Wednesday, December 15, 2021
On February 17, 2022, a recall at one Michigan plant emptied formula shelves across the country, showing how few factories feed America's babies.
On this day in 2022, the Food and Drug Administration warned parents not to use certain powdered infant formulas, and Abbott Nutrition recalled Similac, Alimentum and EleCare made at its plant in Sturgis, Michigan. The company stopped production there while regulators investigated four reports of bacterial infection in infants. One plant went quiet, and that was enough.
The shortage that followed was national. Abbott supplied a large share of the American formula market, and specialty formulas for infants with allergies and metabolic conditions had almost no substitute. Out of stock rates climbed through the spring, parents drove between counties looking for cans, and the federal government eventually flew formula in from overseas.
The lesson is about concentration, not contamination. A supply chain with a handful of factories behind it can look abundant right up until one of them stops, and the families with the least flexibility feel it first. A modest cushion of the specific things your household cannot substitute is the cheapest insurance against that, and it is the same habit behind a working food stockpile. Understanding how food shortages actually start makes the cushion easier to size.
