Vice President Harris welcomed another shipment of infant formula from overseas at the Dulles, Va., airport on Friday and said that the administration will have brought in 13 million eight-ounce bottles through its “Operation Fly Formula” airlift by the end of the week.
Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff met with aviation and transportation workers aiding the formula delivery at the airport outside Washington.
The vice president delivered brief remarks touting the public-private partnership that has brought thousands of pounds of formula from overseas to the U.S. amid a critical domestic shortage.
“This really is about what should be one of the highest purposes for any one of us, which is to ensure we are meeting the needs of our children,” Harris said.
Harris was joined by Brett Hart, president of United Airlines, which has donated flights for transporting shipments of baby formula to the U.S. from overseas.
“We are clear that the strength of public-private partnerships is something that can meet moments like this in an extraordinary way,” Harris said.
The shipment Harris welcomed on Friday contained 14,000 lbs of Kendamil formula from London, the equivalent of more than 200,000 eight-ounce bottles of formula, according to the White House. She said that, by this coming Sunday, the administration will have shipped 13 million bottles of formula through Operation Fly Formula, which President Biden announced last month.
Harris said the administration is making progress to address the shortage but added, “There’s no doubt there is more work to do.”
She said the Biden administration would continue to move formula quickly to shelves and stressed the need to ramp up domestic production.
The formula shortage stems from a February shutdown of an Abbott Nutrition factory in Michigan over safety concerns. The Biden administration has been criticized as being slow to act in response to the shortage, particularly after Biden acknowledged in recent weeks that he only learned of the severity of the issue in early April.
In addition to the airlifts of formula, the Biden administration has also used the Defense Production Act to ramp up domestic production of formula.
The Abbott plant in Michigan reopened earlier this month but was forced to shut down this week after storms caused flooding. The company said in a statement Wednesday that the incident was likely to delay production and distribution of new formula by “a few weeks.”