It's not surprising that Reason points to trade restrictions which makes sense because importing food from Europe should not be an issue, but on the other hand, why does the government, federal or local not have a stockpile of well... the stuff you feed infant children with?
Same situation as the masks again. Yes, free trade alleviates these issues but only if you're not in global bottleneck which seem to be increasingly common with supply chain and production issues. This is food security, and countries should have the industrial capacity and backup to not end up with empty shelves.
> free trade alleviates these issues but only if you're not in global bottleneck
Which we are not with regard to infant formula; as the article notes, there's plenty in Europe that meets standards at least as stringent as US standards, the FDA just won't let US customers buy it because of stupid labeling requirements.
Also, your implication that in a global bottleneck, free trade doesn't work as well as other solutions, is not correct. Free trade has the least severe failure modes in global bottlenecks, precisely because there are no artificial impediments that get in the way of producers adjusting to market conditions according to straightforward economic incentives.
> the FDA just won't let US customers buy it because of stupid labeling requirements.
The labelling requirements don't strike me as that stupid; the Reason article links [1] with the text "formula available in Europe tends to meet or exceed the FDA's nutritional requirements, but not the labeling requirements", but it actually provides some good reasons:
"It was found that European formulas do not meet all FDA label requirements, including many not being in English, which may lead to the incorrect mixing of formula [mixing tends to be different for European formula]. The average listed nutrient levels of all but one of the identified imported European formulas fell within the minimum nutrient level requirements of the FDA. As the nutrient levels on the labels of European formula represents an average and not a minimal level, it is difficult to compare the actual contents with US formulas. In addition, it is important to note that hypoallergenic is defined differently in Europe than in the United States. Therefore, partially hydrolyzed European formulas may be labeled as ‘‘hypoallergenic’’ or HA, which is not appropriate for infants with CMPA and may lead to improper treatment of an infant with CMPA."
Expiry dates as being in EU formats (i.e. for the US' weird m/d/y thing) was also mentioned, as well as using US measurements rather than metric (whether the US date style and imperial units are a good idea is besides the point here: fact is it's what people use).
There were also some other much more minor issues, but these don't seem entirely unreasonable or "stupid" to me, especially the requirement that labelling should be in English, but also the different definition of hypoallergenic.
These problems are fairly minor and can be fixed without too much effort though.
I don’t believe labeling requirements are preventing anyone from exporting to the US. Printing a new label and slapping on top of the existing one isn’t something that would hold anyone back from exporting.
Labeling requirements are common practice everywhere. And the solution is for exporters to print a new label that conforms to the requirements and place it on the product.
As I understand it it's not so much the labelling requirements per se, but rather that the FDA needs to approve the formula, including the label, and that takes times. For example the FDA probably wants to test that the nutritional content on the label matches what's actually in the product, or that it's not adulterated. This is fairly reasonable under normal circumstances IMO.
Some other requirements (like not having enough linoleic acid or iron) are perhaps more problematic than just the labels, and allowing formula which doesn't quite meet the requirements is a kind of unfair competition (that they happen to be imported from the EU is not really important as such).
It likely isn't the FDA's choice, there are a lot of statutory requirements under 21 USC 350a that requires inspections, audits and specific quality control measures that can't be set aside via CFR with an emergency rule making process. Changing these would require Congress to act, but bilateral food regulations on something as sensitive as baby formula is not a topic that lends itself to quick resolution.
Is that actually true? I would expect formula to be the kind of thing that has a very consistent demand profile, and there wouldn't be a lot of surge capacity in the European manufacturing plants.
IDK why are you getting downvoted. This is precisely how things are often done in Europe. On a continent with fortysomething major languages, you cannot possibly fit all descriptions in all languages onto the preprinted packaging. If I go to a Bulgarian store in Prague, all the ajvars, jogurts and kjufteta will simply have a Czech instruction label slapped on them.
The lack of a stockpile is due to limited shelf stability and long-term bacterial growth.
It's unfortunate Reason doesn't expand on the other side of this issue: the formula industry lobbied the FDA to reduce bacterial testing frequency (and inspections overall), with an emphasis on Cronobacter risks, arguing that the FDA "overestimat[ed] the expected annual incidence of Cronobacter infection". [1]
It seems that the regulatory system is broken and I don't know how to fix it other than to remove the barriers of entry to this industry.
