Holy shit. I read this story and I had to walk the kitchen to keep from throwing a cast iron pan through the goddamn wall. Abbott’s formula plant in Sturgis, Michigan — the place that makes the powder you feed a baby, the one thing that cannot be dirty — was so filthy that the FDA found Cronobacter crawling on the machinery. Cronobacter. The bacteria that loves dry, warm, dirty equipment. The one that kills newborns. The FDA found it in 2022. Two dead babies. Four sick. The company’s response? “No proof” the formula got them sick. Bullshit. Your factory was a Petri dish with a logo on it, and you hid behind lawyers and court orders for two years while the feds tried to inspect the place. Then, when the stink got too bad, Abbott paid $100 million to make the parents go away. A hundred million. That’s not a fine. That’s pocket change for a company that sells the stuff every goddamn hospital in America stocks on the shelves. And you know what Abbott bought with that money? Not safety. Not clean equipment. Not accountability. They bought a law. In 2024, Congress passed a bill that actually guts FDA inspection authority for infant formula. No more surprise visits. No more swift shut-downs. Next time the machinery gets filthy, the company gets a warning and a promise to do better. Let me be crystal-fucking-clear: they used dead babies as a bargaining chip, and the donor got the goddamn law. The families got a check they have to cash while their empty cribs are still warm. The company got to keep selling the goddamn powder. And every Republican who voted for that weak-ass bill — and every Democrat who went along — walked into that chamber with a straight face and pretended they were “protecting the babies.” That’s the tatemae. The honne is: the donor got the goddamn law. Meanwhile, parents are still waiting. They’re still scared. They’re still reading labels, wondering if the next can is the one that lands their kid in the hospital. And the people who made that can — they’re counting their money and laughing. Hell, I’d say “shame on them,” but shame requires a conscience. These bastards bought a statute that says they don’t need one. Go read the receipts, folks. Your God-fearing, family-values lawmakers just sold the powder that kills kids, and the only thing they got for it was a fatter bank account.
Source story: Abbott agrees to $385 million settlement in baby formula case.