Generally speaking, infants are fed formula only during their first year. So at any given time, the number of infants of "formula age" equals the total number of babies born in the previous twelve months. Here's what that looks like:
The number of live births had been trending downward for years and then dropped more sharply at the beginning of the pandemic. As a result, during the first half of 2021 the number of infants aged 0-12 months plateaued at a record low of 3.57 million.
But in the second half of 2021, that number increased sharply to 3.66 million, an increase of 90,000, and has probably increased another 50,000 since then. According to the CDC, approximately half of these babies are fed formula rather than being breastfed.
This prompts a bit of speculation: Lots of US corporations seem to have decided in 2020 to cut back on production but then never made plans for the pandemic to end and demand to go back up. In the case of infant formula companies, that mistaken inclination would have been reinforced by the fact that the US birth rate had been steadily declining for years even before the pandemic.
The middle of 2021 is about when the infant formula crisis began. Why? Manufacturers blithely wave off questions by blaming it on labor shortages, supply chain issues, packaging problems, and instability caused by the Ukraine war. These are the standard excuses offered by every company suffering from shortages and nobody ever questions them. After all, everyone knows about the pandemic labor shortages and the supply chain issues and all that. So it sounds plausible.
And maybe it is. But another possibility is that infant formula manufacturers made the same mistake so many other companies did: they cut back production and assumed demand would never return. This might have remained a modest mistake causing only a few temporary shortages here and there while production was eventually ramped back up, but then in February the Abbott recall turned a modest mistake into a catastrophe. I wonder if this is what really happened?
Like I said, this issue is of little interest. If you don't know what a recall is, Tyr help you. Most of this is lazy women not wanting to breast feed. How sad. You only really need to do it 8 months.
Have you ever tried breastfeeding? Most mothers (84%!) do, and it's really hard! If your baby won't latch or there are other issues, it's not "lazy" to supplement or replace breast milk with formula.
Do not feed the troll.
Neither bottle nor breast?
On come on. Suck the tittie, pump the tittie. Women have done it since the beginning of time.
This is women whining because it effects their lifestyle. Probably wanted to get drunk that night.
Of course, that doesn't help the kids who are on specialized diets - the infant formula is made from the same basic stuff (and same factory) we feed to people of all ages who have nutrition problems.
It doesn't help those unable to nurse, kids without mothers - almost 60 die per 100,000 births in Louisiana, for instance...
Do not feed the troll. It gives no shits about anything related to humanity.
Given the formula shortage with no end in sight, ob/gyns should be advising all their expectant patients (men as well as women, because that's how we do it now) on the advantages and mechanics of breast feeding. If this shortage doesn't encourage more people (men and women both, of course) to give it a try post-partum, I don't know what will.
As a recent new father, I can attest that there is already an *enormous* amount of information and pressure on new mothers to try breastfeeding. 84% of women at least try breastfeeding (https://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/data/nis_data/results.html) though there's dropoff over time.
A lot of women are physically unable to breastfeed. And even for those that can, producing enough milk can be difficult. And if you have to go to work, I mean at some point you just have to be realistic. Expectant parents are scolded enough by society to achieve some kind of breast feeding perfection. Formula is a perfectly reasonable option for nearly everyone in normal circumstances.
my wife works is a l&d nurse at a local hospital. when she started working there a few years back, she was trained on how to train her patients on breastfeeding. it's a major emphasis there.
They do. When I was postpartum in 2013 almost every single person who walked into my room said they were trained as a lactation consultant and offered to help. The problem isn't education. It's that women don't get enough paid leave to establish and stick to breastfeeding. Even with 3 months leave, you need to introduce bottles to your kid so other people can feed them when you are at work. And pumping just doesn't produce enough for a lot of women/babies.
Women who switch to formula or need to supplement are mostly making rational decisions based on the constraints they face.
Initially, the pandemic triggered a run on formula, which also meant a drop off in sales as people used up their stocks later on during the pandemic.
Now, if treated like most consumer goods, slow ramp up as demand comes back means more pricing power. Some of that could also be attributable to caution amidst fluctuating demand. Either way, everything was hanging by a thread.
Kevin, I understand a desire to try to blame lack of corporate foresight, but this is a situation where there is no such thing as a sudden increase in demand. I’m sure there is more than sufficient data on how many women were/are pregnant to have a good idea of demand three months out if not six.
Your previous post on this topic sounds like a case of FUBAB. Fucked Up Because A Bureaucracy.
