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The Biden administration knew there would be a shortage of baby formula as early as February.
The Daily Caller reported that Brian Deese, the director of the National Ecnomic Council, told CNN’s “New Day” that the administration is working around the clock to “tackle the issue from every angle possible.”
Deese noted that the administration is trying to give retailers “more flexibility on the types of formulas that they can sell,” but he did not give an estimate of how long the administration anticipates the formula shortage to last.
Deese urged families to contact their healthcare providers if they are in need of immediate assistance.
The host of “New Day,” Kaitlan Collins, asked Deese how he would respond to Republicans who are critical of the administration for not acting fast enough to solve the shortage, to which Deese said that the Biden administration has been addressing the issue “from the get-go.”
He said, “The administration has been on this from the get-go. A lot of this emanated from a plant in Michigan that was producing formula that didn’t meet safety standards.”
When Collins asked Deese when the Biden administration first became aware of the shortage, Deese said that the administration became aware of the impending shortage “when the FDA had to take its action back in February.”
He said, “As a parent, and with friends and colleagues, we were aware that people were starting to have trouble in stores, but we were aware of this from when the FDA had to take its action back in February, with Abbott and with the steps in the Michigan facility. And we have had a team on this from the FDA and in the interagency process since then.”
Collins responded by asking whether the FDA moved fast enough on the issue, she inquired, “So I’m wondering if the sense inside the White House is that the FDA moved quickly enough on this issue?”
On this, Deese said, “Well, those are independent scientific judgments that I will leave to the FDA. What I can tell you is that they took action to put in place that recall, and we have been working closely on this issue, in the wake of that recall, to try to address the impending impacts of that.”
On Thursday, Kat Cammack, a Republican Congresswoman from Florida, lambasted the federal government for sending “pallets” of baby formula to an illegal immigrant detention center in Texas while American families are unable to find the product on shelves.
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