WASHINGTON — Even as the House on Wednesday debated a bill aimed at helping to ease a baby formula crisis that has sent families scrambling, lawmakers are grappling with a second issue: how to ease the shortage’s impact on low-income families that use the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC.
While the bill would spend $28 million to fund the Food and Drug Administration’s infant formula safety and inspection capabilities, lawmakers aim to prevent low-income families from ever experiencing formula shortages again. Democrats want to extend WIC infant formula flexibilities that the Biden administration was only able to trigger recently because of the ongoing COVID-19 public health emergency.
The debate comes as President Joe Biden on Wednesday invoked the 1950 Defense Production Act to require suppliers to prioritize and provide the needed resources to formula manufacturers to increase production. Biden also directed the Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture to use military commercial aircraft to pick up overseas infant formula to get it to store shelves faster.
“Parents are not quite in panic mode yet. But they’re frantic,” said Mark Corkins, a professor of medicine at the University of Tennessee in Memphis and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Nutrition.
WIC funds half of all the formula purchases nationwide, and Abbott Nutrition’s formula products serve roughly 90% of all infants participating in WIC, according to the Agriculture Department’s Food and Nutrition Service. Roughly 43% of baby formula supply was out of stock as of May 8, according to a market analysis from Datasembly.
While WIC has traditionally included limitations on which formulas parents can buy under the program, on May 13, the USDA urged states to offer families using WIC “maximum flexibility” when it comes to purchasing infant formula on benefit. These flexibilities include allowing states to offer alternative sizes, forms and brands of formula on WIC and allowing stores to accept exchanges of formula purchased with WIC benefits.
But those flexibilities are only possible because the United States is currently under a public health emergency, and without the ongoing pandemic emergency, lawmakers would have had to pass legislation to allow for the WIC formula flexibilities, or the Biden administration would have to take executive action, according to a Senate aide.
In recent days, pediatricians have said they’ve noticed a run on baby formula because parents are growing more and more concerned about shortages. Many retailers, including Target, Walgreens and CVS, are capping how many cans of formula a person can buy.
Unlike other food recalls, infant formula represents a major and exclusive food supply for infants, meaning a lack of access to formula could create long-term health implications for babies, said Brian Dittmeier, senior director of public policy at the National WIC Association.
“It will take a whole-of-community effort — including the ongoing partnership of retailers, WIC providers and food banks — to plug the gaps as we wait for manufacturer promises to translate to stock on the shelves,” Dittmeier said.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are working to give WIC permanent flexibility so families that use WIC benefits have access to more kinds of formula for the long term, regardless of whether a public health emergency is in place.
Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., and Education and Labor Chairman Robert C. Scott, D-Va., introduced a bill Wednesday that would provide flexibilities for low-income families on WIC to purchase a wider variety of infant formula during supply chain disruptions.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., plans to introduce a companion bill in the Senate, along with Republican Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said he wanted the Senate to try to pass Stabenow’s legislation via unanimous consent since it has broad bipartisan support.
“This is something that should bring us all together. As quickly as possible,” Stabenow said Wednesday evening on the Senate floor.
