A South Carolina mother shared a viral post about desperate parents breaking down at a local Walmart when they were faced with empty shelves of baby formula.
Sara Owens, of Florence County, said she was hunting for baby formula for his six-month-old daughter, Namoi, amid a nationwide shortage when she encountered a dad break into tears after driving from store to store looking for his daughter’s brand of formula.
‘As tears continued to stream down his face he said ‘I never thought I would be crying because I can’t find what my child has to have,” Owens wote in the Facebook post that’s been shared more than 180,000 times. ‘My heart broke to 100 pieces on the formula aisle in Walmart.’
She told Fox News on Friday that the situation has not gotten any better since the encounter with the dad three weeks ago as Murray Kessler, the CEO of formula giant Perrigo, warned that the shortage would last all year.
‘My experience with the formula shortage has become a daily concern instead of a weekly concern,’ Owens told Fox. ‘I’ve had to begin searching almost every day [out of] fear I would miss a store restocking. It’s gone from concern to fear.’
Sara Owens, of Florence County, South Carolina, said she was searching for baby formula for her six-month-old daughter, Naomi, (above, pictured together) when she encountered a dad break down at her local Walmart because he couldn’t find his daughter’s formula brand
Owens recounted the heartbreaking event in a viral Facebook post, with the mother now opening donation sites to help those in need of formula amid the nationwide shortage
Owens said she continues to see bare shelves at her local stores and across the nation. Pictured, an empty baby formula shelf at a store in Virginia on Friday
Owens added that family members in other states have shared pics with her about experiencing the same empty shelves she did at the Walmart on April 25.
‘I have struggled along with other parents to find formulas for my child but to see someone crying & says they don’t know what they will do is absolutely heart breaking & shouldn’t happen in America,’ Ownes wrote in the viral post.
She told WMBF that trips to the store now involve her splurging on the baby formula she can find due to the uncertainty of when the shelves will be restocked.
‘I buy two big cans every week and that’s between $40 and $50 dollars for the week, and so when you can’t find it for the next week it’s like what do you do?’
Since then, Owens has helped open baby formula donation sites in Florence in order to help distribute formula to desperate parents who can’t find it anywhere.
The frenzy over formula comes as Perrigo, one of the four companies that control 90 percent of the U.S. market for baby formula, warned that the shortages nationwide could last until the end of the year.
Kessler said his company’s factories in Ohio and Vermont are running at 115 percent capacity, to compensate for Chicago-based Abbott’s shutdown – but added that supplies would remain erratic for the remainder of 2022.
‘We have stepped up and are killing ourselves to do everything we can,’ Kessler said.
At the request of the FDA, Perrigo is focusing on four items: the store-brand versions of Similac Pro Sensitive and Pro Advance, and Enfamil Gentle Ease and Infant, Kessler said.
The closure of Abbott’s infant-formula plant in Sturgis, Michigan, exacerbated national pandemic-related shortages, leading to empty shelves in big box stores and supermarkets and panicked parents.
Abbott’s brands include Similac formulas.
Perrigo is working with retailers including Walmart and Target Corp so they ‘get something each week,’ Kessler said.
Retailers’ allocations are based on an average of what the retailers received prior to ‘this crisis,’ he said.
Meanwhile President Biden has sparked fury after claiming that the issue could be sorted within weeks – the same as what the FDA has previously said – without offering further unique detail on how he plans to tackle the issue.
He was also accused of being glib after telling reporters Friday that he’d have needed psychic powers to predict the crisis, despite alarm bells sounding as far back as summer 2021.
The nationwide ‘out of stock’ level has been consistently above 10 percent since August, and in January this year The Wall Street Journal warned of an impending problem.
Brian Deese, Director of the National Economic Council, said on Friday morning that the White House had been urging states to take action to combat the issue in February – after the shortage was exacerbated by a February 17 recall of some products produced by Abbott Laboratories, and a shutdown of one of their plants.
‘We actually gave states the guidance on using flexibility the day after this recall happened in February,’ he told CNN‘s Kaitlin Collins.
Yet Biden on Friday insisted no one could have predicted the crisis, which has seen desperate parents go from store to store, trying to find the urgently-needed formula.
The president was hosting an event about community policing when he was asked about the baby formula situation. He said he would only answer questions on policing, before somewhat reluctantly addressing the crisis at hand.
Asked if his administration should have acted sooner, Biden replied: ‘If we’d been better mind readers, I guess we could have.’
The statement was immediately jumped on by critics who slammed the president for failing to prepare for the shortage despite ample warning time.
‘America doesn’t need a mind-reader as president. It needs a Wall Street Journal reader,’ said one.
‘Per Jim Geraghty, the Journal had a story about the formula shortage back on … January 12.’
Another noted: ‘people have been talking about a looming shortage for months.’
Another added: ‘@POTUS I’m not a mind reader, I listen to people talking about Baby Formula & look at store shelves, I could see the problem weeks ago.
‘As could everyone else, nothing to do with price gouging like you’ve said before, nothing to do with hording. Common Sense is all it takes.’
Biden said on Friday he expects more formula on shelves in weeks.
French food and beverage company Danone, which also makes infant formulas, said the ‘unexpected Abbott Nutrition recall in February has led to a surge in demand in the U.S. market.
‘We are in discussions with the U.S. authorities to see how we can support them in addressing their shortages.’
Abbott closed its manufacturing facility in Michigan after complaints of bacterial contamination.
The FDA later cited five bacterial infections reported in babies given the company’s formula, including two deaths.
This chart shows how quickly the nationwide crisis has escalated. The scale of the crisis is revealed in the new analysis, which shows that only 43 percent of the usual national supply of baby formula is available
Many took to Twitter to criticize Joe Biden’s claim that there were no warning signs of the formula shortage and that it would only last a couple of weeks
Abbott has said its plants are ‘not likely the source of infection’ and is able to reopen the facility in the next two weeks.
It will then take six to eight weeks for the products to hit the shelves, meaning a delay of at least 10 weeks even if reopened tomorrow.
‘Subject to FDA approval, we could restart the site within two weeks,’ the company said.
‘We would begin production of EleCare, Alimentum and metabolic formulas first and then begin production of Similac and other formulas.
‘We deeply regret the situation and since the recall, we’ve been working to increase supply at our other FDA-registered facilities, including bringing in Similac from our site in Cootehill, Ireland, by air and producing more liquid Similac and Alimentum.
‘We also began releasing metabolic formulas that were on hold earlier this month at FDA’s request to those who need these unique formulas.’
The FDA has not set a date for reopening, and told DailyMail.com they were still monitoring the plant.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said there was no timeline.
‘So our message to parents is we want to do everything we can, and we’re going to cut every element of red tape to help address this,’ she said.
Empty shelves are pictured in a Brooklyn store on Friday, as the nationwide shortage continues