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Bad government policy is fueling the infant formula shortage

289 points by mhb 5y ago

FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
Is the domesticated human, chained by relations of dependence to industrial society, still in fact a mammal? mammal (n): An animal that nurses its young. We are not even a boob culture any more, but an ass one. Whatever happened to boobs? Were we supposed to forget we have them?
pstuart 5y ago
A more nuanced take is here: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/baby-formula-shortage-abbott-recall/629828/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/baby-formu... and here: https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/monopolies-and-the-baby-formula-shortage/ https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/monopolies-an...
- AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
  How is this more nuanced than the OP's article? The OP article actually _adds_ nuance by expanding on the Atlantic's claim that "America’s regulatory and trade policy" is largely to blame. The Atlantic claims that this "might be the most important part of the story."
  - pstuart 5y ago
    No mention of the effective monopoly in place -- that a single factory getting shut down would have such an impact. Obviously government policy has failed as well.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      Matt Stoller covered that in his BIG newsletter about antitrust and monopolies in America. https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formula-nightmare https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formu...
  - dv_dt 5y ago
    Well I take issue on the very first line of the Reason article "Trade restrictions and over-zealous FDA regulation are a big part of the problem, but there's more." The plant is closed with bacterial infection problems linked to the deaths of two infants. That seems the opposite of over-zealous FDA regulation. There are definitely other regulatory issues, but I would characterize them as regulatory capture - too little regulation going against corporate interests. Temporary easing of trade restrictions does seem like a good thing, but not really permanent easing as I suspect Reason would prefer. Permanent easing leads us to even bigger supply insecurity risks imho.
zeruch 5y ago
Occasionally Reason gets it right...this is not one of those times.
- zeruch 5y ago
  - programmarchy 5y ago
    All you’ve done is offer a contradiction and an ad hom, so why not bring a more substantial argument to the table for discussion.
    - avs733 5y ago
      Because they have reason (magazine) on their side
      - programmarchy 5y ago
        Maybe I misunderstood but pretty sure they’re saying the Reason article got it wrong. I’d like to hear why, and I’m likely to be sympathetic to an opposing view. For example, I disagree with Reason that we should loosen FDA rules on something as critical as baby formula, but lowering tariffs on imports doesn’t seem like a terrible idea. On the other side, I think tariffs play an important role in protecting domestic industry that are vital to national security. So we don’t want Abbott to get shut down, but they do need to be severely punished.
        CWuestefeld 5y ago
        If baby formula is vital to national security, can you name anything that isn't also vital?
        programmarchy 5y ago
        Sure, any luxury good.
vondur 5y ago
Can’t congress just make an emergency exemption and possibly start importing formula from Europe? Apparently customs seize shipments that people attempt to purchase directly from Europe.
- taf2 5y ago
  A president is usually better at doing this via executive orders... Simply because it's one president who has to sign the order vs many congressman who have to agree to pass an act... So it's unclear why this has not happened...
  - throwaway48375 5y ago
    Don't worry they've formed a committee to look into maybe doing something about this. Meanwhile babies are starving. I wish I were joking.
    - macspoofing 5y ago
      >Don't worry they've formed a committee to look into maybe doing something about this. Yes. You have to 'form a committee' to understand the problem, instead of just winging it.
      - throwaway48375 5y ago
        Is there a good reason why it takes that committee over a week just to meet? Why can't they just schedule a zoom conference and then issue an executive order the same day? It's not like starving babies are a time critical issue like missiles for Ukraine or something.
        macspoofing 4y ago
        >Is there a good reason why it takes that committee over a week just to meet? It's a complicated issue, that will take time to sort out. There is no decision that will just magically fix everything. >It's not like starving babies are a time critical issue ... This is a baby formula shortage, in a rich first-world nation. No babies are going to be harmed. Is there really a need to go into hyperbole?
Barrin92 5y ago
It's not surprising that Reason points to trade restrictions which makes sense because importing food from Europe should not be an issue, but on the other hand, why does the government, federal or local not have a stockpile of well... the stuff you feed infant children with? Same situation as the masks again. Yes, free trade alleviates these issues but only if you're not in global bottleneck which seem to be increasingly common with supply chain and production issues. This is food security, and countries should have the industrial capacity and backup to not end up with empty shelves.
- chitowneats 5y ago
  In addition to this, the reason that Europe is an attractive option for baby formula is because their regulatory bodies take "food for infants" more seriously than we do here.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Does "Europe" have an abundant surplus of infant formula that they are prepared to export? A lot more mothers breast-feed in Europe, formula feeding is rather uncommon so why would one expect that inventory is available to send somewhere else? And then you have the mother in Tennessee who gets a can of German-labeled formula powder, with mixing instructions in metric. Is she going to add the correct amount of water? Or are we going to re-label it? Who does that? Who checks it? How long will it take? I don't think this is the simple answer it appears to be.
    - samatman 5y ago
      Certainly, since this would be the first food Americans have ever imported from Europe, there is no framework for Imperialization of nutrition labels, since no one has ever done it before in the history of ever. Congratulations you found a show-stopper!
      - throwawayboise 5y ago
        Of course EU producers who package food for export label it accordingly. However what Reason seems to be implying is that we just load up some cargo planes with pallets of surplus formula that are apparently not needed in Europe and bring it to the USA under some kind of "emergency" order.
seibelj 5y ago
All problems are caused by greedy corporations! Throw executives in prison! If we just had more government all of this would be better /s
daenz 5y ago
>So while you might think formula from Germany or The Netherlands is safe enough for your child (formula available in Europe tends to meet or exceed the FDA's nutritional requirements, but not the labeling requirements.) the FDA will not let you have it because it has not reviewed and approved the label or inspected the production facilities overseas. Reasonable people can debate whether this is a reasonable policy in normal times, but in the current mess this sort of rule undermines the health and development of the infants the FDA purports to protect. Is this even a debate about whether or not it is a reasonable policy? Why would you allow uninspected products to feed your most vulnerable population? Now, I understand the nuance of "well we're in a shortage, so we should allow it temporarily." But think about it from a security perspective: you'd still be exposing babies to uninspected food products. Any America-hating entity could capitalize on this attack vector, if they knew we would bypass our security controls. Is it likely? I don't know, but I do know that suspending your security in response to a crisis is dangerous.
- sacrosancty 5y ago
  What does "inspected" mean to you in this context that makes it so obvious that it's essential? And essential for Americans but not Germans??
  - daenz 5y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your question, can you rephrase it please?
    - dcolkitt 5y ago
      Germany clearly inspected the formula. Clearly baby formula imported from Germany is still inspected. The only distinction is it's inspected by Germany instead of American inspectors. This would be as insane as Florida insisting that baby formula can only be sold in Florida if it was inspected in Florida. Baby formula inspected in New York cannot be sold, even though it was inspected.
      - 5y ago
VictorPath 5y ago
Reason is correct that tariffs on Canada, pushed by Abbott, helped exacerbate the baby formula problem. This is what happens when heirs and corporations gain too much power. When they are not responsive to working people or the government. Not only are they unresponsive to the government, they buy the government, and get rulings like Citizens United to buy the government even more. All of this is the result of what Reason has been pushing forever. They wanted to prevent government from dealing with Abbott, and the result is these tariffs and the baby formula breakdown. The market is incapable of working due to the policies of Reason. It's like the bread shortages in the USSR after the failure of Khruschev's Virgin Lands program. Different mechanisms but same result.
