Lovely Comments on the Baby Formula Shortage in NPR Article

May 23, 2022

NPR

Mary E. Lovely

Economics Department

Government

United States

NPR

Mary E. Lovely

The shutdown of the Abbott manufacturing plant, caused by suspected contamination, has led to an infant formula shortage in the U.S. It also highlights how concentrated the industry is, with just four companies controlling about 90% of the market. Typically, the U.S. buys almost no infant formula from other countries due to steep tariffs and regulatory barriers.

"It's clear that the U.S. has basically closed off its market to imports," says Professor Mary Lovely. "There's really no reason we should be blocking perfectly nutritional formula coming out of high-quality, sanitary plants in the European Union," Lovely says. "There is no reason why we can't be importing baby formula from Canadian plants, which could very easily be inspected by FDA."

Read more in the NPR article, "How the U.S. got into this baby formula mess."