WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden will hold a virtual meeting on Wednesday with manufacturers of infant formula amid a nationwide shortage of the product, the White House said on Tuesday.
Biden and the manufacturers will discuss “his administration’s progress to accelerate infant formula production and imports of formula through Operation Fly Formula,” it said.
The Biden administration has come under pressure to address the baby formula shortage, which has roots in a February recall of some formulas by one of the nation’s main manufacturers, Abbott Laboratories.
Global companies that make baby formula are bringing products into the United States after the country’s health regulator relaxed its import policy to address a nationwide shortage. Biden also invoked the Defense Production Act to help increase the national supply.
Many U.S. parents rely on baby formula. Fewer than half of babies born in the United States were exclusively breast-fed through their first three months, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2020 Breastfeeding Report Card.
(Reporting by Eric Beech and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by David Gregorio)