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  Yeah, I think some people/groups like Reason often see government as mostly ineffective and then say we should give them less money, which can make them more ineffective, and then they say they're even more ineffective so we should give less money, so on and so forth. I was reading elsewhere that stronger FDA regulation and enforcement could help fix issues like this one with the baby formula yet many libertarian perspectives don't seem to want to give more power to the government. I don't know.
  - _3u10 5y ago
    The govt isn’t ineffective it’s very effective at making the free market ineffective which is what the reason crowd wants to defund. I live in South America, taxes are 10% and there’s no shortage of formula.
    - jimkleiber 4y ago
      > I live in South America, taxes are 10% and there’s no shortage of formula. There doesn't seem to be a shortage in Europe either, where taxes are much higher and with your argument, the government may be even more effective. It's an argument I seem to hear often: government is simultaneously all powerful and completely ineffective. But I'll stay open and curious: what did the US government do to primarily or fully cause a shortage of infant formula?
CWuestefeld 5y ago
The FDA has been trying to kill us for over two years now. At the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic, recall how they wouldn't allow anyone to do their own testing - the only test allowed was a known-broken test from the CDC. More recently they dragged their feet for purely political reasons on approval of Paxlovid. And still going on now is the approval of vaccinations for small children, where their reasoning for holding approval has nothing to do with safety or efficacy, but something stupid about causing confusion when a second vaccine hasn't yet been approved. The FDA has demonstrated that their only concern is avoiding down-side risk, and are completely incapable of evaluating up-side risk: what's the danger to the American public of NOT having access to a given treatment. This agency seems beyond reform. It needs to be gutted and completely redesigned from the ground up.
- jostmey 5y ago
  +1
OrvalWintermute 5y ago
I made some comments on another thread here on HN about the Infant Formula Shortage, and how the individuals strains of Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria from the unfortunately deceased infants did not match the strains of Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria found at the food production facility, did not match each other, but, the baby food production facility was shut down anyways. [1] EDITED. [1] https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2022/04/five-strains-of-bacteria-found-at-infant-formula-plant-none-match-samples-from-two-patients/ https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2022/04/five-strains-of-bacte...
- bawolff 5y ago
  I'm not sure why you think that matters? Even if its not directly causal, the plants should not have bacteria of that sort.
  - KennyBlanken 5y ago
    Exactly. The reason the plant was shut down was because it had poor sanitation. What probably happened: company got the initial reports of deaths, did a one-off sanitation effort but didn't address systemic hygiene/sanitation issues, and the plant ended up with contamination again.
- WalterGR 5y ago
  > However, it is clear there is a HN downvote brigade out in force patrolling the comments https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Gunax 5y ago
  I don't think it's unreasonable to close it. I don't know anything about this bacteria, but is it normal to find it in the formula? If another child died someone would have to explain 'well we let it open because whole we found bacteria in the product, it was not exactly the same bacteria that killed the other kids'.
CPLX 5y ago
The actual problem here, as it is with some many parts of our economy, is consolidation and monopoly. One company, Abbott, controls about half the country’s supply, and has a stranglehold on distribution: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formula-nightmare https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formu...
- pythonic_hell 5y ago
  I wish more people would wake up to the impact that monopolies have on their economic and wellbeing security.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Legalizing imports would break, or at least put strong pressure on, such a monopoly.
  - CPLX 5y ago
    Maybe. Or maybe we’d then be subject to a bigger more international monopoly. These two issues are loosely related at best.
    - BurningFrog 4y ago
      So you're claiming there is an international monopoly controlling the world formula market? And they would crush or assimilate Abbot when the borders opened?
Animats 5y ago
Reason missed the key point. Well over half of US infant formula is paid for by welfare programs. Those have per-state monopolies awarded by competitive bidding. So it's not an ordinary consumer product.[1] [1] https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/39616/PDF https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/39616/PDF
- ConceptJunkie 5y ago
  Seems to me that still falls under the umbrella of "bad government policy". So, you could say bad government policy doesn't explain the whole problem. There's also bad government policy.
  - lupire 4y ago
    This is Reason. Ther good government policy would be doing nothing, which wouldn't help poor families get formula either. There's a case to be made about fine-tuning things in some ways as the article suggests, but it's still gross to frame this under the "government is bad" banner as Reason does. This concern is especially relevant in the baby formula space, where Nestle killed thousands of babies by pushing their mothers off breast milk onto unreliably supplied formula.
    - barry-cotter 4y ago
      > This is Reason. Ther good government policy would be doing nothing, which wouldn't help poor families get formula either. Their good government policy would be to give the poor families money. This would have the great side effect of getting rid of the idiotic state by state monopolies but the justification is the same as every other tied benefit. This is stupid. Give people the money and let them decide what to spend it on. They have the information and motivation.
      - doyouevensunbro 4y ago
        I have zero faith that once the government programs are stopped the second step of giving money to the poor would actually happen.
syrrim 5y ago
One good reason for protectionism in this way is to protect from international shocks. If there was an event that caused international production of formula to scale back (say a volcanic eruption), then it would be beneficial to have as large a domestic supply as possible. This is achieved by subsidizing local production, eg via tarrifs on foreign imports. It would be valuable in addition to expressly allow for foreign imports in response to shocks like this, but making that the permanent regime would have its own risks.
- dereg 4y ago
  How does consolidating an industry improve its resilience? Unless consumers have all decided that they love the formula exclusively manufactured under that volcano, they're not going to find themselves in the same bind that they are in now. Now, this is different than if a certain country controls a significant portion of the raw materials needed to make a good, but that doesn't apply in this case. Cows and grass are abundant in every nation. Protectionism effectively reduces their supply, thereby increasing our exposure to shocks.
rilezg 5y ago
This article is a summary of a different article: https://capitolism.thedispatch.com/p/americas-infant-formula-crisis-and https://capitolism.thedispatch.com/p/americas-infant-formula... It seems odd that the posted article ignores how WIC contracts are distorting the market and encouraging a monopoly and instead jumps on over-regulation being the problem. It sure seems like those contracts should either not be exclusive or should require suppliers to demonstrate supply resiliency in the face of a single factory failure.
- 999900000999 5y ago
  I was frankly alarmed something like half of kids qualify for WIC. Don't get me wrong, feed em, but why is child poverty so bad in the US ?
  - User23 5y ago
    You have to be poor or very affluent to afford children in many American cities. And many of the affluent aren’t procreating.
    - jMyles 5y ago
      > And many of the affluent aren’t procreating. Source? Has the relative, inflation-adjusted average wealth of new parents changed substantially?
      - User23 4y ago
        > Source? Do your own googles instead of implying that I'm ignorant or dishonest. It's easy to find birth rates broken out by income. What I said is true and readily verifiable.
        jMyles 4y ago
