The White House recently announced that over 20 million bottles of baby formula will soon be shipped into the United States in response to the ongoing nationwide crisis.
On Wednesday, the officials announced that the equivalent of some 16 million 8-ounce bottles of Gerber formula will be flown from Mexico to Fort Worth, Texas and will be distributed to the retailers starting on Friday.
In addition, they also revealed in another press release that over 1.5 million Nestlé bottles were being shipped to Texas from Germany while nearly 5.5 million bottles of Bubs formula will be shipped to Los Angeles from Melbourne, Australia this week and Philadelphia in early July.
According to the reports, the federal agencies have partnered to pick up government-approved infant formula shipments from international distributors under US President Joe Biden’s “Operation Fly Formula” mission.
The efforts come as the country suffers from the shortage of baby formula which began due to supply chain problems amid the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
The shortage stemmed from a product recall by an Abbott Nutrition facility in Michigan after reports surfaced alleging unsanitary conditions and contaminated products.
The controversy prompted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to temporarily shut down the facility.
Moreover, earlier this month, Abbott re-opened the facility under strict FDA oversight. However, the facility was forced to close on June 15 due to torrential rain and flooding in the area.
“Severe thunderstorms and heavy rains came through southwestern Michigan on Monday evening, resulting in high winds, hail, power outages and flood damage throughout the area. These torrential storms produced significant rainfall in a short period of time – overwhelming the city’s stormwater system in Sturgis, Mich., and resulting in flooding in parts of the city, including areas of our plant,” the company announced following the temporary closure.
“As a result, Abbott has stopped production of its EleCare specialty formula that was underway to assess damage caused by the storm and clean and re-sanitize the plant,” the company added.
The company also claimed that it had informed the Food and Drug Administration and would conduct a comprehensive testing to make sure that the facility is safe to resume production.
“This will likely delay production and distribution of new products for a few weeks,” Abbott said.
