A dramatic bottleneck in the supply of baby food has arisen in the USA. Parents panic, President Joe Biden even has to set up an airlift. The baby milk crisis shows that anyone who relies solely on domestic production and keeps foreign manufacturers away can run into big problems.

Imagine if it weren’t sunflower oil that was sold out in our shops these days, but a really vital product. One that cannot simply be replaced with something similar, but really only with breast milk. This is the current situation in the USA, where a massive supply shortage of powdered baby milk has triggered a nationwide panic among parents.

The shelves for “baby formula”, i.e. powder for mixing baby milk, have been emptied for weeks. At the beginning of May, around 40 percent of the quantities usually available were missing in stores across the US, and in some states the products are no longer available in stores.