        I implied no such thing. You, be contrast ("do your own googles") implied that I lack the work ethic or skill to determine this. But I did give it a quick go, and searching phrases like (birth trends by income decades) didn't yield anything to support this assertion. I doubt you are dishonest; I just don't know the facts myself.
WalterBright 5y ago
WSJ has an article on it, too: https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-made-the-baby-formula-shortage-biden-administration-abbott-tariffs-nestle-11652480538 https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-made-the-baby-formula-short... TL,DR: government manipulation of the market caused the shortage
samsonradu 5y ago
Matt Stroller writes a very good newsletter[1] on monopolies and antitrust matters. Last article touched this exact topic. [1] https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formula-nightmare?s=r https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formu...
nostromo 5y ago
We need dramatic supply-side improvements to get our way out of this inflationary spiral. We need to unleash America's entrepreneurs to create more stuff to soak up this excess money. More housing. Lots more housing. More products with fewer roadblocks to bring products to market. The fact that it took over a year for American masks to come to market, just in time for them to not be needed, in large part because of regulation is a sign of how bad things have gotten here. We need more energy too -- wind, solar, nuclear, and yes fossil fuels too. (Our current policy of begging Saudi Arabia to provide us more oil, when we have plenty in our own backyard makes zero strategic sense. Not to mention how high fuel prices are enriching our adversaries like Russia.)
- lumost 5y ago
  Is it really regulation? Anecdotally this appears to be a knowledge/capability problem. We haven't grown domestic industry in so long that I honestly don't think many still know how to actually build. If you give money to businesses that for the last 50 years have simply become experts at dealing with international supply chains... You’re probably just going to have the money sent abroad.
  - onphonenow 5y ago
    It's surprising how regs slow things down - it's just an accumulation. Southern Cal wanted a desalination plant. Spent a TON of time in development. Shot down. Repeat time 100x, kind of crushing I think.
    - supertrope 5y ago
      When the drought is extreme enough government regulations will be changed. Like how environmental reviews are being shoved to the side to export LNG to Europe. But before we build extremely expensive desalination, more effective and lower cost actions must come first. Reforming water rights law to stop insane use it or lose it incentives (e.g. flood irrigation of almond trees). Renegotiating water treaties. Increasing water efficiency in agriculture. Xeriscaping. Higher water prices that will hold down demand and provide a self-enforcing incentive to reduce waste, leaks, and low value water consumption. And better finance water works. Reduce, reuse, recycle.
mlom 5y ago
people in this thread seriously seem to think there's some meaningful distinction between the bank notes that they collect at their bullshit jobs and wic coupons for feeding children
tzs 5y ago
> In a well-functioning market, any temporary shortage caused by the removal of one company's product from the market would be addressed relatively quickly. Is that actually the case in real life? In a well functioning market I'd expect producers to have just enough capacity above average demand to cover the normal random fluctuations in their market. I wouldn't expect them to have enough excess capacity to quickly make up the temporary loss of a major producer. Also, what about logistics? Say some particular plant starts producing say 50% more...are they going to be able to quickly find shipping capacity to deliver that?
- thayne 5y ago
  Or maybe in real life, most markets aren't well functioning.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  Significantly increasing production capacity would take time, and companies would only do it if they thought the shortage would be long-term. There's no use making a long-term investment in response to a temporary shortage. In the short term, the market would "address" the problem by increasing prices. Poorer parents would respond by buying less infant formula. Better-off parents would accept the price hike. Infants in poor families would suffer. This is the sort of thing you'd expect a modern society to prevent. Just letting the market solve the issue by letting prices spike - and consequently risking malnourishment in infants - is a bad idea.
mcguire 5y ago
Much of the problem is with families that need a specific formula. How would, say, importing different formula from Europe help that?
deeptote 5y ago
Reason calling the government bad is like Uncle Leo in Seinfeld calling everyone an anti-semite.
jonahhorowitz 4y ago
The issue here is that the FDA and Abbot didn't treat it as an emergency when the Abbot facility was forced to close in the first place. Had they acted as if it was an emergency, they would have mobilized all available resources to clean and disinfect the facility, replace the faulty milk drying equipment, and get the facility back up and running. Here we are, months later and it's now an emergency. Sure, importing from other countries will help, but like toilet paper, it's a product that has a pretty consistent demand and there isn't a lot of surge capacity out there, even in other countries, so we really need to get the facility back online. The issue isn't bad government policy - infant formula is strictly regulated for very good reasons, it's a lack of urgency from the government and private sector to make sure a medically critical product is available. Also, of course, we shouldn't have let such a critical product mostly be made by 3 companies, but that's another rant.
- rilezg 4y ago
  Although the linked article does not address it, the FDA is certainly working to mitigate any fallout from the plant closure. Much of the complexity is that WIC is administrated at the state level, so the FDA must work with each state individually to address the shortage. Of particular note: >more infant formula has been produced in the last four weeks than in the four weeks that preceded the recall, despite one of the largest infant formula production facilities in the country being offline during that time. https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2022/05/13/usda-continues-urgent-actions-address-infant-formula-shortage https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2022/05/13/usda-co...
  - landemva 4y ago
    >>> FDA is certainly working to mitigate any fallout from the plant closure. This should not be the role of the regulator. Let the FDA set standards and check for compliance.
    - rilezg 4y ago
      My mistake. The press release is actually from the USDA, and this is the only mention of the FDA: >USDA has been working closely with FDA to ensure program participants and stakeholders have the information they need to keep infants safe I apologize for any confusion.
cafard 4y ago
"This whole scheme, done under the guise of welfare, is essentially a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the poor, done by enriching the baby formula cartel." I'm not sure how transferring wealth from the middle class to the poor would be "under the guise of welfare" rather than "welfare". No, enriching the cartel is not good.
- Sebguer 4y ago
  Did the linked article change? You seem to be quoting: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formula-nightmare?s=r https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formu... which is not the article here, nor linked in the article as far as I can tell.
  - cafard 4y ago
    You're right, I am quoting Stoller. His article, though, is linked to in the comments. I should have commented on that comment, not at the top level.
deleted 4y ago
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ananonymoususer 4y ago
Another example of "we don't know that it's okay, so you can't have it." This flawed logic has been used in various forms to create twisted reasoning for plenty of stupid laws. E.g. We don't know that you're not going to use the cold medicine to make meth, so you can't have it." The presumption of innocence is dead.
- margalabargala 4y ago
  There are excellent reasons to generally forbid the import of certain critical items such as infant formula- as a matter of national security, for example. It's important that this industry exist domestically. However, in extraordinary cases such as we are in right now, the appropriate thing to do would of course be to import formula from other countries to make up for the shortage. Seems to me that this is the sort of thing that should have already been approved by the FDA, and controlled purely via import restrictions/tariffs, so that more can be quickly imported if needed.
  - landemva 4y ago
    >>> as a matter of national security If this was a national security issue, someone from NIH and FDA and welfare departments would be having public service announcements extolling the virtues of breast feeding.
    - gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
      Mostly like the Biden administration will start doing this in the next two weeks. It will quietly sweep under the run the problem and say it's the population that's not following the science.
greenthrow 4y ago
