Baby Formula Supply Remains Vulnerable

The nation’s supply of infant formula still suffers from supply and safety issues about one year after the country went through a widespread shortage, a former Food and Drug Administration official told legislators this week.

Frank Yiannas, the FDA’s former deputy commissioner for food policy, testified during a hearing for the House Oversight Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services that “it is my view that the state of the infant formula industry today is not much different than it was then.”

Yiannas left the agency earlier this year after helping to lead its response to the shortage.

“In other words, the nation remains one outbreak, tornado, flood or cyberattack away from finding itself in a similar place to that of February 17, 2022,” he said on Tuesday.

He went on to say that while the FDA blamed its delayed response to contamination at a major formula plant on “mail issues,” officials at the agency had previously received electronic and physical copies of a whistleblower complaint warning about the issue. Yiannas said that the agency’s decentralized offices weren’t quick enough about relaying that information.

“I wish that the communications silos had not existed and that I would have been notified earlier, so I could have initiated these steps sooner,” he said. “I also believe that had we been able to initiate these steps and act sooner, the recall may have been smaller in size.”

Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., who chairs the subcommittee, said that the FDA is “just as guilty” as Abbott Nutrition, who produced multiple baby formulas whose recall helped spark the shortage.

“What has been shared by the witnesses today has been extremely remarkable. The FDA needs to be held accountable for its lack of transparency to the Congress and the American people,” McClain continued. “I hope we can make the necessary changes for the American people, especially with parents out there with newborn babies.”