Accused at the worst of indifference, at best of wait -and -see, the White House exposed a few measures on Thursday, of a limited scope.
Le Monde with AFP
Empty rays and anxious parents: the White House assured, Thursday, May 12, to take the shortage of baby milk very seriously that the United States is experiencing, and which turns to the political crisis for the president, Joe Biden.
According to DataSembly data supplier, the stock breaking rate for this product reached 43 % at the end of last week. Since the arrest, in February, stops a manufacturer’s factory Abbott, the situation has only won.
On February 17, after the death of two babies, Abbott announced the “voluntary recall” in his Michigan factory of powdered milks, including Similac, used by millions of American families. The survey has cleared the targeted milk but the production has still not resumed, aggravating the shortage already caused by more general problems of supply chain and lack of labor.
Accused at the worst of indifference, at best of wait -and -see, the White House exposed some measures on Thursday, of a limited scope. “It’s a work that has been going on for months,” said his spokesperson, Jen Psaki, questioned about the reaction time of the American executive. “Our message to the parents is as follows: we have heard, we want to do everything we can,” she also said.
Administration Biden plans in particular to increase imports, while the United States produces 98 % of the humanized milk they consume. Furthermore, M psaki said they worked with states to lighten the administrative constraints weighing on the most modest families who buy infant milk thanks to good food. Finally, the White House seized the Competition Authority on the abuses linked to this situation of shortage, in particular the resale of infant milk online at exorbitant prices.
the republican opposition pounds the Administration Biden
M me psaki added that another option still under study was to invoke the Defense Production Act, a text inherited from the Cold War, which allows the American president to take economic decisions by decree. Mr. Biden also met Thursday with retail representatives and baby milk producers, conversations qualified as “encouraging” by an administration official. But the White House was not risking to predict an exit from the crisis, while the republican opposition, in the campaign for the mid-term elections, in November, took over the subject and pounded the administration Biden.
Elise Stefanik, elected republican in the House of Representatives, said during a press conference that she had contacted the federal authorities in February: “Joe Biden has no plan. (…) When we asked the question At the White House on the shortage, they laughed. “Randy Feenstra, an elected republican of Iowa, assured that, in his region, families” made 50, 75, up to 100 miles [or from 80 to 160 kilometers] to try [to] find “powdered milk.
Until the Democratic Patroness of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, who let her frustration show out on Thursday: “At the moment, babies are hungry, babies cry, we have to answer this situation now.”
Sara Khan, mother of three children aged 10, 7 years and 6 months old, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) her distress against empty shelving in Washington. “From the birth of my baby, I noticed that there was a problem,” says Sara Khan, who held thanks to the boxes of milk sent by post by her family and friends.
The situation is even more scary for parents of children whose health requires special milks. Thus Maya, 3 weeks, intolerant of lactose. “We had little choice but to turn to a milk made from plants”, for lack of alternative, explains his father, Steve Hohman, who lives in San Diego, California.