Oh look a Reason article where "government is bad." What a shock. Baby formula needs to be closely regulated (see: history around baby formula.) Poor people need to be able to care for their babies (see: babies dying is bad.) Seems like things went awry here, but the policies in place are all worthwhile in my view. (Limiting the import of baby formula from other countries falls under the need to closely regulate baby formula.) If anything this is evidence that something so important to human life shouldn't have any for profit organizations involved because those companies can choose to risk not having adequate supply if the upside of that risk is greater profit.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  > Oh look a Reason article where "government is bad." What a shock. Let’s leave ad-hominem attacks on the publication out of this, shall we? I think we need more journalism that questions government and its efficiency. Not less. It’s doing rather a disservice to excellent points you’ve brought up.
  - badlogic 4y ago
    Pointing out media bias is just as important as pointing out inefficiencies in government.
    - systemvoltage 4y ago
      Meta: We never like to point out media bias of NYT, but have a bias for pointing out how biased anyone else is. NYT gets a free pass. Can you imagine a comment that starts with something like this: “Oh look a NYT article where government is good." What a shock. —- But I digress. I agree, we should point out bias, but shouldn’t reduce the entire article to “What a shock”. Otherwise, we’d throw away every newspaper since they’re all biased. Right?
      - diordiderot 4y ago
        But NYT reports on how gov is bad sometimes
deleted 4y ago
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swayvil 4y ago
Looks like we're gonna have to buy it from a foreign manufacturer that happens to be owned by the legislators behind the regulations that caused the shortage. If it's too expensive the fed will supply funds, no doubt.
fallingfrog 4y ago
Sometimes efficiency and just-in-time production come at the cost of decreased robustness. A maximally optimized system has no slack.
ck2 4y ago
What a ridiculous title and "article". Imagine what the hell is going on with the rest of the food, drug and completely unregulated vitamin/mineral/supplement industry if this is what happens with baby food > The company recalled several lots of the formula brands Similac, Alimentum, and EleCare in February following complaints that infants contracted cronobacter sakazakii, an environmental bacteria. All four babies used formula produced at the company's Sturgis, Michigan facility. > cronobacter sakazakii bacteria was found in a number of areas in the facility, and other safety protocols, such as employees wearing gloves, were not observed So right, the government regulation is the "bad guy" just like making people wear masks in a pandemic is the "bad guy"
perryizgr8 4y ago
Remember folks: anything important enough to be regulated is also important enough not to be.
gandalfff 4y ago
So I'm a bit out of the loop here. Are infants going hungry because of the formula shortage?
- strgcmc 4y ago
  Some infants, probably. On a widespread general basis, probably not (yet?). Switching between different formulas for normal/healthy babies can be done (if a preferred brand is out of stock but something else is available), but it's not trivial. Switching to a different formula for a baby with special dietary needs, special allergies, etc., can range from "difficult" to "impossible." For those parents, this is an acute crisis, and "going hungry" doesn't begin to describe the potential impact; stunted development in the newborn phase, has long-term knock-on effects. Newborns are very different from adults (or even just, older children); adults can skip a few days worth of meals or ration their calorie intake for weeks, without much adverse long-term impact... newborns cannot do this. A semi-related source about what kinds of scenarios parents are facing: https://www.nytimes.com/article/formula-shortage-help.html https://www.nytimes.com/article/formula-shortage-help.html
whack 4y ago
> The proximate cause was a recall of formula produced by Abbott, but that was only the triggering event. In a well-functioning market, any temporary shortage caused by the removal of one company's product from the market would be addressed relatively quickly. Why hasn't that happened here? My understanding is that the above has already and is indeed happening. Infant formula is still readily available - what's unavailable is infant formula from specific brands. For parents who are willing to switch to other brands, formula does exist. Is this not the case?
refurb 4y ago
Wait, if you actually read the recall notice... "Importantly, no distributed product has tested positive for the presence of either of these bacteria, and we continue to test. Abbott conducts extensive quality checks on each completed batch of infant formula, including microbiological analysis prior to release." So if I read that correctly, despite there being reports of contamination of formula, none of it can be exclusively linked to the actual product and the bacteria in question are commonly found in the household environment? So there is a chance that there is zero problem with the formula?
Proven 4y ago
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noelherrick 4y ago
This is an article by a Koch supported organization. They are very blatant they want to remove all regulation and are behind climate misinformation. The real reason we have a problem is that Abbott was not maintaining their factory all the while doing stock buybacks. The reason we have an FDA is because before that babies would get milk with worms in it and die. There is no free market solution to a dead baby. You can’t just say “whoops, I guess I will buy a different brand next baby.”
- deepsquirrelnet 4y ago
  I’m in agreement with you. Let’s not ignore that it was also negligence that caused this. Read the whistleblower’s accounts of all the blatant health and quality violations in the factory that had been going on for years. It’s no surprise that they eventually killed babies. “Regulation bad” is a pretty hard take when it’s clear that they were evading the regulations that could have prevented this in the first place. https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2022/04/former-employee-blows-whistle-on-baby-formula-production-plant-tied-to-outbreak/ https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2022/04/former-employee-blows...
lyrachord 4y ago
ngcc_hk 4y ago
Some discussion (given this is IT site) use IT as analogy, but many IT world cannot be easily applied. Regulation is needed. In fact the triangle of regulation, competition vs facilitation-participation-governance has to be balanced. Here, I wonder given we are IT site let us learn from one history not gov regulation but military mandate that help - the alternative provider concept that leads to AMD survival along side of intel. (Sadly no Boeing alternative now which it should to avoid the 1 monopoly vs 1 regulator killing the other trianlge). That means e.g. there must be at least one competitor per state instead of one per state for critical sector. (Let one may add for critical sector be American 50+% and controlled by chinese, Russia, india, eu or Brazil etc. or at least buffer for say anti-biotic enough for local produce to replace any issue, like oil reserve). You know in our field, AMD survived because of this mandate and we have innovative idea. One of the issue of monopoly is not they are poison which they might be, but they do not know alternative. Organisation compete also but once settle down they do one way. And then the regulator was captured. And the facilitator, the participants (stakeholders) and the governance all gone bad. You just do not know any alternatives. Can 80x86 do 64 bit, say? No, we need another architecture. Microsoft, HP … all followed intel leads to nowhere for a decade. Windows NT has those you know. Even here alternative is there but no need. (And it comes ultimately as ARM… another story.) History now, and for novice you always wonder have i selected right - amd64. No, I use intel cpu … should I choose the non-amd option. No you should not. It is AMD told us that the x86 can have 64 bit. And the rest is history. But if we have only intel. We still are trying to switch. With a very hot cpu in 14 nm … Key is not regulation vs competition vs gov oversight/public stakeholder participation/ facilitation and helping hand. It is all. In many industry you cannot really allow free competition (everyone can be a doctor), but also undesirable to have no competition (single provider - which can be ok if there are alternatives abd competition to provide option ). Sidetrack but important, in one of discussion, Gov need to help, but not play 2 incompatible role the facilitator AND the regulator at the same time (usda vs fda as mentioned in sone post; or the Boeing incident of delegation of flight safety by Boeing as the regulator … does not really know as they are not from a different background, the so called capture). China example is the worst. They have too much competition and they break the system by ganging it. And then the regulator, media, … all forced to cover it up. The “infrastructure” for this is hard (like current Wuhan virus handling and vaccine innovation/certification etc). But the triangular relation is a must. And must be balanced.

