2022.05.12 美国令人震惊的婴儿配方奶粉短缺的背后是什么？

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IDEAS
What’s Behind America’s Shocking Baby-Formula Shortage?
Bacteria, a virus, a trade policy—and a lesson

By Derek Thompson
An illustration of an empty baby bottle
The Atlantic
MAY 12, 2022
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About the author: Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the Work in Progress newsletter.

Sign up for Derek’s newsletter here.

America’s baby-formula shortage has gone from curious inconvenience to full-blown national crisis.

In many states, including Texas and Tennessee, more than half of formula is sold out in stores. Nationwide, 40 percent of formula is out of stock—a twentyfold increase since the first half of 2021. As parents have started to stockpile formula, retailers such as Walgreens, CVS, and Target have all moved to limit purchases.

The everything shortage isn’t new. But rationing essentials for desperate parents? That’s a twisted turn in the story of American scarcity.

Three factors are driving the U.S. baby-formula shortage: bacteria, a virus, and a trade policy.

First, the bacteria. After the recent deaths of at least two infants from a rare infection, the Food and Drug Administration investigated Abbott, a major producer of infant formula, and discovered traces of the pathogen Cronobacter sakazakii in a Michigan plant. As a result, the FDA recalled several brands of formula, and parents were advised to not buy or use some formula tied to the plant.

Derek Thompson: America is running out of everything

Recalls are common. Thousands of drugs and products are recalled every year, and they don’t create a meltdown at pharmacies or require CVS to instate Soviet-style rationing of essentials. So something else is going on here.

That brings us to the second cause: the virus. The pandemic has snarled all sorts of supply chains, but I can’t think of a market it’s yanked around more than infant formula. “During the spring of 2020, formula sales rocketed upwards as people stockpiled formula just like they stockpiled toilet paper,” Lyman Stone, the director of research at the consulting firm Demographic Intelligence, told me. Then, as “families worked through their stockpiles, sales fell a lot. This oscillation made planning for production extremely difficult. It was complicated to get an idea of the actual market size.” Meanwhile, Stone’s research has found that an uptick in births in early 2022 has corresponded with a “very dramatic decline in rates of breastfeeding” among new mothers, which pushed up demand for formula once again.

In brief: Demand for formula surged as parents hoarded in 2020; then demand fell, leading suppliers to cut back production through 2021; and now, with more new mothers demanding more formula in 2022, orders are surging faster than supply is recovering.

Finally, the third factor: America’s regulatory and trade policy. And while that might not sound as interesting to most people as bacteria and viruses, it might be the most important part of the story.

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FDA regulation of formula is so stringent that most of the stuff that comes out of Europe is illegal to buy here due to technicalities like labeling requirements. Nevertheless, one study found that many European formulas meet the FDA nutritional guidelines—and, in some ways, might even be better than American formula, because the European Union bans certain sugars, such as corn syrup, and requires formulas to have a higher share of lactose.

Some parents who don’t care about the FDA’s imprimatur try to circumvent regulations by ordering formula from Europe through third-party vendors. But U.S. customs agents have been known to seize shipments at the border.

U.S. policy also restricts the importation of formula that does meet FDA requirements. At high volumes, the tax on formula imports can exceed 17 percent. And under President Donald Trump, the U.S. entered into a new North American trade agreement that actively discourages formula imports from our largest trading partner, Canada.

America’s formula policy warps the industry in one more way. The Department of Agriculture has a special group called WIC—short for Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children—that provides a variety of services to pregnant and breastfeeding women and their young children. It is also the largest purchaser of infant formula in the United States, awarding contracts to a small number of approved formula companies.  As a result, the U.S. baby formula industry is minuscule, by design. A 2011 analysis by USDA reported that three companies accounted for practically all U.S. formula sales: Abbott, Mead Johnson, and Gerber.


Read: Americans have no idea what the supply chain really is

The Biden administration is focused on expanding domestic manufacturing of formula to meet families’ needs. But the bigger problem is our trade policy. “The U.S. is a captive market for domestic dairy producers like Abbott, and during times of crisis, the lack of alternative supplies becomes a pretty big problem,” Scott Lincicome, the director of general economics and trade for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, told me.

Conservative populists and even liberals who are skeptical of globalization sometimes argue that if the U.S. made everything within our borders, our economy would be more resilient. But the baby-formula shortage suggests that things don’t always work out that way. Instead, we’re seeing what happens when we reduce trade with other countries for an essential good: We’re more vulnerable to emergencies like a bacteria-infested plant in Michigan.

There is a better way. “What we should want to maximize is total global capacity and system-wide flexibility and dynamism,” Lincicome said. “The location of the supply doesn’t matter as much as having as much as possible within a nimble system that can replace one plant’s supply with another’s.”

America’s reasonable instinct to protect infants has metastasized into an unreasonably protectionist trade policy that makes the U.S. formula market exquisitely sensitive to existential shocks (like a pandemic) and domestic shocks (like a major recall). Today, the shocks are everywhere, and that’s why baby formula is not.

Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the Work in Progress newsletter.




