WASHINGTON — “We can always do more to ensure food safety,” a Food and Drug Administration official told lawmakers at a hearing on last year’s infant formula shortage. The agency is trying to figure out how to prevent something like this from happening again.
“I never thought formula, you wouldn’t be able to find the food that your baby needs,” one parent told us.
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She’s one of many who struggled as infant formula recalls and supply chain issues left store shelves bare. Parents said they were just trying to do what they could at the time.
Now, Congress is trying to figure out what went wrong by questioning FDA officials.
One Republican-led subcommittee called its hearing “Responsibility for the Infant Formula Shortage.” The chairwoman said it’s important to have accountability and consequences.
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“Last year, the trust was broken, and families lost precious children as a result,” Rep. Lisa McCain, R-Michigan, said. “Those lives can never be replaced, and we owe it to those families to demand answers and I think that’s what we’re doing.”
Both parties agree there’s plenty of blame to go around. The Democratic ranking member said she’s hoping to shift the focus.
“We need to use these hearings to identify what are worthy proposals, worthy innovations, and then we need to transform them into legislation,” Rep. Katie Porter, D-California said. “If we don’t do that, we’re failing to solve the future problems.”
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Dr. Susan Mayne leads the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. She went over some of the changes.
“We need industry to comply with our requirements and to adopt enhanced food safety measures,” Mayne said. “We have worked diligently to increase the supply of formula on the U.S. market… …FDA and industry should be able to address product contamination in or near real-time… …We are also actively hiring for specialized infant formula inspection staff.”
So far, this year, we’ve already seen two infant formula recalls.
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