With the United States suffering from a severe shortage of Baby formula, a lot of mothers have complained of not being able to find the food needed to feed their babies. One mum has confessed to going to the black market i.e. going online to buy a Dutch-made brand that had been banned from being imported into the U.S, despite the country’s authorities warning the citizens from purchasing from brands that had been barred from the Nation.
In 2021, custom security confiscated about 30,000 dollars’ worth of formulas from Europe, stating that it wasn’t appropriate and that they didn’t have good nutritional labeling and so the safety of the formula couldn’t be ascertained. Additionally, in 2019, baby formulas estimated to be about 162,000 dollars at the border were blocked from entering the country.
Indications of the scarcity first came in 2021, post-Covid pandemic whereby supplies were strained. The crisis peaked in February after baby formula producer Abbott Nutrition directed an important product recall. Officials had closed down one of the company’s factories, stating bacterial contamination as the reason, reducing a large share of US production in the process.
Over half of American babies gets at least certain formula by the time they are over two months old. So there has been political pressure to find a solution to the issue.