No. Fucked up for recall, that really didn't need to happen. Lazy posts like this crack me up.
This issue is a coastal issue. In Ohio nobody cares or even see it.
Ohio? Where there's one of their major factories?
https://www.fiercepharma.com/supply-chain/abbott-opens-third-nutrition-plant-year
Do not feed the troll. It is an asshole that only wants to shit all over everything.
I understand a desire to try to blame lack of corporate foresight, but this is a situation where there is no such thing as a sudden increase in demand.
Which is exactly why it might plausibly be blamed on lack of corporate foresight, no?
Neither of Kevin's post has mentioned that Abbot has essentially a monopoly in many areas in the US:
https://prospect.org/economy/the-age-of-rationing/
Monopoly or oligopoly is the usual result of "free markets" that aren't disrupted by new discoveries. There is no law of nature that says that markets reach a state of equilibrium with perfect competition - actually the bigger companies just keep getting bigger and swallow up the others. Anti-trust regulation is very weak or has been captured by industries in the US, so we now have oligopolies in many areas.
So when the main or only supplier has a problem of any kind, there is a shortage.
And, as standard procedure, the big guys gobble up the companies that have made "big discoveries" or technological changes, to either co-opt or more frequently, actually KILL the improved product. Patent law really helps!
Without a strong referee, the "free market" rapidly devolves into monopoly or oligopoly. Like they say, "Freedom ain't free."
Kevin: I think you hit it 100%. When the talking heads talk about supply and demand It's not because demand is up, it's because manufactures aren't ramping supply up when they can just raise prices. That's what my employer has done. We went into the pandemic severely under-staffed and the first thing they did was institute a hiring freeze. We're doing about 90% of our pre-pandemic levels but our margins are up 25%. We're "trying" to hire people but we haven't increased our starting wage.
Agreed. It's a pretty plausible explanation. I just wish someone in top level MSM had an ounce of Kevin's bullshit monitor and numeracy.
The MSM is probably raking in, too, both in increased "eyeballs" and adverising revenue. Being part of the problem can be lucrative! And investigative reporting is just another cost, not a revenue stream.
This probably understates the drop-off and comeback. Formula use, of course, is correlated with women going to work and leaving the kids at daycare. WFH would of course have allowed many women to breastfeed longer than they would have prior to the pandemic. We also know of course that employment generally has been rocketing back over the last year which would further increase demand.
Part of the NAFTA -> USMCA changes during the Trump admin were restrictions on importing formula from Canada, in an effort to protect our domestic industry. Right now, being able to import from Canada would be a big help.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-made-the-baby-formula-shortage-biden-administration-abbott-tariffs-nestle-11652480538?mod=opinion_major_pos1
This.
Nope
Those changes were irrelevant. It's been that way for decades. Those word changes were also supported by the Obama Administration who basically wrote USMCA.
Importing from Canada was not happening with NAFTA it wasn't happening now.
Remember that Canada only has one-ninth of the US population. Ample baby formula for Canada is simply not enough to make any large difference in US supplies. I would suggest that imports from Western Europe, which has a considerably larger population than the US, would make better sense.
Seems wrong. The fact that Canada is a lot smaller than the United States doesn't mean its exports couldn't make a substantive difference in key sectors. We see this all the time in US-Canada trade disputes. The classic analog would be be milk. Also, for some commodities, distance (and not being separated by an ocean) make a difference.
To reiterate, the US created a baby formula oligopoly by tacking on 17.5% - 35% tariffs onto imported baby formula. One can even pinpoint to the event that accelerated this: Trump's USMCA trade deal.
WE DID THIS TO OURSELVES.
We can undo it, too. Biden can issue an emergency declaration and lift those tariffs for 6 months, flooding the US with product from Canada.
Or nah, you love Trump tariffs?
Nope. That was already written before Trump. When are you going to get it??
A nostril rip and was eye ball being gouged out would serve you well.
Outside big big cities, this is irrelevant. I went down to Columbus. Up to Detroit. Nothing??? What shortage???
Sounds like a lie.
As usual, corporate heads are very focused on the short term no matter what they say. Once demand dropped off they immediately cut costs and production, without really thinking about how long it would take to ramp back up when/if demand returned. Sure, they could have asked some production expert in the company, but probably he sat silently at meetings where the big cheeses bragged endlessly about how profits were up, up, up despite low demand! No company wants to ramp up supply and costs until after the demand has showed itself, and that takes time. The pandemic exaggerated this problem when demand for a lot of stuff fell off a cliff.