Four manufacturers, consisting of 89% of the nations supply, have so much influence over a regulatory agency insofar that they can write their own rules. Four manufacturers are able to shape the competitive landscape because the government has deemed their voices vital.
> why does the government, federal or local not have a stockpile of well
Because the real issue is that we have no diversity of supply.
1) We have allowed everything to become monopolized such that losing a single supplier knocks out large chunks of supply. At this point, it is quite clear that for economic robustness, any company found to control more than 25% of the market for any product should be repeatedly broken in two until that is no longer true. But that would require robust anti-trust enforcement.
2) The suppliers are Always-Late(tm) Inventory optimized such that they can't absorb a significant uptick in demand without a long wind up time. Covid comprehensively demonstrated that industrial producers no longer have the ability to "retool". By removing as many humans from production and replacing them with automation, the productions lines have traded any flexibility for maximum profit.
In 1, what's the product that you're considering the market share of? An iphone 13 mini? All iPhones? All smartphones? Or any phone? Or any portable computing device?
A Macbook? Or a laptop? Or a computer? Or a computing device (to include laptops, desktops, tablets, and smartphones)?
The point is that you don't need a stockpile if you have supply diversity.
If you have two suppliers, one going down clobbers half of the market and the other company has to ramp up 100% to take over. That's simply not feasible.
If you have five suppliers and one goes down, the remaining four companies only have to increase 20% each to take over the load. That's not easy, but it's actually in the realm of being possible.
There are lots of crucial goods, right? I don't see how the government could stockpile all of them. And infant formula is only good for a couple years, right? So it would have to be an ongoing project to keep it good. n95s eventually degrade, but I believe they've got a much longer shelf-life.
Also, masks become unusually important when there's an epidemic, so we wouldn't expect the economy to have capacity to deal with that. We should expect that in a well balanced economy, the supply of baby formula should basically match the demand. It seems to me that instead of government stockpiles (since they can't stockpile everything and don't know what will be needed) it would make more sense to monitor the market more closely and keep tabs on inventory... and, actually, it is pretty surprising that they didn't catch this before it became an issue.
Stockpile to a point and then regularly auction off things that are nearing end of life (or, in the case of baby formula that is heavily provided by state programs, just give it to the states to distribute).
We have national oil reserves. Having reserves of other essential assets seems fine to me, especially in the case where there are few substitute goods.
Why is that necessary when it appears there is sufficient global supply and regulations are causing it to be unavailable to the US market? The issue isn't a shortage of production, as far as I can tell. And even if there were, a stockpile only absorbs a temporary shortage. A strong industry with many producers is what the government should desire, I imagine.
I'm not a national defense expert, but it seems to make sense to ensure your country can get access to essential goods. One possible solution would be stockpiling them. Another would be maintaining the capacity either in the state or the private sector to acquire or manufacture them rapidly. It feels like hindsight 20/20 to say "why didn't the government have a stockpile of [thing we had a shortage of]".
It appears to me the policy here led to essentially a single point of failure or low optionality for the market to get the product. Not clear stockpiling is the answer to that problem.
In our current political climate, people would attack this during the good times as wasteful and not a good use of money. I agree with you, but we have a party in this country that doesn't think good governance is a virtue.
I was actually thinking of something like that as well. If nothing else, the cast-offs from a stockpiling program could be a nice social welfare program.
It’s also funny that the thread talking about how this problem results from one monopolistic factory/company is so much further down the front page compared to the one blaming government regulation
The classic, "if you're prepared and it doesn't happen, it looks wasteful" reason. Or even if it doesn't happen, because you were prepared and released the stockpile, folks don't realize that's the reason. So prep for some politician to cut it.
Although, if it's more of a buffer in the supply chain instead of a strategic reserve, the waste doesn't have to be that great.
Which takes us right back to JIT vs JIC.
Perhaps sensible regulation on just how lean manufacturing may be in critical industries. (It's a race to the bottom, so re-define the bottom & let the market re-optimize)
One fun thought: for identified industries, each production line maintains X days of inventory of any foreign dependencies. The implications are interesting to ponder.
Agree it's a good thing. Purely from an incentive perspective though, there's a perverse incentive to let your opponents take the blame for things that you did, and take the credit for things that they did.
Why not just go back before the FDA existed, in other words? Because it's generally frowned up when people mix things like plaster of paris, "bluish, white compound of true milk, pus and dirty water" and sell it as milk.
