There was a severe infant formula shortage in the United States. Many babies rely on formula as their primary source of nutrition, which is frightening for parents. Some people don’t see the severity of the shortage and think the formula is not a necessity when babies can just breastfeed. The historian of infant feeding wanted to debunk the myth that all babies in the past were breastfed. The importance of access to formula was explained by Carla Cevasco. Below you can find her informative thread, as well as some of the responses it has received from concerned readers.
There has been a severe shortage of baby formula in the United States over the past few months.
Some people don’t understand the importance of formula and think babies can just go back to breastfeeding as they did in the past.
There was a misconception that all babies used to rely on breastmilk.
There are a lot of reasons why babies in the past couldn’t get all their needs met through simple breastfeeding.
She said that a lack of access to formula will endanger the health of many babies.
There were several reasons for the infant formula shortage. The first problem was a recall of multiple brands of formula after the Food and Drug Administration found traces of harmful bacteria in a Michigan Abbott Nutrition plant. 40% of the baby formula sold in the US is produced at the plant that was shut down. The plant alone did not cause the shortage. The supply of infant formula has been affected by the Pandemic over the past two years. Many parents started to stock up on formulas at the beginning of the Pandemic. Purchase levels decreased when the stores were back to normal because everyone was working through their purchases. “This oscillation made planning for production extremely difficult,” says Lyman Stone, the director of research at the consulting firm Demographic Intelligence. “It was complicated to get an idea of the actual market size.”
America’s regulatory and trade policy is one of the factors that contribute to the infant formula crisis. Most European brands of baby formula can’t be sold in the US due to strict guidelines and labeling requirements by the FDA. A study found that many European products are just as healthy as American brands, but getting them into the country can be difficult. This shortage is a perfect example of how vulnerable the country is because politicians in the US want to rely less on imports.
The government should do everything it can to make sure our children are safe. The formula crisis in the US is not easy for parents to handle. Parents will never have to worry about where their babies’ meals are coming from again if the supply of formula is increased as soon as possible. If you have any suggestions for where parents can access the formula, please let us know in the comments.
Readers responded with more examples of the importance of formula.