289 points by mhb 5y ago

Is the domesticated human, chained by relations of dependence to industrial society, still in fact a mammal? mammal (n): An animal that nurses its young. We are not even a boob culture any more, but an ass one. Whatever happened to boobs? Were we supposed to forget we have them?

pstuart 5y ago

A more nuanced take is here: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/baby-formula-shortage-abbott-recall/629828/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/baby-formu... and here: https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/monopolies-and-the-baby-formula-shortage/ https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/monopolies-an...

AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
How is this more nuanced than the OP's article? The OP article actually _adds_ nuance by expanding on the Atlantic's claim that "America’s regulatory and trade policy" is largely to blame. The Atlantic claims that this "might be the most important part of the story."
- pstuart 5y ago
  No mention of the effective monopoly in place -- that a single factory getting shut down would have such an impact. Obviously government policy has failed as well.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Matt Stoller covered that in his BIG newsletter about antitrust and monopolies in America. https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formula-nightmare https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formu...
- dv_dt 5y ago
  Well I take issue on the very first line of the Reason article "Trade restrictions and over-zealous FDA regulation are a big part of the problem, but there's more." The plant is closed with bacterial infection problems linked to the deaths of two infants. That seems the opposite of over-zealous FDA regulation. There are definitely other regulatory issues, but I would characterize them as regulatory capture - too little regulation going against corporate interests. Temporary easing of trade restrictions does seem like a good thing, but not really permanent easing as I suspect Reason would prefer. Permanent easing leads us to even bigger supply insecurity risks imho.

zeruch 5y ago

Occasionally Reason gets it right...this is not one of those times.

zeruch 5y ago
- programmarchy 5y ago
  All you’ve done is offer a contradiction and an ad hom, so why not bring a more substantial argument to the table for discussion.
  - avs733 5y ago
    Because they have reason (magazine) on their side
    - programmarchy 5y ago
      Maybe I misunderstood but pretty sure they’re saying the Reason article got it wrong. I’d like to hear why, and I’m likely to be sympathetic to an opposing view. For example, I disagree with Reason that we should loosen FDA rules on something as critical as baby formula, but lowering tariffs on imports doesn’t seem like a terrible idea. On the other side, I think tariffs play an important role in protecting domestic industry that are vital to national security. So we don’t want Abbott to get shut down, but they do need to be severely punished.
      - CWuestefeld 5y ago
        If baby formula is vital to national security, can you name anything that isn't also vital?
        programmarchy 5y ago
        Sure, any luxury good.

vondur 5y ago

Can’t congress just make an emergency exemption and possibly start importing formula from Europe? Apparently customs seize shipments that people attempt to purchase directly from Europe.

taf2 5y ago
A president is usually better at doing this via executive orders... Simply because it's one president who has to sign the order vs many congressman who have to agree to pass an act... So it's unclear why this has not happened...
- throwaway48375 5y ago
  Don't worry they've formed a committee to look into maybe doing something about this. Meanwhile babies are starving. I wish I were joking.
  - macspoofing 5y ago
    >Don't worry they've formed a committee to look into maybe doing something about this. Yes. You have to 'form a committee' to understand the problem, instead of just winging it.
    - throwaway48375 5y ago
      Is there a good reason why it takes that committee over a week just to meet? Why can't they just schedule a zoom conference and then issue an executive order the same day? It's not like starving babies are a time critical issue like missiles for Ukraine or something.
      - macspoofing 4y ago
        >Is there a good reason why it takes that committee over a week just to meet? It's a complicated issue, that will take time to sort out. There is no decision that will just magically fix everything. >It's not like starving babies are a time critical issue ... This is a baby formula shortage, in a rich first-world nation. No babies are going to be harmed. Is there really a need to go into hyperbole?

Barrin92 5y ago

It's not surprising that Reason points to trade restrictions which makes sense because importing food from Europe should not be an issue, but on the other hand, why does the government, federal or local not have a stockpile of well... the stuff you feed infant children with? Same situation as the masks again. Yes, free trade alleviates these issues but only if you're not in global bottleneck which seem to be increasingly common with supply chain and production issues. This is food security, and countries should have the industrial capacity and backup to not end up with empty shelves.

chitowneats 5y ago
In addition to this, the reason that Europe is an attractive option for baby formula is because their regulatory bodies take "food for infants" more seriously than we do here.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Does "Europe" have an abundant surplus of infant formula that they are prepared to export? A lot more mothers breast-feed in Europe, formula feeding is rather uncommon so why would one expect that inventory is available to send somewhere else? And then you have the mother in Tennessee who gets a can of German-labeled formula powder, with mixing instructions in metric. Is she going to add the correct amount of water? Or are we going to re-label it? Who does that? Who checks it? How long will it take? I don't think this is the simple answer it appears to be.
  - samatman 5y ago
    Certainly, since this would be the first food Americans have ever imported from Europe, there is no framework for Imperialization of nutrition labels, since no one has ever done it before in the history of ever. Congratulations you found a show-stopper!
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      Of course EU producers who package food for export label it accordingly. However what Reason seems to be implying is that we just load up some cargo planes with pallets of surplus formula that are apparently not needed in Europe and bring it to the USA under some kind of "emergency" order.

seibelj 5y ago

All problems are caused by greedy corporations! Throw executives in prison! If we just had more government all of this would be better /s

daenz 5y ago

>So while you might think formula from Germany or The Netherlands is safe enough for your child (formula available in Europe tends to meet or exceed the FDA's nutritional requirements, but not the labeling requirements.) the FDA will not let you have it because it has not reviewed and approved the label or inspected the production facilities overseas. Reasonable people can debate whether this is a reasonable policy in normal times, but in the current mess this sort of rule undermines the health and development of the infants the FDA purports to protect. Is this even a debate about whether or not it is a reasonable policy? Why would you allow uninspected products to feed your most vulnerable population? Now, I understand the nuance of "well we're in a shortage, so we should allow it temporarily." But think about it from a security perspective: you'd still be exposing babies to uninspected food products. Any America-hating entity could capitalize on this attack vector, if they knew we would bypass our security controls. Is it likely? I don't know, but I do know that suspending your security in response to a crisis is dangerous.

sacrosancty 5y ago
What does "inspected" mean to you in this context that makes it so obvious that it's essential? And essential for Americans but not Germans??
- daenz 5y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your question, can you rephrase it please?
  - dcolkitt 5y ago
    Germany clearly inspected the formula. Clearly baby formula imported from Germany is still inspected. The only distinction is it's inspected by Germany instead of American inspectors. This would be as insane as Florida insisting that baby formula can only be sold in Florida if it was inspected in Florida. Baby formula inspected in New York cannot be sold, even though it was inspected.
    - 5y ago

