of the cases shipped in recent weeks included formula produced in June when the facility briefly restarted before closing again after heavy storms triggered flooding in the plant.
One healthcare provider in Georgia said it was not clear to some families and medical providers that the EleCare they are now receiving was produced after the recall. They assumed that was the case, but they have not gotten a lot of updates.
Koval issued a statement, saying that the formula produced in June and shipped out had been rigorously tested. The company quietly restarted production a second time on July 1, according to NPR.
