FORMULA FOR TOT RELIEF

US flies in 1.5M bottles

Shutting down the Michigan plant at the center of the nation’s baby formula crisis was a “prudent thing to do,” a White House economic adviser said Sunday — as a US military cargo plane carrying 78,000 pounds of special formula landed in Indianapolis.

The shipment of 132 pallets of Nestlé Health Science Alfamino Infant and Alfamino Junior formula containing half a million bottles is the first of several deliveries expected this week.

Another 114 pallets of Gerber Good Start Extensive HA formula will arrive in the coming days, amounting to about 1.5 million 8-ounce bottles of the three formulas in total.

The Indianapolis airport was chosen because Nestlé has a distribution hub about a mile away where the company can do a quality control check before sending the formula to its destination.

‘Safety paramount’

National Economic Council Director Brian Deese told CNN’s

“State of the Union” that Sunday’s shipment is intended to bring

“some incremental relief” as the administration tries to come up with a permanent plan to increase supply.

Deese was grilled over how the administration found itself so unprepared for the formula shortage, despite an October whistleblower report about safety issues at Abbott Nutrition’s plant in Sturgis, Mich. Abbott is the biggest US supplier of powder infant formula including Similac.

The Food and Drug Administration shut the plant in February after a number of babies were sickened by formula made there.

“The FDA did what it was supposed to do, which was assess

safety and shut down a facility in the United States,” Deese said on “Fox News Sunday.” “And that was a prudent thing to do because of safety. We’re dealing with infants and babies here. Safety has to be paramount.”

The cargo is the first to arrive in the US this week as part of the Biden administration’s “Operation Fly Formula.”

The president invoked the Defense Production Act last Wednesday after his administration came under intense scrutiny for failing to prepare for the shortage — and as stories emerged about panicked parents with hungry children facing barren shelves at shops. Some have had to drive for hours in their desperate search for formula.