North Korea has boasted about the production of its baby formula as the US continues to face a severe shortage of the essential item.
A new article by state media says that dictator Kim Jong Un personally assisted in creating the recipe for dried milk in the totalitarian country.
The Voice of Korea article claims that Mr Kim himself oversaw the production of baby formula by taste-testing batches and advising on how it could be improved.
The article was translated by KCNA Watch, a South Korea-based group that monitors and translates state media from its neighbouring country.
In says that last September, Mr Kim called a a senior official of the Pyongyang Municipal at 4am to discuss the country’s formula production.
“Kim Jong Un said he had just tasted the diluted dry milk produced in Pyongyang City for trial and pointed out the shortcomings one by one,” it said.
“He told the senior official that it is necessary for the officials of the relevant sector to study such shortcomings with the produced dry milk.”
The article continued by describing Mr Kim as being like “a mother who tastes a food for her child first to see if it is too hot and if it is too salty”.
And it claims that after the phone call the quality of the product was improved.
Meanwhile, in the US parents are struggling to find baby formula and the shelves are empty because of a combination of product recalls, supply chain issues and labour shortages.
US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg on Sunday blamed the shortage on Abbott Nutrition, one of the largest formula suppliers in the US.
Abbott was forced to recall product and shut-down its Michigan plant earlier this year.
“Fundamentally, we are here because a company was not able to guarantee that its plant was safe, and that plant has shut down,” Mr Buttigieg said on Face the Nation.
He denied the Biden administration was responsible for the shortage and again blamed the company.
“Let’s be very clear. This is a capitalist country. The government does not make baby formula, nor should it,” he added.
“Companies make formula, and one of those companies, a company which, by the way, seems to have 40 per cent market share, messed up and is unable to confirm that a plant, a major plant, is safe and free of contamination.”
Abbott closed its plant after complaints of bacterial infection in four hospitalised infants, two of whom died.
The company has said there is no link to its products and could re-start its production within two weeks, but that it would take “six to eight weeks” for that product to his shelves.
