Silver State Times

As the U.S. struggles with a shortage of baby formula following a sudden plant shutdown of baby-formula production giant Abbott Nutrition in February, a Florida lawmaker has proof that the Biden administration is supplying undocumented immigrants at the southern border with the baby formula they need.

U.S. Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) said this is an example of President Joe Biden's "America last agenda." 

Meanwhile Nevada's store shelves in major cities such as Las Vegas are nearly bare where there should be infant formula.

"Here’s what the shelves look like in the baby formula aisle of a Las Vegas Target," Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Adam Laxalt tweeted. "This is a full blown crisis for Nevada families and @CortezMasto hasn’t done one thing to address it."

After receiving news from a border patrol agent that the southern border has a baby formula stockpile for illegal migrants, Cammack made a trip to the border to see for herself, a recent Fox Business report said. Her trip confirmed there are "multiple stocked warehouses that have been not only filled with baby formula, diapers, wipes and clothing, but they have been doing this for months and there's more en route," the report said.

Cammack first notified the public about the border patrol report in a Facebook Live post on May 11.

“They are sending pallets, pallets of baby formula to the border,” the congresswoman said in the video as she held a photo of empty shelves where formula would be, a recent Washington Examiner report said. “Meanwhile, in our own district at home, we cannot find baby formula. It is not the children’s fault at all. But what is infuriating to me is that this is another example of the America last agenda that the Biden administration continues to perpetuate.”  

The formula shortage stems from an incident on Feb. 17 when Abbott Nutrition voluntarily recalled its Sturgis-manufactured products and shut down the plant following reports that four infants became ill from bacterial infection and two died after consuming formula produced in the Michigan manufacturing plant, a recent Fortune report said. A whistleblower report submitted to the FDA in October 2021 alleged further health and safety compliance issues at the facility and led to a formal inspection by the agency in early 2022.

While numerous factors have contributed to shortfalls in the amount of formula on store shelves, the FDA's dragging their feet is one of the most crucial ones, a report from the Observer said this week. The agency's slow reaction to whistleblower reports of tainted formula back in October of last year is being blamed, because it wasn't until January 2022 that the FDA started an investigation into food safety practices at the facility in Sturgis, Mich. — three months after the initial reports. Then, it was not until Feb. 17 that the agency warned consumers about certain powdered infant formula products from the Sturgis plant, and that Abbott closed the facility while initiating a recall.

It will be weeks before production and distribution are back to normal, a recent Washington Post report said. Former FDA Associate Commissioner Peter Pitts noted that the situation illustrates “a serious problem across the FDA portfolio, where there are a limited number of manufacturers. Making baby formula is a sophisticated, expensive proposition, so consolidation is going to happen. The downside is when one of those facilities goes offline.”

On May 11, Cammack posted two comparison photos on her Twitter account, one she received from a border patrol agent showing the full stockpiled shelves at the southern border and the other of a bare local grocery store shelf that should contain baby formula.       

The baby formula shortage is elevated in the Las Vegas area.

“We always have to go to multiple stores or try to find it online just to be able to have at least a week or two’s worth at home,” Bryan Garofalo, a Las Vegas father of a 5-month-old son, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.