It seems to me like it could be prescription (though first a real health system would be needed) if there is a shortage. I mean I think the last one is 80% of the market and putting the other 20% of infants at risk.
Not all formula is the same, and since there isn't a prescription needed, the only thing holding back new entrants is either (a) the market is too small to be worth starting up a new company, or (b) the regulatory hurdles (as a food item, etc) make starting up a new company cost prohibitive compared to what they could make selling it.
Shortages of baby formula is pretty rare here in the states, and building a business is a costly time consuming endeavor- you won't be able to spin one up just to make money during the shortage (testing, inspections, FDA approval for the labels, etc). That leaves other companies who are already running food businesses to possibly expand into it, but getting FDA approvals still takes time and a lot of money, so you need a longer term game plan for keeping it going.
A doctor writing a prescription for it doesn't help you get any if there's not any available in significant quantities- it's not a one and done thing, it is literally all the baby can eat until they've grown enough to be weaned off.
> A doctor writing a prescription for it doesn't help you get any if there's not any available in significant quantities- it's not a one and done thing, it is literally all the baby can eat until they've grown enough to be weaned off.
If it is available in any quantity then needing a prescription keeps it from being used for infants that don't need it. (Market naturally drops but I don't think risking the health of many infants who don't need formula to keep it cheap is a great ethical move anyway.)
There are infinitely refillable prescriptions and nutritional prescriptions, they have an advantage that they can be billed to health insurance which is fairer if an expensive diet is a medical need.
The overall effects of losing the local market, importing for infants that need it and having insurance pay much higher costs may well pay for itself if we could measure the future health consequences of unnecessary formula use.. but the rule of do no harm means we shouldn't try to feed kids formula without a medical need.
> If it is available in any quantity then needing a prescription keeps it from being used for infants that don't need it.
Ah, I didn't realize you meant waving a fiat wand so that everyone had to get a prescription for it.
If that were the case, then I imagine we could do the same with bottled water, gluten free grains, alcohol, vitamin supplements, coffee, CBD, and more, and solve so many problems!
Alas, the FDA has certain authority over drugs, and certain authority over food. It does not have the same authority over both, and infant formula is a food, not a drug.
Baby formula is not really food, babies can't eat food and feeding your infant food would be abuse likely to kill them. Full nutritional replacements that need to be made in a safer environment than a kitchen to replace mother's milk is closer to penicillin than cheeseburger. But there are better categories, the FDA does recognize nutritional supplements and there are prescription health supplements.
Wet nurses exist. Period. I know of more than one woman who donates breast milk. They both have continued to pump as their kids grow to give back to the community.
Wet nurses are extremely expensive, they also introduce a variety of challenges in modern times as you must trust a stranger to carefully and correctly preserve the milk, not dilute it with anything, and be in good health without any complicating factors.
When all is said and done, milk can be purchased peer to peer at roughly 4x the cost of infant formula or between 1 and 2 dollars per oz. Purchasing through a service with some notional guarantees on the above concerns increases the cost to 5 dollars per oz. A 3-6 month old can consume 40+ oz per day.
Exclusively breastfeeding is very challenging to do while working, for one. Even at my megacorp with a dedicated space, a hospital grade pump, and 2 hrs a day dedicated only to that, it was a substantial hit to supply. Considering that most women don't have those amenities and support I'm not surprised they don't breastfeed exclusively after their mat leave (for most women in the US, 6 weeks unpaid)
Not to mention - it can be painful (if I had no option of course I would endure pain for my child, but there is no shame in looking for something less painful) or the baby can not learn to latch (formerly known as "failure to thrive" and a driver of infant mortality)
I've recently become a father and I do wonder how much US maternity leave (or rather, lack thereof) accounts for your high formula usage.
While my wife is coping, it's still very draining to handle a newborn and pump at regular intervals, even at 10 weeks. If she was in the US and had been forced to go back to work already, she may well have given up on breast milk already.
Nursing is nearly a full time job. When I was doing it with a six month old via pumping, I tracked my hours spent one week and came up with 30 hours. With another baby, I was nursing in the evenings when home from work, and it was literally 3-4 hours a night. Every night. And often almost a full hour in the morning before work. It varies from baby to baby, but it's a brutal time commitment.
