A plane from Germany with more than 31 tons of cans of baby milk powder destined for the American market hit by a major shortage landed in the United States on Sunday morning, according to images from American television channels.
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President Joe Biden had recently announced on Twitter that a plane “loaded with more than 70,000 pounds (more than 31 tons, editor’s note) of infant formula (…) is about to land in Indiana”.
“A flight took off overnight from Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany full of baby formula and will land in Indiana Sunday morning,” White House economic adviser Brian Deese told the CNN channel.
On board 132 pallets of Nestlé baby food.
Other shipments of milk powder “will arrive” on other flights earlier in the week, he added.
The United States has been suffering from a baby milk shortage for several months, caused by supply and labor problems related to Covid-19 and then exacerbated by the February closure of a Michigan-based manufacturer Abbott factory following a product recall suspected death caused by two babies.
“We had a manufacturer that didn’t play by the rules and made formulas that had a risk of babies getting sick,” lamented Brian Deese.
Abbott CEO Robert Ford apologized in The Washington Post columns Saturday for the shortage affecting thousands of American families for whom finding milk for their baby has become a real obstacle course.
But beyond that, asks Joe Biden’s chief economic adviser, “how did we end up with a market that’s 90% controlled by three companies?”
He insisted on the need to think about how to “bring more competition into the American economy, to have more baby milk suppliers so that no one company has that kind of control over the production chains. And we’ll have to work on that.”
Asked about the likelihood of a recession in the United States in the coming months, Brian Deese contented himself with stressing that “there are always risks” but wanted to reassure on the health of the American economy.
“There is no doubt that the difficulties are great,” he admitted, referring in particular to inflation, which slowed somewhat to 8.3% in April after hitting 5% on March 8, its all-time high 40 years.