Biden once again proves he’s unfit to lead this nation admitting today that, unlike baby formula company CEOs, he had no clue that the FDA shutting down the Abbott facility would wreck the production of baby formula production in this country.
Watch:
The important part was toward the end of the video, where Biden was asked by a CNN reporter: “Didn’t the CEOs just tell you that they understood it would have a very big impact?”
Biden responded: “They did, but I didn’t.”
According to The Hill, baby formula CEOs told Biden today that they knew this would decimate the baby formula industry:
The president’s admission came minutes after executives from some of the leading manufacturers said they knew the shutdown would have a significant impact on formula availability.
“We were aware of the general impact that this would have,” said Robert Cleveland, a senior vice president at Reckitt, in response to a question from Biden about whether the company was surprised the Abbott closure had “this profound effect immediately.”
“We knew from the very beginning this would be a very serious event,” Cleveland said.
Cleveland said when he heard about the recall and shutdown, he immediately reached out to the company’s retail partners like Target and Walmart to help them order all the available inventory on hand and push stock from distribution centers to store shelves.
“The very first thing we did when we heard about the Abbott recall was, we could foresee this would create a tremendous shortage. We significantly increased all our material orders,” said Murray Kessler, CEO of Perrigo, which makes store brand formula.
The FDA shut down this facility over some bacterial contamination even though Abbott executed a nationwide recall. The Hill notes, however, that “the FDA has been unable to conclusively link the bacteria found in Abbott’s plant to the strains found in the sick babies.”
The bottom line is that they didn’t have to shut down the facility. The could have allowed Abbott to fix the problems they found while recalling the suspect baby formula and this crisis would have been averted.