Also, when you're nursing full time, you can't leave the baby. Ever. Getting a haircut requires significant planning because if the baby gets hungry, it is your problem and yours alone. If you want to go shopping or see a movie or just leave the dang house for any reason at all, if you want to do any activity that occupies you for a length of time and is hard to interrupt, you need a baby plan. And for a period of months, when in love with a newborn, this seems totally fine and totally worth it. But somewhere on the road to a year? Being able to hand a baby to someone to watch for an hour or two and go do things is amazing.
Don't get me wrong, nursing is a wonderful experience and very important for the health of mother and baby. But the value diminishes over time. With a preemie, it is downright lifesaving. With a newborn it has proven lifelong benefits. But somewhere around the time they're eating cheerios and licking the floor and snacking on apple juice, and you have other things to do, you ask yourself if it's really worth what it costs. At least, I did.
Where you come down on the value of breastfeeding vs formula really depends a lot on your life circumstances and the relative priorities you place on mothering via milk, and mothering via other activities. When and where you leave off is very personal. Some women want to nurse toddlers, and I support that. Some women want to use formula from day one, and I'm not crazy about that, but life is varied and sometimes circumstances dictate and when they do, I'm glad we have the option. In particular, I think this is really common after a C-section, which makes sense -- mom is recovering from surgery and breastfeeding can involve resting a baby on a recovering wound! I'd certainly never second guess someone who thought it more important to have the energy to be emotionallypresent with the baby, even if that meant feeding baby a different food than they'd wish for in a perfect world. Milk has its benefits, but having an emotionally healthy mom counts for a lot, too. Probably more. And it's a long journey. Trying too hard to do everything perfect can result in mental health issues for mom, which isn't good for anyone, baby included.
Some women transition early, and I support that, some do late, and I support that, too. All parents try to do right by their children, and for some that looks like laborious custom homemade food and for some that looks like neighborhoods and education and opportunities. I do think we'd be better off as a society if it were more practical to nurse for the first year--I think a lot of women would choose it if it were easier. But that involves understanding it like the full time commitment it is. Can I put a year of "full time mom" on my resume? Three times? Can I take a year off of work? Is spending a year nursing seen as a normal and honorable career choice? That's essentially the ask. Whether the gap is made up by state or society or family or whatever, the world would have to look pretty different for me to find it a practical option to make such a commitment to nursing that formula was entirely unnecessary. For some people it's that important. Some would like to, but it's too hard. Some people aren't cut out to be full time moms. And sometimes even full time moms think it's better to use their energy for other things.
> "Also, when you're nursing full time, you can't leave the baby. Ever."
outside of the first few weeks (not months), a healthy baby can wait an hour or two to nurse. you certainly don't want to constantly deny feeding for hours on end, but a couple hours is well within the environment in which we've evolved over the past many millenia. our bodies are amazingly adaptive and tolerant, even as infants. mothers, nursing or not, shouldn't feel any guilt for not dedicating every single waking second to infants (after the first few weeks). that said, i fully support multiple months of paid parental leave (socially supported rather than employer supported) for both parents to adjust to the new human in their lives.
Yeah, I suppose I'm overstating it. It would be better to say that when you're full time nursing, going and doing things requires planning and support.
When I was directly breastfeeding exclusively, stepping outside the house for an hour felt crazy and scary. You're right that it got easier as the baby got older, and I knew the baby wouldn't die, but I wanted to be there for him!! Who wants to leave a kid hungry when they need you? So from a practical perspective, I rarely did anything.
When I was pumping, I worried about supply and timing and what I'd left behind and if I'd make it back in time to sufficiently support everyone's biology. It was doable but I was always planning around it. Better, and now hours on end became practical, but the hassle still made it hard to want to go out. You're always worrying, if you miss your pumping appointment, if that means ultimately baby won't get enough. I mean, you know that's not true, but you worry. The practical effect for me is that something fun and easy that doesn't fit perfectly in the schedule -- like seeing a movie -- just doesn't seem worth the stress. So you never see movies.
But man, the sheer freedom of being able to tell grandma "Here's the baby, here's a box of unlimited food" and not think about it. Man. If you want to know why people make that call, I'm sure that's a factor. That's really what I mean.
yah, the need to always be planning is definitely a drag, and it dampening the deisre to step away is completely understandable. it totally makes sense to me that parents often choose the hybrid approach (of supplementing with formula) because of this.