VictorPath 5y ago

Reason is correct that tariffs on Canada, pushed by Abbott, helped exacerbate the baby formula problem. This is what happens when heirs and corporations gain too much power. When they are not responsive to working people or the government. Not only are they unresponsive to the government, they buy the government, and get rulings like Citizens United to buy the government even more. All of this is the result of what Reason has been pushing forever. They wanted to prevent government from dealing with Abbott, and the result is these tariffs and the baby formula breakdown. The market is incapable of working due to the policies of Reason. It's like the bread shortages in the USSR after the failure of Khruschev's Virgin Lands program. Different mechanisms but same result.

jimkleiber 5y ago
Yeah, I think some people/groups like Reason often see government as mostly ineffective and then say we should give them less money, which can make them more ineffective, and then they say they're even more ineffective so we should give less money, so on and so forth. I was reading elsewhere that stronger FDA regulation and enforcement could help fix issues like this one with the baby formula yet many libertarian perspectives don't seem to want to give more power to the government. I don't know.
- _3u10 5y ago
  The govt isn’t ineffective it’s very effective at making the free market ineffective which is what the reason crowd wants to defund. I live in South America, taxes are 10% and there’s no shortage of formula.
  - jimkleiber 4y ago
    > I live in South America, taxes are 10% and there’s no shortage of formula. There doesn't seem to be a shortage in Europe either, where taxes are much higher and with your argument, the government may be even more effective. It's an argument I seem to hear often: government is simultaneously all powerful and completely ineffective. But I'll stay open and curious: what did the US government do to primarily or fully cause a shortage of infant formula?

CWuestefeld 5y ago

The FDA has been trying to kill us for over two years now. At the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic, recall how they wouldn't allow anyone to do their own testing - the only test allowed was a known-broken test from the CDC. More recently they dragged their feet for purely political reasons on approval of Paxlovid. And still going on now is the approval of vaccinations for small children, where their reasoning for holding approval has nothing to do with safety or efficacy, but something stupid about causing confusion when a second vaccine hasn't yet been approved. The FDA has demonstrated that their only concern is avoiding down-side risk, and are completely incapable of evaluating up-side risk: what's the danger to the American public of NOT having access to a given treatment. This agency seems beyond reform. It needs to be gutted and completely redesigned from the ground up.

jostmey 5y ago
+1

OrvalWintermute 5y ago

I made some comments on another thread here on HN about the Infant Formula Shortage, and how the individuals strains of Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria from the unfortunately deceased infants did not match the strains of Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria found at the food production facility, did not match each other, but, the baby food production facility was shut down anyways. [1] EDITED. [1] https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2022/04/five-strains-of-bacteria-found-at-infant-formula-plant-none-match-samples-from-two-patients/ https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2022/04/five-strains-of-bacte...

bawolff 5y ago
I'm not sure why you think that matters? Even if its not directly causal, the plants should not have bacteria of that sort.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  Exactly. The reason the plant was shut down was because it had poor sanitation. What probably happened: company got the initial reports of deaths, did a one-off sanitation effort but didn't address systemic hygiene/sanitation issues, and the plant ended up with contamination again.
WalterGR 5y ago
> However, it is clear there is a HN downvote brigade out in force patrolling the comments https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Gunax 5y ago
I don't think it's unreasonable to close it. I don't know anything about this bacteria, but is it normal to find it in the formula? If another child died someone would have to explain 'well we let it open because whole we found bacteria in the product, it was not exactly the same bacteria that killed the other kids'.

CPLX 5y ago

The actual problem here, as it is with some many parts of our economy, is consolidation and monopoly. One company, Abbott, controls about half the country’s supply, and has a stranglehold on distribution: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formula-nightmare https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formu...

pythonic_hell 5y ago
I wish more people would wake up to the impact that monopolies have on their economic and wellbeing security.
BurningFrog 5y ago
Legalizing imports would break, or at least put strong pressure on, such a monopoly.
- CPLX 5y ago
  Maybe. Or maybe we’d then be subject to a bigger more international monopoly. These two issues are loosely related at best.
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    So you're claiming there is an international monopoly controlling the world formula market? And they would crush or assimilate Abbot when the borders opened?

Animats 5y ago

Reason missed the key point. Well over half of US infant formula is paid for by welfare programs. Those have per-state monopolies awarded by competitive bidding. So it's not an ordinary consumer product.[1] [1] https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/39616/PDF https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/39616/PDF

ConceptJunkie 5y ago
Seems to me that still falls under the umbrella of "bad government policy". So, you could say bad government policy doesn't explain the whole problem. There's also bad government policy.
- lupire 4y ago
  This is Reason. Ther good government policy would be doing nothing, which wouldn't help poor families get formula either. There's a case to be made about fine-tuning things in some ways as the article suggests, but it's still gross to frame this under the "government is bad" banner as Reason does. This concern is especially relevant in the baby formula space, where Nestle killed thousands of babies by pushing their mothers off breast milk onto unreliably supplied formula.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    > This is Reason. Ther good government policy would be doing nothing, which wouldn't help poor families get formula either. Their good government policy would be to give the poor families money. This would have the great side effect of getting rid of the idiotic state by state monopolies but the justification is the same as every other tied benefit. This is stupid. Give people the money and let them decide what to spend it on. They have the information and motivation.
    - doyouevensunbro 4y ago
      I have zero faith that once the government programs are stopped the second step of giving money to the poor would actually happen.

syrrim 5y ago

One good reason for protectionism in this way is to protect from international shocks. If there was an event that caused international production of formula to scale back (say a volcanic eruption), then it would be beneficial to have as large a domestic supply as possible. This is achieved by subsidizing local production, eg via tarrifs on foreign imports. It would be valuable in addition to expressly allow for foreign imports in response to shocks like this, but making that the permanent regime would have its own risks.

dereg 4y ago
How does consolidating an industry improve its resilience? Unless consumers have all decided that they love the formula exclusively manufactured under that volcano, they're not going to find themselves in the same bind that they are in now. Now, this is different than if a certain country controls a significant portion of the raw materials needed to make a good, but that doesn't apply in this case. Cows and grass are abundant in every nation. Protectionism effectively reduces their supply, thereby increasing our exposure to shocks.

rilezg 5y ago

This article is a summary of a different article: https://capitolism.thedispatch.com/p/americas-infant-formula-crisis-and https://capitolism.thedispatch.com/p/americas-infant-formula... It seems odd that the posted article ignores how WIC contracts are distorting the market and encouraging a monopoly and instead jumps on over-regulation being the problem. It sure seems like those contracts should either not be exclusive or should require suppliers to demonstrate supply resiliency in the face of a single factory failure.

999900000999 5y ago
I was frankly alarmed something like half of kids qualify for WIC. Don't get me wrong, feed em, but why is child poverty so bad in the US ?
- User23 5y ago
  You have to be poor or very affluent to afford children in many American cities. And many of the affluent aren’t procreating.
  - jMyles 5y ago
    > And many of the affluent aren’t procreating. Source? Has the relative, inflation-adjusted average wealth of new parents changed substantially?
    - User23 4y ago
      > Source? Do your own googles instead of implying that I'm ignorant or dishonest. It's easy to find birth rates broken out by income. What I said is true and readily verifiable.
      - jMyles 4y ago
        I implied no such thing. You, be contrast ("do your own googles") implied that I lack the work ethic or skill to determine this. But I did give it a quick go, and searching phrases like (birth trends by income decades) didn't yield anything to support this assertion. I doubt you are dishonest; I just don't know the facts myself.

