The United States spends billions of dollars each year, provoking disastrous wars throughout the globe, yet as official economic indicators show, it pays no heed to its citizens’ basic needs.
Today, many of the most needed commodities are in limited supply across the United States, with powdered milk being one of the items at the top of the list.
The price of powdered milk, a prime ingredient, has skyrocketed over the past few days, which is expected to afflict the largely low-income segments of society.
According to market observers, the current shortage of powdered milk might be related to several factors, the most salient of which are the still-raging COVID-19 pandemic, soaring inflation rates, and a public health scandal, brought to light when four infants in the state of Michigan were diagnosed with a rare bacterial illness after consuming “Abbott Nutrition” products.
It was later announced that two of the babies had regrettably passed away.
Following the tragic deaths of the two newborns, FDA inspectors forced the Michigan-based Abbott’s Nutrition company to suspend its line of production.
The exacerbating situation has sparked a nationwide panic among American consumers and caused a sudden influx into drugstores, in the hope of finding milk formulas.
But hopeless parents were faced, in most cases, with empty shelves; or, if lucky, they found milk formulas at incredible prices or in rationed quantities.
Although most Americans have experienced never-ending medical and food shortages in recent years, given that infant milk formulas are less replaceable than other products, it looks like the US government will confront a seemingly insurmountable challenge. According to recent estimates, roughly 40% of the companies that supply milk powder to the US market have their warehouses empty.
As there is no definite date for ending the milk shortage crisis, which has disturbed millions of American households, one of the country’s top producers of powdered milk has warned that the shortage might last until the end of the year.
In this regard, Mary Bruce, senior White House correspondent for ABC News, said that when she and her colleagues asked White House officials when the powdered milk crisis would end, they were unable to provide comment, adding that this ambiguous condition would be exceedingly alarming to parents since there is no clear indication of when the predicament would end.
Amid the worsening crisis, several potential solutions have been offered to address the dire shortage. One is limiting the number of milk powder boxes supplied per client in big shopping malls. Through this strategy, US authorities expect to have some control over the deteriorating situation.
A second option is to import milk powder from the European Union. For instance, Nestlé has declared that it is prepared to ship consignments of powdered milk from its Netherlands and Switzerland facilities to the United States to alleviate the ongoing crisis.
As a third option, some Democrats have urged that the Biden administration invoke the Defense Production Act of 1950, a statute that permits the White House to compel American corporations to prioritise manufacturing of particular commodities to solve severe deficiencies.
Amid the recurring medical shortages like the one we currently face, other detrimental socioeconomic problems that have emerged in recent years, such as prevalent poverty, growing unemployment, the looming collapse of the US middle class, social discrimination, and financial injustice, have engulfed a country that was once ostentatiously dubbed the “Land of Dreams.”
Finally, in the past four decades, powdered milk shortages have been broadly considered an unprecedented problem in the US. However, with an alarming rise in inflation and data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicating that less than half of all newborn infants are breastfed, while the rest are fed powdered milk; President Biden must desist from his international militaristic approaches and instead focus on resolving America’s massive domestic crises.