Check the female workforce statistics. We decided as a culture it was more important for women to be working than “wasting time” raising and caring for their children.
This development has occured in most of the world, including some rather conservative societies like Japan and Iran. The sad truth is that modern economies need a lot of educated workers.
Infant formula makers market their goods aggressively to new mothers. The formula makers fully understand that once a child is on formula, a mother will soon stop being able to create her own milk and the baby will have to use formula from then on.
Not every new parent fully understands this, especially in places that don’t have a lot of marketing dollars spent influencing people at one if the most vulnerable times of their life.
This can, and does, lead to situations where the mother’s milk dries up “early” and then formula isn’t available and the baby dies.
It's also incredibly common for mothers not to have sufficient supply regardless of formula use. This results in a negative spiral where the baby won't be fed enough, and the mother isn't able to sleep, resulting in even less supply. Formula allows the mother to sleep, and the baby to be properly fed, even when they mother wants to breast feed.
Reason never found a regulation they didn’t hate or cast as the root cause for a complex problem. The Kochs created it specifically to promote that point of view.
In addition to this, the reason that Europe is an attractive option for baby formula is because their regulatory bodies take "food for infants" more seriously than we do here.
Does "Europe" have an abundant surplus of infant formula that they are prepared to export? A lot more mothers breast-feed in Europe, formula feeding is rather uncommon so why would one expect that inventory is available to send somewhere else?
And then you have the mother in Tennessee who gets a can of German-labeled formula powder, with mixing instructions in metric. Is she going to add the correct amount of water? Or are we going to re-label it? Who does that? Who checks it? How long will it take?
I don't think this is the simple answer it appears to be.
Being from Paris and living in The bay area, a lot more women breastfeed here than in France. Even in the countryside of France, where my extended family is, few women breastfeed.
Please let’s not make blanket statements about Europe vs USA.
Clearly, European countries will be touchy about exporting baby formula. Also, the food regulation being widely different, I’m not sure how easily one could import european baby formula
> Clearly, European countries will be touchy about exporting baby formula.
Formula will have to be labeled in English (and possibly French or Spanish) to not violate EU Export Regulations.. No one got upset about bulk exports to China, shipping direct consumer containers was OTOH illegal.
Certainly, since this would be the first food Americans have ever imported from Europe, there is no framework for Imperialization of nutrition labels, since no one has ever done it before in the history of ever. Congratulations you found a show-stopper!
Of course EU producers who package food for export label it accordingly. However what Reason seems to be implying is that we just load up some cargo planes with pallets of surplus formula that are apparently not needed in Europe and bring it to the USA under some kind of "emergency" order.
In fact, a lot of somewhat shady spice packets you get at asian groceries in the bay area have a crummy paper sticker with english labeling over the Indian/Chinese/... original label.
If this can happen for spices, why not for baby formula ?
I think that this is a case of noone wanting to take the risk of eventually someone selling some product that is expired or otherwise bad with relaxed labeling/... rules. I can understand it, too, from a biz POV.
I think the government needs to provide some sort of indemnification to importers/distributors/groceries. If the tradeoff demands it – 'X babies die/get sick because of malnutrition b/c missing baby formula' vs 'Y kids die/get sick because of bad baby formula.'
The task is translating from metric to imperial and German or Dutch to English.
Once. This will take someone an hour, someone else will spend thirty minutes proofreading it. Tell you what, two people take thirty minutes to proofread it, just to make you comfortable.
How do you expect this task to fail? Compare and contrast the failure modes of importing blood and translating a nutrition label for me, please. If it's so bloody obvious.
These are fair points. I suppose I was giving Reason the benefit of the doubt about the EU being interested in selling some type of surplus. Certainly not a forgone conclusion, as you pointed out. The most potent critiques of libertarian thought often rest their case on the world as it is, not as the libertarians imagine it to be.
I did a cursory googling and you are correct that formula feeding is less prevalent in Europe. TIL. My only knowledge was that, anecdotally, I know several expats that prefer EU formula for their kids. This jived with my general sense of more stringent EU regulation around food safety.
Same situation as the masks again. Yes, free trade alleviates these issues but only if you're not in global bottleneck which seem to be increasingly common with supply chain and production issues. This is food security, and countries should have the industrial capacity and backup to not end up with empty shelves.