How the Defense Production Act will address baby formula shortage: Pentagon press secretary

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How the military will respond to baby formula shortage

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby reveals how the military will address the baby formula shortage under the Defense Production Act on 'Your World.'

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby explained how the Defense Production Act will combat the baby formula shortage Thursday on "Your World."

JOHN KIRBY: Right now, the principal job for the military will be to work with HHS, the Department of Agriculture, the FDA, to help provide contract commercial air to move formula from overseas - particularly Europe - to the United States. So we're working in close consultation with those agencies right now to better determine what the requirement is. And then we'll work with our contract, commercial air carriers to actually go pick up the baby formula wherever it is in Europe particularly, and get it to the appropriate place here in the United States. And we think that using contract air right now, that's probably the best approach, the most cost-efficient, and quite frankly, probably the quickest. 

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That's one of the things the Defense Production Act can give you. Not only can it help get suppliers and manufacturers of baby formula the kinds of ingredients that they need faster to make that formula, but it can also help boost production by helping create industry to create the actual machinery that is used to make baby formula. It can spur actual fabricators to get the equipment that's needed to, again in this one case, get the Abbott plant back up and running again. They might need equipment. DPA can help provide that equipment a little bit faster, get it fabricated and into the factory a little bit faster. So it actually can cover a lot of ground here. 

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