Will Frivolous Lawsuits Create Another Baby Formula Shortage?

Remember the 2022 baby formula shortages? Welp, buckle up for round two.

It might be a distant memory for many, but families who had infants in the summer of 2022 will never forget it. 

Desperate mothers looking for baby formula drove from store to store only to be met with completely bare shelves. Some even tried to create their own formula with risky home recipes. I personally weaned my baby early because our brand was suddenly impossible to find.

The shortages resulted from the “voluntary recall of contaminated products and shutdown of manufacturing facility in February led to increases in the national out-of-stock rate of the baby formula from 18 to 70% over the summer of 2022.”

The Biden/Harris administration’s malfeasance was inexcusable. Their needless delay in reopening facilities cleared to resume safely manufacturing formula caused a public health crisis that took months to correct.

So what makes me think we’re heading for another baby formula shortage?

In the U.S., only two companies are permitted to manufacture specialized formulas that meet the very specific needs of premature newborn babies. According to the Wall Street Journal, “These formulas are administered by doctors in the neonatal intensive care units because breast milk alone often doesn’t contain sufficient nutrients to sustain infants with low birth weights.”

And these companies are currently under relentless attack.

Plaintiff attorneys have filed hundreds of lawsuits against Abbott Laboratories and Reckitt Benckiser, claiming their fortifying products increase the risk of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) and should come with a warning label.

But these companies cannot add any such label to their products, because the science doesn’t support the claims made in these lawsuits.

Nevertheless, juries are often very sympathetic to parents who have lost children. So these lawsuits—driven by people with no medical knowledge exploiting vulnerable, grieving families in pursuit of money—are coming in droves.

And that would be bad enough—if not for what could come next.

These life-sustaining products could be pulled from the market if immediate action isn’t taken to stop these frivolous lawsuits.

And as we saw in 2022, it only took ONE formula manufacturer shutdown to cause catastrophic ripple effects throughout the whole system.

Every life is sacred. Every baby deserves the best care possible.

That includes access to these life-saving products.