White House Roundtable with Infant Formula Manufacturers
Virtual Event
As Prepared for Delivery
Mr. President, thank you for convening today’s roundtable. At your direction, we are working tirelessly to get infant formula into the hands of parents across the country in need.
As a mom named Alexa from Leesburg, Virginia recently told my staff, her sons — a one-and-a-half year-old and a six-month-old — rely on specialty formula, because of a pre-existing condition.
As we told Alexa, getting more infant formula – particularly specialty formula -- on shelves quickly and safely is a priority for us.
And it’s a commitment that we think about day in and out, as we work to safely speed up efforts to meet the needs of families like Alexa’s who are in need.
As a father of three daughters, I know there is nothing my wife and I wouldn’t have done so that our daughters had everything they needed to be healthy growing up. And when they were young, the essentials boiled down to two things: sleep and milk.
So many families rely on baby formula, and every parent should be able to rest at night knowing that the main source of nourishment for their child is in reach.
Families like Alexa’s have to have it, and at the Department of Health and Human Services we are committed to doing everything we can to accelerate the production of baby formula to get it into the hands of parents and caregivers.
Mr. President, thanks to your leadership, we have partnered with federal colleagues to support Operation Fly Formula to bring formula in from other countries, swiftly and safely.
The FDA is working with Abbott to get its facility to reopen safely, and it is working around the clock to quickly and safely bolster the supply of products so that the industry can get them to people in urgent need, with a focus on specialty formula.
Under a consent decree with the FDA, Abbott agreed to take corrective actions following an FDA inspection of its Sturgis, Michigan facility – actions that are expected to ultimately result in an increase of safe infant formula.
And I have invoked the Defense Production Act three times to accelerate delivery of raw materials needed to manufacture infant formula for American families.
But that’s not all.
At HHS we have also launched a new online hub — HHS dot gov slash formula — to help parents and caregivers navigate their baby formula options.
At HHS dot gov slash formula, parents and caregivers can connect to community resources, such as community centers or an accredited food bank.
They can connect to preliminary recommendations from physicians and clinicians and can check if the brand of formula they rely on was affected by Abbott’s recall.
We invite feedback and plan to update this page further in the coming days.
And all of this information can be found in multiple languages.
In addition, we are engaging governors across the country so that they, too, have the latest information on how to help families in their states navigate need.
And we are working closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children — WIC — to ensure WIC families can access new supplies of baby formula as they become available.
We are not going to let up. We will keep working to ensure that families across this country have access to infant formula.
But let me also add: we are not manufacturers.
We need infant formula manufacturers and the industry as a whole to keep stepping up and working with us.
Only together can we solve this challenge and get families the formula they need.
President Biden, thank you for holding today’s roundtable and for leading on this critical issue.