WalterBright 5y ago

WSJ has an article on it, too: https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-made-the-baby-formula-shortage-biden-administration-abbott-tariffs-nestle-11652480538 https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-made-the-baby-formula-short... TL,DR: government manipulation of the market caused the shortage

samsonradu 5y ago

Matt Stroller writes a very good newsletter[1] on monopolies and antitrust matters. Last article touched this exact topic. [1] https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formula-nightmare?s=r https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formu...

nostromo 5y ago

We need dramatic supply-side improvements to get our way out of this inflationary spiral. We need to unleash America's entrepreneurs to create more stuff to soak up this excess money. More housing. Lots more housing. More products with fewer roadblocks to bring products to market. The fact that it took over a year for American masks to come to market, just in time for them to not be needed, in large part because of regulation is a sign of how bad things have gotten here. We need more energy too -- wind, solar, nuclear, and yes fossil fuels too. (Our current policy of begging Saudi Arabia to provide us more oil, when we have plenty in our own backyard makes zero strategic sense. Not to mention how high fuel prices are enriching our adversaries like Russia.)

lumost 5y ago
Is it really regulation? Anecdotally this appears to be a knowledge/capability problem. We haven't grown domestic industry in so long that I honestly don't think many still know how to actually build. If you give money to businesses that for the last 50 years have simply become experts at dealing with international supply chains... You’re probably just going to have the money sent abroad.
- onphonenow 5y ago
  It's surprising how regs slow things down - it's just an accumulation. Southern Cal wanted a desalination plant. Spent a TON of time in development. Shot down. Repeat time 100x, kind of crushing I think.
  - supertrope 5y ago
    When the drought is extreme enough government regulations will be changed. Like how environmental reviews are being shoved to the side to export LNG to Europe. But before we build extremely expensive desalination, more effective and lower cost actions must come first. Reforming water rights law to stop insane use it or lose it incentives (e.g. flood irrigation of almond trees). Renegotiating water treaties. Increasing water efficiency in agriculture. Xeriscaping. Higher water prices that will hold down demand and provide a self-enforcing incentive to reduce waste, leaks, and low value water consumption. And better finance water works. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

mlom 5y ago

people in this thread seriously seem to think there's some meaningful distinction between the bank notes that they collect at their bullshit jobs and wic coupons for feeding children

tzs 5y ago

> In a well-functioning market, any temporary shortage caused by the removal of one company's product from the market would be addressed relatively quickly. Is that actually the case in real life? In a well functioning market I'd expect producers to have just enough capacity above average demand to cover the normal random fluctuations in their market. I wouldn't expect them to have enough excess capacity to quickly make up the temporary loss of a major producer. Also, what about logistics? Say some particular plant starts producing say 50% more...are they going to be able to quickly find shipping capacity to deliver that?

thayne 5y ago
Or maybe in real life, most markets aren't well functioning.
DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
Significantly increasing production capacity would take time, and companies would only do it if they thought the shortage would be long-term. There's no use making a long-term investment in response to a temporary shortage. In the short term, the market would "address" the problem by increasing prices. Poorer parents would respond by buying less infant formula. Better-off parents would accept the price hike. Infants in poor families would suffer. This is the sort of thing you'd expect a modern society to prevent. Just letting the market solve the issue by letting prices spike - and consequently risking malnourishment in infants - is a bad idea.

mcguire 5y ago

Much of the problem is with families that need a specific formula. How would, say, importing different formula from Europe help that?

deeptote 5y ago

Reason calling the government bad is like Uncle Leo in Seinfeld calling everyone an anti-semite.

jonahhorowitz 4y ago

The issue here is that the FDA and Abbot didn't treat it as an emergency when the Abbot facility was forced to close in the first place. Had they acted as if it was an emergency, they would have mobilized all available resources to clean and disinfect the facility, replace the faulty milk drying equipment, and get the facility back up and running. Here we are, months later and it's now an emergency. Sure, importing from other countries will help, but like toilet paper, it's a product that has a pretty consistent demand and there isn't a lot of surge capacity out there, even in other countries, so we really need to get the facility back online. The issue isn't bad government policy - infant formula is strictly regulated for very good reasons, it's a lack of urgency from the government and private sector to make sure a medically critical product is available. Also, of course, we shouldn't have let such a critical product mostly be made by 3 companies, but that's another rant.

rilezg 4y ago
Although the linked article does not address it, the FDA is certainly working to mitigate any fallout from the plant closure. Much of the complexity is that WIC is administrated at the state level, so the FDA must work with each state individually to address the shortage. Of particular note: >more infant formula has been produced in the last four weeks than in the four weeks that preceded the recall, despite one of the largest infant formula production facilities in the country being offline during that time. https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2022/05/13/usda-continues-urgent-actions-address-infant-formula-shortage https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2022/05/13/usda-co...
- landemva 4y ago
  >>> FDA is certainly working to mitigate any fallout from the plant closure. This should not be the role of the regulator. Let the FDA set standards and check for compliance.
  - rilezg 4y ago
    My mistake. The press release is actually from the USDA, and this is the only mention of the FDA: >USDA has been working closely with FDA to ensure program participants and stakeholders have the information they need to keep infants safe I apologize for any confusion.

cafard 4y ago

"This whole scheme, done under the guise of welfare, is essentially a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the poor, done by enriching the baby formula cartel." I'm not sure how transferring wealth from the middle class to the poor would be "under the guise of welfare" rather than "welfare". No, enriching the cartel is not good.

Sebguer 4y ago
Did the linked article change? You seem to be quoting: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formula-nightmare?s=r https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formu... which is not the article here, nor linked in the article as far as I can tell.
- cafard 4y ago
  You're right, I am quoting Stoller. His article, though, is linked to in the comments. I should have commented on that comment, not at the top level.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ananonymoususer 4y ago

Another example of "we don't know that it's okay, so you can't have it." This flawed logic has been used in various forms to create twisted reasoning for plenty of stupid laws. E.g. We don't know that you're not going to use the cold medicine to make meth, so you can't have it." The presumption of innocence is dead.

margalabargala 4y ago
There are excellent reasons to generally forbid the import of certain critical items such as infant formula- as a matter of national security, for example. It's important that this industry exist domestically. However, in extraordinary cases such as we are in right now, the appropriate thing to do would of course be to import formula from other countries to make up for the shortage. Seems to me that this is the sort of thing that should have already been approved by the FDA, and controlled purely via import restrictions/tariffs, so that more can be quickly imported if needed.
- landemva 4y ago
  >>> as a matter of national security If this was a national security issue, someone from NIH and FDA and welfare departments would be having public service announcements extolling the virtues of breast feeding.
  - gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
    Mostly like the Biden administration will start doing this in the next two weeks. It will quietly sweep under the run the problem and say it's the population that's not following the science.

greenthrow 4y ago

Oh look a Reason article where "government is bad." What a shock. Baby formula needs to be closely regulated (see: history around baby formula.) Poor people need to be able to care for their babies (see: babies dying is bad.) Seems like things went awry here, but the policies in place are all worthwhile in my view. (Limiting the import of baby formula from other countries falls under the need to closely regulate baby formula.) If anything this is evidence that something so important to human life shouldn't have any for profit organizations involved because those companies can choose to risk not having adequate supply if the upside of that risk is greater profit.

