A top official at the Food and Drug Administration acknowledged that he didn’t see a copy of a whistleblower’s report about an Abbott Nutrition plant …
A top official at the Food and Drug Administration acknowledged that he didn’t see a copy of a whistleblower’s report about an Abbott Nutrition plant in Michigan for four months because it was apparently lost in the mail room. The anonymous whistleblower sent the 34-page report to the FDA in October 2021 alleging a number of unsanitary conditions at the baby formula plant in Sturgis, Mich., but Frank Yiannas, the deputy commissioner for food policy and response, said he didn’t get his hands on it until February, according to a report. In that four-month span, four infants had become ill and two may have died after ingesting formula made at the Michigan facility.
“It wasn’t sent to me and it wasn’t shared with me internally. How does this happen?” Yiannas admitted to The . “There were early signals and in any safety profession you want to take those seriously to stop the domino effect. That didn’t happen.”
“Why didn’t we act more quickly on the complaints and the whistleblower report? Who knew what when?” Yiannas told the newspaper. “Those are going to be some of the tough questions that will have to be answered.”
According to documents the FDA provided a House committee, which held a hearing on the administration’s response to the shortage on Wednesday, the complaint was lost in the mailroom.
“Hard copies addressed to these individuals were not forwarded from the FDA mailrooms, likely due to COVID-19-related mail routing issues,” the FDA said told the House panel.
