Pittsburgh group helps local mothers get access to baby formula amid shortages

By Chandi Chapman

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    NORTH HUNTINGDON, Pennsylvania (WTAE) — As Jasmine Bennett and her daughter played with baby dolls, Bennett remembered that, not too long ago, her days weren’t as simple.

“I was stressed out because I was thinking she wasn’t going to gain weight, she was going to lose weight. I wasn’t getting her the food, the formula she needed,” Bennett said.

Bennett said she spent hours driving around Allegheny County searching for baby formula. She went to five stores in one day, but all she found were bare shelves.

In 2022, Abbott Nutrition’s infant formula plant recalled several formula brands due to a contamination issue, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says caused shortages.

In December, Reckitt/Mead Johnson voluntarily recalled its Nutramigen hypoallergenic infant powder formula. The company says the recall didn’t impact production. Some parents still had a hard time finding what they needed.

“I cried at times because I couldn’t get it,” Bennett said.

She was able to finally get help feeding Skye Love through Beverly’s Birthdays, which oversees the Greater Pittsburgh Infant Formula Bank.

“We want to be a voice for those who might not have a voice, and those are tiny little babies and their moms and dads,” said Megs Yunn, who founded Beverly’s Birthdays after having trouble finding special formula for her child.

Yunn works side by side with Darla Sherlock, director of Beverly’s Babies division.

“When you can’t feed your baby, and you live in the U.S., something is wrong,” Sherlock said.

Many times during shortages, baby formula is not evenly distributed, Sherlock said.

“A lot of the times, grocery stores that are in more affluent neighborhoods are more stocked with formula,” Sherlock said. “When you go into other neighborhoods where there are smaller grocery stores, they are not as well stocked.”

Yunn and Sherlock want to make sure everyone has the same opportunity to feed their babies by purchasing from wholesalers and putting the formula where it’s needed.

“We also go to grocery stores ourselves, and we purchase formula at full retail price,” Sherlock said. “But we also make sure when we are purchasing formula, we are not wiping shelves, we are leaving things behind, and we take it from affluent neighborhoods and bring it into neighborhoods where there might not be as many grocery stores and families are on a bus line.”

“And you might be a family in middle-class America that doesn’t qualify for supplemental services, so that’s why we exist to be a bridge,” Yunn said.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pennsylvania, says his goal is to provide peace of mind to families and hold companies like Reckitt/Mead Johnson accountable.

“This company, like any company that’s producing infant formula, has to come forward with answers for me, but more importantly than the need to answer my questions is the need to provide information to families,” Casey said. “I had legislation that had a provision that ultimately passed as part of a larger bill in response to this crisis to make sure that the manufacturers were notifying the FDA of any pending or likely supply disruptions.”

Casey wrote a letter to Reckitt/Mead Johnson and sat down with leaders of the company to discuss several issues, including making sure the industry is not dominated by just a few companies.

“To make sure that there are more suppliers out there because we can’t have circumstances that, a few years ago, where one manufacturer goes down, there isn’t enough supply across the board,” Casey said. “We have to make sure there a lot more companies that are providing safe infant formula in the marketplace.”

Casey said he will continue to monitor the situation concerning shortages of baby formula.

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