A military plane carrying enough special infant formula for more than half a million bottles arrived in Indianapolis on Sunday, the first of several flights expected from Europe aimed at alleviating a shortage that has left parents struggling to find enough to eat. feed their children.
President Joe Biden authorized the use of Air Force aircraft for the effort, dubbed Operation “Fly Formula”because there were no commercial flights available.
The formula weighed 78,000 pounds (35,380 kilograms), White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One as Biden flew from South Korea to Japan.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was in Indianapolis to greet the arrival of the first shipment.
The flights are intended to provide “some gradual relief over the next few days” as the administration works on a longer-lasting response to the shortage, Brian Deese, director of the White House National Economic Council, said on Sunday.
Deese told “State of the Union” from CNN that Sunday’s flight brought in 15% of the specialty medical-grade formula needed in the US, and due to various government actions, people should see “more formula in stores starting this week.”
In the long term, he said, the US needs more formula suppliers “so that no single company has as much control over supply chains.”
Later Sunday, the White House announced the first two Defense Production Act authorizations for infant formula, both coming from the Department of Health and Human Services.
The manufacturer Abbott Nutrition it can now take priority orders for raw materials such as sugar and corn syrup for infant formula, which the White House says will allow the manufacturer to rapidly increase production by a third. Reckitt, which owns Mead-Johnson, can now take priority orders for consumables such as filters and other single-use products needed to generate certain oils needed to make infant formula, the White House said, allowing the Reckitt facility to operate at its maximum capacity.
The Biden administration has struggled to address formula shortages across the country, particularly hypoallergenic varieties. The crisis follows the closure of the nation’s largest domestic manufacturing plant in Michigan in February due to security concerns.
The White House has said that 132 formula lollipops Nestlé Health Science Alfamino Infant y Alfamino Junior they would leave the Ramstein air base in Germany for the USA. Another 114 lollipops of formula were expected Gerber Good Start Extensive HA They will arrive in the next few days. In all, about 1.5 million 8-ounce bottles of the three formulas, which are hypoallergenic for children with allergies to cow’s milk protein, are expected to arrive this week.
Indianapolis was chosen because it is a distribution center for Nestlé. The formula will be unloaded onto FedEx semi-trailers and taken to a Nestlé distribution center a mile away, where the company will conduct a standard quality control check before distributing the supplies to hospitals, pharmacies and doctors’ offices, according to a report. administration official on site.
[Con información de The Associated Press]
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