The Food and Drug Administration has reached an agreement with Abbott Laboratories to resume production at the company’s Sturgis, Michigan, facility. The announcement gives hope of relief for the three-fourths of American parents who rely on infant formula, and have struggled to find the product in recent weeks.
But the incidents leading up to the shortage have raised serious doubts about America’s food regulators. To avoid the next crisis, policymakers should take bold steps now to make food safety a priority within FDA, or more ideally, apart from it.
The Sturgis plant closure, following Abbott’s Feb. 17 voluntary recall, represents the proximate cause of the infant formula shortage. Sturgis is the company’s main production facility, and Abbott is one of just four companies — along with Mead Johnson, Nestle and Perrigo Nutritionals — that provides virtually all the formula sold in the United States.
