The New Yorker:

At a House committee hearing this week, the F.D.A. and Abbott passed the buck. With parents scrambling to feed their children, who’s responsible for the shortages?

By Jessica Winter

For enthusiasts of C-span and institutional accountability, a small casualty of the pandemic era has been the adversarial drama of a good congressional committee hearing. There is catharsis, even Schadenfreude, to be found in hours-long interrogations of malfeasant government officials or corporate executives embroiled in scandal, but the glitchy, covid-safe versions of such events transform the oak-panelled reckonings beneath vaulted ceilings into just another Zoom meeting. This disconnect was evident on Wednesday, when the House Committee on Energy and Commerce convened a hearing on the communication breakdowns, lack of foresight, and gross negligence that contributed to the ongoing baby-formula shortage across the United States. The frantic parents and hungry babies afflicted by the crisis—which has dragged on for months, and which will continue for weeks, at least—are the rare constituency that can inspire bipartisan outrage in Congress. But it’s hard to project righteous indignation from your living room or, in the case of one committee member, what looked like the front seat of a car.

The time line of the catastrophe beggars belief. Abbott Nutrition, a subdivision of the multinational health conglomerate Abbott Laboratories, controlled at least forty per cent of the baby-formula market in the U.S., and it makes about forty per cent of that formula at a single facility in Sturgis, Michigan. On September 20, 2021, the Food and Drug Administration was made aware of a baby who had contracted a bacterial infection, caused by Cronobacter sakazakii, after consuming formula made at the Sturgis plant. Coincidentally, that same day, as Politico’s Helena Bottemiller Evich later reported, F.D.A. inspectors were conducting a routine check of the facility. They registered no major safety issues, although they did recommend “voluntary action” to address cleanliness and sanitation. Then, in October, a former employee at the Sturgis plant sent a shocking whistle-blower report to senior officials at the F.D.A. 

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