Ex-FDA official warns of potential future infant formula shortage in US.

The US supply of infant formula is still vulnerable to safety issues and supply disruptions more than a year after a nationwide shortage that left parents scrambling to feed their children, a former Food and Drug Administration official told US lawmakers. The former deputy commissioner for food policy, Frank Yiannas, said the agency was slow to act when concerns about contamination arose at Abbott's formula manufacturing plant in Sturgis, Michigan. The plant was shuttered for months, sharply reducing formula supply across the US. Yiannas underscored dysfunction within the FDA that he believes exacerbated the shortage. He pointed to structural and cultural issues within the agency, a failure to monitor the food supply chain and inadequate public health surveillance of the fatal bacteria, Cronobacter sakazakii, that contaminated Abbott's formula.