On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said that the Biden administration “acted immediately” to address the formula shortage and that to give retailers and consumers the needed flexibility to sell and purchase formula that’s available, “we’ve got to waive a bunch of regulations that traditionally make sense, but don’t make sense in this crisis.”
Deese stated, “We acted immediately, and here’s what happened, which is, in mid-February…that Abbott facility was closed. Immediately after that, the FDA began working with the other producers — as you say, there [are] too few producers in this market, we’re going to have to address that over the long term — but began working with them to ramp up their production. That got us to the point where, as of last week, the other producers in the United States had gotten their production up 50%, 30%, to…record levels. That’s where the Defense Production Act comes in. Because sustaining that production at those record levels means that these producers need to have access to all of the supplies that they need, not only the inputs to make formula, but also the bottles, the different packaging, and we want them to be able to run at that very high level without having any impeded access to supply. So, that’s where the Defense Production Act comes in.”
He added, “But there’s another piece of this, too, which is our retailers. When those products get to market, our retailers need to have the flexibility to actually sell and our consumers to buy whatever type of product that they have, and to do so safely. So, we’ve got to waive a bunch of regulations that traditionally make sense, but don’t make sense in this crisis. And we also have to make sure that people are not going in, buying up, out of the retailers, large amounts of formula and then selling them for exorbitant prices online.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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