systemvoltage 4y ago
> Oh look a Reason article where "government is bad." What a shock. Let’s leave ad-hominem attacks on the publication out of this, shall we? I think we need more journalism that questions government and its efficiency. Not less. It’s doing rather a disservice to excellent points you’ve brought up.
- badlogic 4y ago
  Pointing out media bias is just as important as pointing out inefficiencies in government.
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    Meta: We never like to point out media bias of NYT, but have a bias for pointing out how biased anyone else is. NYT gets a free pass. Can you imagine a comment that starts with something like this: “Oh look a NYT article where government is good." What a shock. —- But I digress. I agree, we should point out bias, but shouldn’t reduce the entire article to “What a shock”. Otherwise, we’d throw away every newspaper since they’re all biased. Right?
    - diordiderot 4y ago
      But NYT reports on how gov is bad sometimes

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

swayvil 4y ago

Looks like we're gonna have to buy it from a foreign manufacturer that happens to be owned by the legislators behind the regulations that caused the shortage. If it's too expensive the fed will supply funds, no doubt.

fallingfrog 4y ago

Sometimes efficiency and just-in-time production come at the cost of decreased robustness. A maximally optimized system has no slack.

ck2 4y ago

What a ridiculous title and "article". Imagine what the hell is going on with the rest of the food, drug and completely unregulated vitamin/mineral/supplement industry if this is what happens with baby food > The company recalled several lots of the formula brands Similac, Alimentum, and EleCare in February following complaints that infants contracted cronobacter sakazakii, an environmental bacteria. All four babies used formula produced at the company's Sturgis, Michigan facility. > cronobacter sakazakii bacteria was found in a number of areas in the facility, and other safety protocols, such as employees wearing gloves, were not observed So right, the government regulation is the "bad guy" just like making people wear masks in a pandemic is the "bad guy"

perryizgr8 4y ago

Remember folks: anything important enough to be regulated is also important enough not to be.

gandalfff 4y ago

So I'm a bit out of the loop here. Are infants going hungry because of the formula shortage?

strgcmc 4y ago
Some infants, probably. On a widespread general basis, probably not (yet?). Switching between different formulas for normal/healthy babies can be done (if a preferred brand is out of stock but something else is available), but it's not trivial. Switching to a different formula for a baby with special dietary needs, special allergies, etc., can range from "difficult" to "impossible." For those parents, this is an acute crisis, and "going hungry" doesn't begin to describe the potential impact; stunted development in the newborn phase, has long-term knock-on effects. Newborns are very different from adults (or even just, older children); adults can skip a few days worth of meals or ration their calorie intake for weeks, without much adverse long-term impact... newborns cannot do this. A semi-related source about what kinds of scenarios parents are facing: https://www.nytimes.com/article/formula-shortage-help.html https://www.nytimes.com/article/formula-shortage-help.html

whack 4y ago

> The proximate cause was a recall of formula produced by Abbott, but that was only the triggering event. In a well-functioning market, any temporary shortage caused by the removal of one company's product from the market would be addressed relatively quickly. Why hasn't that happened here? My understanding is that the above has already and is indeed happening. Infant formula is still readily available - what's unavailable is infant formula from specific brands. For parents who are willing to switch to other brands, formula does exist. Is this not the case?

refurb 4y ago

Wait, if you actually read the recall notice... "Importantly, no distributed product has tested positive for the presence of either of these bacteria, and we continue to test. Abbott conducts extensive quality checks on each completed batch of infant formula, including microbiological analysis prior to release." So if I read that correctly, despite there being reports of contamination of formula, none of it can be exclusively linked to the actual product and the bacteria in question are commonly found in the household environment? So there is a chance that there is zero problem with the formula?

Proven 4y ago

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noelherrick 4y ago

This is an article by a Koch supported organization. They are very blatant they want to remove all regulation and are behind climate misinformation. The real reason we have a problem is that Abbott was not maintaining their factory all the while doing stock buybacks. The reason we have an FDA is because before that babies would get milk with worms in it and die. There is no free market solution to a dead baby. You can’t just say “whoops, I guess I will buy a different brand next baby.”

deepsquirrelnet 4y ago
I’m in agreement with you. Let’s not ignore that it was also negligence that caused this. Read the whistleblower’s accounts of all the blatant health and quality violations in the factory that had been going on for years. It’s no surprise that they eventually killed babies. “Regulation bad” is a pretty hard take when it’s clear that they were evading the regulations that could have prevented this in the first place. https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2022/04/former-employee-blows-whistle-on-baby-formula-production-plant-tied-to-outbreak/ https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2022/04/former-employee-blows...

lyrachord 4y ago

ngcc_hk 4y ago

Some discussion (given this is IT site) use IT as analogy, but many IT world cannot be easily applied. Regulation is needed. In fact the triangle of regulation, competition vs facilitation-participation-governance has to be balanced. Here, I wonder given we are IT site let us learn from one history not gov regulation but military mandate that help - the alternative provider concept that leads to AMD survival along side of intel. (Sadly no Boeing alternative now which it should to avoid the 1 monopoly vs 1 regulator killing the other trianlge). That means e.g. there must be at least one competitor per state instead of one per state for critical sector. (Let one may add for critical sector be American 50+% and controlled by chinese, Russia, india, eu or Brazil etc. or at least buffer for say anti-biotic enough for local produce to replace any issue, like oil reserve). You know in our field, AMD survived because of this mandate and we have innovative idea. One of the issue of monopoly is not they are poison which they might be, but they do not know alternative. Organisation compete also but once settle down they do one way. And then the regulator was captured. And the facilitator, the participants (stakeholders) and the governance all gone bad. You just do not know any alternatives. Can 80x86 do 64 bit, say? No, we need another architecture. Microsoft, HP … all followed intel leads to nowhere for a decade. Windows NT has those you know. Even here alternative is there but no need. (And it comes ultimately as ARM… another story.) History now, and for novice you always wonder have i selected right - amd64. No, I use intel cpu … should I choose the non-amd option. No you should not. It is AMD told us that the x86 can have 64 bit. And the rest is history. But if we have only intel. We still are trying to switch. With a very hot cpu in 14 nm … Key is not regulation vs competition vs gov oversight/public stakeholder participation/ facilitation and helping hand. It is all. In many industry you cannot really allow free competition (everyone can be a doctor), but also undesirable to have no competition (single provider - which can be ok if there are alternatives abd competition to provide option ). Sidetrack but important, in one of discussion, Gov need to help, but not play 2 incompatible role the facilitator AND the regulator at the same time (usda vs fda as mentioned in sone post; or the Boeing incident of delegation of flight safety by Boeing as the regulator … does not really know as they are not from a different background, the so called capture). China example is the worst. They have too much competition and they break the system by ganging it. And then the regulator, media, … all forced to cover it up. The “infrastructure” for this is hard (like current Wuhan virus handling and vaccine innovation/certification etc). But the triangular relation is a must. And must be balanced.