You cannot turn off something as complex as our commerce system, and then just switch it back on again, without some really bad unexpected consequences. Since attempting to restart from our pandemic shutdowns we’ve suffered one supply chain issue after another. We’ve had shortages of toilet paper, sanitizers, rice, microchips, and even dog food. Now it’s a crisis. We have a shortage of baby formula.
Last week we reached a 43 percent out-of-stock rate nationwide. Up to 50 percent of baby formula brands are sold out in 26 states. Some stores are even rationing purchases.
As with other supply chain shortages, raw materials are in short supply. Choked transportation is preventing timely delivery of the raw materials. Factories that produce baby formula are suffering from labor shortages – because we’ve been paying people to stay home, and encouraging businesses to terminate them if they don’t get the vaccine.
These are all the same problems our supply chain has been suffering from for two years. That it has now affected a critical food item, and become a crisis, should surprise nobody.
But our government couldn’t resist making the problem worse. In January of this year, four babies became ill with cronobacter sakazakii. It’s a nasty bacterium and two of the babies died from it. In February, the FDA responded by shutting down the Abbott Nutrition baby formula factory in Sturgis, Michigan, and recalling huge quantities of its product. It’s one of the biggest baby formula factories in the world, and its closure pushed the national supply of formula into the critical zone.
While cronobacter sakazakii was found in a non-production area of the Abbott factory, none was found in the production area, or in any of the baby formula which the factory had produced. Further, the bacteria that the babies fell ill to, is a different genetic strain than that found in the factory. The DNA proves that the babies didn’t get the infection from Abbott formula. The FDA ordered recall and factory shutdown was a gigantic and costly mistake. Yet it is now mid-May, the shortage has reached crisis level, and the factory remains closed – waiting for FDA approval to reopen.
What steps could be taken to resolve the crisis? We could expedite the inspections and fast track the approval to reopen the Abbott plant. But that would require someone telling a bureaucrat to quit playing God and hurry it up. Try telling the person behind the counter at the DMV to hurry it up sometime and see how that works for you.
We could import formula from overseas. That would require the FDA to provide approval of those sources, which to date it has refused to do.
We could expedite the transportation of raw materials for formula. But that would require Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to work on trucking and railroad issues rather than his mileage tax pet project. Maybe he’ll realize this is actually a crisis after he takes Bette Midler’s advice and tries to breast feed.
We could even convert factories that make powdered milk and protein drinks to the production of baby formula. But that would require cutting the government red tape that always gets in the way of such innovations. We can’t have that.
Given the state of our bureaucracy, are any of these actions even possible? Yes, and the proof is in the fact that we’ve done it all in recent history.
When the COVID pandemic hit, President Trump cut red tape and mobilized private industry to solve our problems.
We were faced with a shortage of medical ventilators. When the government quit throwing hurdles in their way, companies converted factories for the production of ventilators. We even had auto manufacturers making ventilators out of car parts. Problem solved. We ended up with a surplus of ventilators.
We had a shortage of sanitizers. Breweries and distilleries all over the country converted to the production of sanitizers. Within weeks, every business we walked into had a giant bottle of hand sanitizer with an amateurish looking label on it. It probably didn’t have the perfumed scent, but it had enough alcohol to kill pathogens and it worked just fine. And it was all because some government bureaucrat wasn’t telling the distilleries they couldn’t do it.
We even developed and produced millions of doses of not one, but three vaccines in under a year. Everybody said it couldn’t be done. Joe Biden still claims it wasn’t done – he has forgotten that he got his vaccine a month before taking office. But it was done. Donald Trump knew it was possible. We just had to unleash private industry and get out of their way. That was the Donald’s approach to a crisis.
What is Biden’s approach? When asked who is in charge of the government’s response, Karine Jean-Pierre, our new Press Secretary, said she didn’t know. That’s because nobody is in charge – apparently not even the president. To them, this isn’t a starving babies problem. This is a messaging problem.
They’re treating this crisis as a public relations campaign, because all problems Democrats face are messaging problems. COVID is still raging because we simply don’t understand how awesome our government’s response has been. Inflation is at a 40-year high because the genius of Biden’s economic policy is simply beyond our comprehension. Those babies aren’t really hungry, they just don’t understand the benefits of equity as we move into a socialist utopia.
Jen Psaki announced that the FDA is talking to the formula companies and tracking supply trends. I feel better already.
But there are a few things the Biden administration is not talking about. They’re not talking about cutting regulations or red tape. They’re not expediting approvals of overseas formula. They’re not even expediting the approval to reopen the Abbott plant (it has been closed for 4 months and counting now).
What the administration is doing is searching for somebody to blame. Because for them the crisis isn’t starving babies, it’s the impact this is having on President Gremlin’s approval rating.
While managing our Hurricane Katrina response, General Honoré informed the press that it was stupid and counterproductive to play the blame game in the middle of a crisis. There would be time for that once the crisis had passed. On her last day in office, Jen Psaki blamed Abbott for the whole baby formula mess – because the Biden administration is “stuck on stupid.”
Have Americans come to a realization that elections have consequences yet? This is the level of suffering that we must endure for trading a rough around the edges problem solver for an empty suit with a nice smile.
Who knew that a return to normal meant a return to a government that is incapable of responding to the needs of Americans? Return to normal is a world in which red tape and regulations are more important than results. Normal is a government that is incapable of mobilizing private industry to solve problems, because it is inhabited by people who see government as the solution to every problem.
Author Bio: John Green is a political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He currently writes at the American Free News Network and The Blue State Conservative. He can be followed on Facebook or reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
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Well said John, and your last paragraph is key. We are now saddled with a federal leviathan that has more negative impacts on the lives of it’s citizens than positive ones, and the ratio isn’t even close. The worst part is that the highest ranking politician in the government is hell bent on making things worse and is encouraged and abetted by most of the media and the dem party.
I never knew so many people, including those traveling on mules, could hate Trump so much. When the election was decided, for better or worse, I knew we were in for this. I think everyone who has a functioning brain knew it.
As for the baby formula shortage, whatever the federal government does, they will just ship more to the border, because the left doesn’t give a damn about some baby, when they would just as soon kill the baby after they are born, not just pre-birth.
Ask a lefty. Lately, they have been telling it all. They love death, pain and misery.