FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Announces Actions to Strengthen Infant Formula Access Resiliency in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)

Since Abbott Nutrition’s voluntary toddler formulation recall to handle well being and security issues at its Sturgis, Michigan manufacturing plant, the Biden-Harris Administration has been working around the clock to make sure that protected and nutritious toddler formulation is obtainable to each household that wants it. In mild of the current disaster and new authority offered by way of the bipartisan Access to Baby Formula Act, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is asserting a collection of further steps it’ll take to strengthen resiliency in WIC, which covers the price of toddler formulation for households with restricted means. These actions will make sure that the households who depend on the WIC program have protected and dependable toddler formulation choices even in an emergency. Currently 1.2 million infants obtain WIC formulation advantages, and greater than half of toddler formulation is bought by WIC members.

Specifically, USDA will:

• Help make sure that WIC members can proceed to entry formulation throughout occasions of disaster. USDA would require WIC State companies to incorporate a provision in future toddler formulation rebate contracts to incorporate cures within the occasion of an toddler formulation recall, together with how an toddler formulation producer would defend towards disruption to program members within the State.
• Ensure WIC state companies are ready for future provide chain disruptions. USDA will work with WIC state companies to have a catastrophe plan in place, which would come with a plan to distribute toddler formulation throughout a provide chain disruption, catastrophe, or emergency interval. In addition, USDA will help WIC state companies in prioritizing assets and creating a separate plan for the distribution of specialty formulation for infants with well being situations. Disaster plan actions may embody how WIC companies will coordinate with well being care facilities to handle the provision of specialty formulation or an built-in plan for WIC retailers to share details about toddler formulation inventory with WIC to help a formulation locater.
• Test and launch on-line looking for toddler formulation for WIC members. WIC members might not presently use their advantages to buy toddler formulation or different meals gadgets on-line. This could make it tougher for households to seek out formulation if their native shops should not carrying it. USDA will use as much as $50 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to check and launch on-line purchasing in WIC, with planning grants announced final month. USDA will even suggest rulemaking to handle regulatory obstacles to on-line purchasing and to develop the forms of shops eligible to take part in this system. Online purchasing will give WIC households extra choices. The Administration proposed to additional develop on-line choices within the President’s 2023 Budget.
• Increase transparency and competitors in WIC toddler formulation bids. To procure toddler formulation rebate contracts, WIC state companies solicit bids from toddler formulation producers to supply a rebate for toddler formulation. To guarantee all producers have the knowledge they should compete for state contracts and to help any new certified corporations available in the market, this fall USDA will set up a devoted webpage for state bid solicitations for toddler formulation, much like actions referred to as for by each Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

This announcement builds on quite a few actions the Biden-Harris Administration has taken to handle toddler formulation provide chain disruptions:

• Provided regulatory flexibility to allow protected, nutritious toddler formulation from abroad to be imported extra simply to the U.S. market.
• Launched Operation Fly Formula to get imported formulation to retailer cabinets quicker.
• Invoked the Defense Production Act to make sure home formulation producers have the components they should ramp up manufacturing.

These efforts have resulted in hundreds of thousands of further bottle equivalents of toddler formulation being made accessible to American households. Cumulative gross sales of toddler formulation are up round 4 % this 12 months adjusting for projected will increase within the variety of births.

USDA continues to work carefully with the Administration, HHS, and FDA to help households by way of this difficult time and to convey to a swift finish to the toddler formulation scarcity with a selected give attention to the WIC program. USDA has:

• Worked with Congress to enact the bipartisan Access to Baby Formula Act, which provides the Secretary of Agriculture extra instruments and flexibilities for WIC to answer toddler formulation provide chain disruptions and emergencies.
• Provided flexibility and quickly elevated the federal funding within the WIC program to make sure that members should purchase a greater variety of formulation with their WIC advantages.

Through these efforts, USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) has labored to make sure WIC members and stakeholders have the knowledge they should hold infants protected and to entry formulation. Following the Abbott plant closure, the company instantly offered steerage to WIC state companies and, inside days, supplied flexibilities together with waivers to assist them reply to the impacts of the recall. In the months since, FNS has been offering ongoing help and help to assist states put these flexibilities to finest use and adapt to the rapidly-changing state of affairs, approving practically 500 waivers.

Since 1989, Congress has required WIC state companies to function a value containment system for toddler formulation, which states are assembly by way of a aggressive bidding course of for formulation contracts. Contracts are awarded to the producer providing the best low cost on wholesale costs. This 1989 reform has resulted in billions of annual financial savings for WIC and allowed this system to supply needed advantages to serve each eligible toddler, baby and pregnant, postpartum or breastfeeding ladies.

This 1989 price containment reform helped make sure that each WIC-eligible household might entry nutritious meals and toddler formulation they wanted, and helped to modestly cut back market-wide focus. Two corporations have dominated the toddler formulation market for the reason that Nineteen Fifties, and in 1987, three corporations managed 99 percent (PDF, 581 KB) of the market—a extra concentrated market than at the moment wherein 4 corporations management 90 % of the market. While the present system has allowed this system to serve eligible households in an economical manner, at the moment’s reforms are an vital step in direction of constructing extra resilience into the system, to guard the well being and security of American infants.

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