INDIANAPOLIS – Since February, Amanda Foster-Moudy has had a harder time finding formula for her 8-month-old baby, Leo.
She joins online groups where moms share tips and photos on where to source their babies’ precious nutrition and share leftovers. Sometimes, she says, her husband, Dave Moudy, spends two to three hours driving around different stores, just to find empty shelves.
“He’s my runner,” she said. “If he can’t find it, he goes elsewhere. Then another place, then another place.”
On Sunday, the Moudys and little Leo watched with amusement as a C-17 military plane with a belly full of European-made formula landed at Indianapolis International Airport – its first shipment. to the United States as part of President Joe Biden’s recently announced Campaign. Fly Formula Initiative.
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Importing formula milk from Europe U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said at the airport it usually takes about two weeks under normal commercial processes when a shipment is unloaded and packed onto a FedEx truck for delivery to a Nestlé distribution plant just a few miles away. mile.
But last week, Biden announced a special protocol to expedite the process to alleviate the shortfall.
“The reason we’re doing this is obviously the critical need,” says Vilsack. “We’ll get to this here in a few days, and the issue of the day means a lot to worried parents.”
The C-17 that landed Sunday in Indianapolis contained 132 cartons of Nestlé formula specially designed for babies and toddlers with cow’s milk allergies. That amounts to about 78,000 pounds — enough to feed 9,000 babies and 18,000 toddlers for a week.
The formula was made at Nestlé’s Zurich factory and shipped to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where a crew member who had just completed an aid shipment to Ukraine made it to the US.
Formula can be beneficial for babies like 7-month-old Ensley Gendig, who are allergic to milk and soy, making finding the right formula a challenge for parents Megan and Steven.
Ensley had a mix of breast milk and formula, but keeping formula on hand wasn’t easy for her parents. Both members of the Bargersville couple traveled around central Indiana looking for work and searching for regional recipes.
“This means so much not only to our little one but to so many other people who are genuinely interested in this to help provide meals for their children,” says Megan Gendig. .
Nestlé officials say some cases will be ready for distribution in the next few days. The rest are still waiting for the results of a standard quality test carried out in Switzerland. They will be distributed once the results are available.
Another shipment of 112 pallets of various other baby formulas from Europe is expected to arrive in the Washington, DC area, in the coming days, Vilsack said. The Indianapolis shipment will go to hospitals and health clinics around the country.
The formula, available on Sunday, will help some of those hardest hit by formula shortages, said Dr Emily Webber, pediatrician and director of medical information at Riley Children’s Hospital. .
Vilsack says about 70,000 children in the US are allergic to cow’s milk.
“Depending on the specific formulations and for kids who need these formulas at peak intensity, there aren’t any substitutes,” says Webber. “There aren’t any shortcuts.”
Brian Deese, Director of the National Economic Council, told CNN Sunday that the formula from Europe should provide “some incremental relief in the coming days.”
More help is available, he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“We’ll continue to work on it throughout the week,” he said.
When asked how it was that a first-world country would run out of baby formula, Deese pointed to the closure of manufacturer Abbott’s factory and questioned why there weren’t many. more competitive in the market.
“It goes back to the question of how can we bring more competition into our economy, having more suppliers of this formula so that no individual company can have it,” he said. more control over the supply chain”.
How the Formula Crisis Began
The crisis began in February, when an Abbott factory in Sturgis, Michigan, closed after four babies drank formula made there that was contaminated with bacteria. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration and Abbott reached an agreement to reopen the plant.
Abbott Nutrition officials said that it can take up to two weeks to open a factory and then another six to eight weeks before products hit the shelves.
To help Abbott ramp up production, Biden last week launched the Defense Production Act, which would prioritize the factory’s supply of necessary supplies, including recipe ingredients, box lids and paper to make Labeling.
In addition, the government is discussing getting more formula from other countries such as Australia, Vilsack said. Although the United States imports a small amount of infant formula from Mexico, the Netherlands, and Ireland, typically about 98% of products consumed here are produced here.
“Definitely within the next 30 days we will start to see this remission,” says Vilsack. “Over the next few weeks, we will see an increasing supply.”
Contributing: Merdie Nzanga
Contact IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at shari.rudavsky@indystar.com. Follow her on Facebook and more Twitter: @srudavsky.
