Why baby formula recipes are often old recipes in the USA

The ongoing baby formula crisis partially explained on NPR

Once again, I have been listening to NPR in the car so you don't have to. I caught part of an interview by NPR's Elissa Nadworny, speaking with Ron Belldegrun, CEO of ByHeart, a manufacturer of baby formula, "about his meeting with President Biden" to discuss the nationwide shortage and how to fix it. (Actually, it seems to have been a call with several manufacturers.)

You can listen or read the transcript at the link.

A couple of comments to start with: I have never heard of ByHeart baby formula. And people say "yeah" and "you know" a lot in NPR interviews.

This CEO also used a word that I had never heard before. "Incent". So I looked it up on Webster's online:

Incent:

transitive verb: incentivize

First Known Use of incent

1981, in the meaning defined above

It's interesting that now the government (or some other undefined entity) now needs to "incent' manufacturers instead of just getting out of their way.

I also find it remarkable that the President was the person chosen to speak in a conference call to this CEO and others about how to fix this baby formula shortage. But there were a few interesting things in this short, very informal interview:

NADWORNY:

President Biden said he didn't know about the baby formula shortage until April, but industry executives have said they anticipated that this would be a dire shortage back in February, when there was the voluntary recall of baby formula from a major manufacturer, Abbott. What was your reaction to the president's remarks?

BELLDEGRUN:

Look, I won't speak directly for, you know, the president or, you know, the administration specifically, but this was a surprise to a lot of people and a lot of parents. One of the biggest misconceptions of this space is that you would actually think there's a lot of choice. And any stakeholder would think that there's dozens of companies that are supporting this most important foundational food. But the reality is 90% of that shelf is from three brands that have dominated for decades. And every single new entrant in the last few decades has taken the same path, and that is to outsource to the one and only contract manufacturer in the country, utilize an expedited kind of generic path to market, which only really allows for incremental change based on old recipes and does not contribute new clinical research or new manufacturing because it's sort of all outsourced. So it's a much more fragile supply chain than I think a lot of people thought.

So current regulations and regulatory practices inhibit innovation and new investment. Perfect. Compare to pharmaceutical innovation and manufacture. Anything that triggers a new FDA product application is extremely expensive.

Remember that the current special incentives and protections for vaccine manufacturers came as a result of a crisis, too. Companies were exiting the market due to lawsuits. So vaccine manufacturers had to be "incented".

BELLDEGRUN:

. . . You know, this is sole-source nutrition for babies. . . . And so it's appropriately the most highly regulated food in the world, right? This is the only food that requires clinical studies, you know, FDA registration. We talked also about, you know, the supply chain bottleneck is a huge deterrent to new entrants - right? - because, you know, as I shared our own experience, you're sitting at a point in time and saying, hey, either I go and I effectively outsource to the one and only contract manufacturer, but then I need to rely on, you know, old recipes and old clinical research. And I can't - you know, it's sort of very restrictive to innovation.

Or you need to go out and acquire manufacturing facilities and, you know, do all internal R and D and run major clinical trials. So the barriers to entry in this category are enormous. And so for this to really be - you know, for the U.S. to really never again find ourselves in this situation, we need to incent more companies to do the work that we have done. And that was to forgo the outsource route and instead invest in manufacturing and clinical research. And that's important not just for shoring up a supply chain but also for advancing this really critical nutrition.

Okay. What would it take to do that without relying on special favors from government?

Fifth flight of baby formula from Europe

Operation Fly Formula

How humiliating is this? Operation Fly Formula????

The U.S. government is relying on Nestle's distribution channels to get formula out to the nation. Wonder if they had to incent the corporation to do this.

Are they doing all this on purpose?

If Biden Intended To Destroy America, What Would He Be Doing Differently?

Deliberate and intentional. Two words you can expect Republicans to utter a lot more as they make the case that what ails America now isn't an accident. It's Joe Biden's design."

That's how Just the News' John Solomon characterizes the shift in tone among Republicans in the runup to the midterm elections this fall. The leftist media is sure to attack this sort of language as crazy and dangerous QAnon conspiracy talk.

But ask yourself, what would Biden be doing differently if his goal was to purposely send the country into a tailspin?

He set off a 40-decade-high inflation spiral with his $2 trillion "rescue" plan. He exacerbated supply-chain problems by paying people not to work. He threw open the borders to millions of illegal immigrants. He needlessly kept COVID mandates and restrictions in place. He worsened shortages of baby formula and spiking gasoline prices. He encouraged foreign adversaries with his disastrous Afghanistan retreat.

In every instance, Biden has said he and his top officials were "caught off guard." In other words, his is pleading incompetence. The public has picked up on this, which is why most Americans now believe that "incompetent" is the word that best describes this president.

But incompetence doesn't do Biden justice. In every case, Biden knew, or should have known, what would happen if he pushed his policies. Yet he did so anyway. . .

What do you think?

Get set for the weekend

Prepare for the gardening and pet threads, with some news anchors of the recent past. No gardening in high heels.

Music

Judy Garland would have been 100 years old yesterday. I guess that means she was a contemporary of Betty White. I don't think of them together, somehow. Commentary on some of her top vocal performances in film.

The number nine pick above, For Me and My Gal

And their top pick, Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Almost cut from the film.

Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

Last week's Thread, June 4, California Update. Gas prices, Transgender homeless housing, infighting over Pride Month in San Fran, David Nunes and the Sussman Trial, The Train to Nowhere, Bees that are fish, ending mandatory reporting of students who threaten schools, campus trespassing is OK on private campuses, no property taxes for counties from solar fields, stripping doctors of medical licenses for wrong-speech, Johnny Cash and The Beach Boys.

Comments are closed so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.

posted by K.T. at 11:15 AM

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