理念
美国令人震惊的婴儿配方奶粉短缺的背后是什么？
细菌、病毒、贸易政策--一个教训

作者：德里克-汤普森
一张空婴儿奶瓶的插图
大西洋报
2022年5月12日
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关于作者。德里克-汤普森是《大西洋》杂志的一名工作人员，也是《工作进展》通讯的作者。

请在此注册订阅德里克的时事通讯。

美国的婴儿配方奶粉短缺已经从好奇的不便变成了全面的国家危机。

在许多州，包括德克萨斯州和田纳西州，超过一半的配方奶粉在商店里卖完了。在全国范围内，40%的配方奶粉已经缺货--自2021年上半年以来增加了20倍。随着家长们开始囤积配方奶粉，沃尔格林、CVS和塔吉特等零售商都已采取行动，限制购买。

万物短缺并不新鲜。但是为绝望的父母配给必需品？这是美国匮乏故事中的一个转折。

有三个因素在推动美国婴儿配方奶粉的短缺：细菌、病毒和贸易政策。

首先是细菌。在最近至少两名婴儿死于一种罕见的感染之后，美国食品和药物管理局对婴儿配方奶粉的主要生产商雅培公司进行了调查，并在密歇根州的一家工厂发现了病原体阪崎肠杆菌的踪迹。因此，FDA召回了几个品牌的配方奶粉，并建议家长不要购买或使用与该工厂有关的一些配方奶粉。

德里克-汤普森 美国正在耗尽一切

召回是很常见的。每年都有数以千计的药品和产品被召回，它们不会造成药店的崩溃，也不会要求CVS对必需品实行苏维埃式的配给制度。所以这里发生了其他事情。

这给我们带来了第二个原因：病毒。这种大流行病使各种供应链陷入困境，但我想不出它对一个市场的影响比婴儿配方奶粉更大。"咨询公司Demographic Intelligence的研究主任莱曼-斯通（Lyman Stone）告诉我："在2020年春季，由于人们像囤积卫生纸一样囤积配方奶粉，配方奶粉的销量急剧上升。然后，随着 "家庭用完他们的库存，销售量下降了很多。这种震荡使生产计划变得非常困难。要了解实际的市场规模是很复杂的。" 同时，斯通的研究发现，2022年初出生率的上升与新母亲中 "母乳喂养率的急剧下降 "相对应，这再次推高了对配方奶粉的需求。

简而言之。2020年，随着父母的囤积，配方奶粉的需求激增；然后需求下降，导致供应商在2021年削减产量；现在，随着2022年更多的新妈妈要求更多的配方奶粉，订单激增的速度超过了供应的恢复。

最后，第三个因素。美国的监管和贸易政策。虽然这对大多数人来说可能听起来不像细菌和病毒那样有趣，但它可能是故事中最重要的部分。

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美国食品和药物管理局对配方奶粉的监管非常严格，由于标签要求等技术问题，大多数从欧洲出来的东西在这里购买是非法的。然而，一项研究发现，许多欧洲配方奶粉符合美国食品和药物管理局的营养准则，而且在某些方面，甚至可能比美国配方奶粉更好，因为欧盟禁止某些糖类，如玉米糖浆，并要求配方奶粉有更高的乳糖比例。

一些不关心美国食品和药物管理局印记的父母试图通过第三方供应商从欧洲订购配方奶粉来规避法规。但美国海关人员已经知道在边境上扣押货物。

美国的政策也限制了符合FDA要求的配方奶粉的进口。在大批量的情况下，配方奶粉的进口税可能超过17%。在唐纳德-特朗普总统的领导下，美国签订了一项新的北美贸易协定，积极阻止从我们最大的贸易伙伴加拿大进口奶粉。

美国的配方奶粉政策还以一种方式扭曲了这个行业。农业部有一个名为WIC的特殊团体--妇女、婴儿和儿童特别补充营养计划的简称，为孕妇和哺乳期妇女及其幼儿提供各种服务。它也是美国最大的婴儿配方奶粉采购商，将合同授予少数经批准的配方奶粉公司。 因此，美国的婴儿配方奶粉行业在设计上是微不足道的。美国农业部2011年的一项分析报告指出，三家公司几乎占据了美国所有的奶粉销售。雅培、美赞臣和嘉宝。


阅读。美国人不知道什么是真正的供应链

拜登政府专注于扩大国内配方奶粉的生产，以满足家庭的需求。但更大的问题是我们的贸易政策。"自由主义智库卡托研究所(Cato Institute)的一般经济和贸易主任斯科特-林西科姆(Scott Lincicome)告诉我："美国是像雅培这样的国内乳制品生产商的圈养市场，在危机时期，缺乏替代供应成为一个相当大的问题。

保守的民粹主义者，甚至对全球化持怀疑态度的自由主义者有时会认为，如果美国在境内制造一切，我们的经济将更有弹性。但婴儿配方奶粉的短缺表明，事情并不总是这样。相反，我们看到了当我们减少与其他国家的基本货物贸易时会发生什么。我们更容易受到像密歇根州细菌感染的工厂这样的紧急情况的影响。

有一个更好的方法。"我们应该希望最大限度地提高全球总容量和全系统的灵活性和活力，"林西科姆说。"供应的位置并不重要，重要的是在一个灵活的系统内拥有尽可能多的供应，可以用另一个工厂的供应取代一个工厂的供应。"

美国保护婴儿的合理本能已经演变成不合理的贸易保护主义政策，使美国奶粉市场对生存冲击（如大流行病）和国内冲击（如重大召回）非常敏感。今天，这些冲击无处不在，这就是为什么婴儿配方奶粉没有。

德里克-汤普森是《大西洋》杂志的工作人员，也是《工作进展》通讯的作者。