🧵Thread on the infant formula shortage situation, which feels like a slow-moving train wreck.

First, retail stock has been rocky for months. It was already bad over the holidays, then a big recall + plant shutdown in Feb. made it worse.

Great viz here @erindataviz/@datasembly: The retail data on the current supply situation varies.

A custom analysis by @datasembly found that over the past two weeks, the out-of-stock percentage for baby formula nationwide increased from 31 to 40 percent.

🧵 For anyone who may have missed in @Morning_Ag this week:

Washington is taking a hard look at the FDA after our investigation into the agency’s food program.

A quick rundown of the facts and some spin 👇 The broad consensus from every interview and every interaction since the piece posted has been one of confirmation.

Even government officials that didn’t cooperate with the investigation have quietly come out of the woodwork to confirm the accuracy of the report.

🧵Unplugged this weekend because I've been wrapping up a big investigative project & I'm totally fried--heck of a time to go offline!

I do welcome criticism. I hear it. Media deserves PLENTY of it. That said, I want to share some context here that I think is important: For the record, I was the one who first reported that McConnell was dug in against school meal waiver extensions on 3/7.

*My reporting is quite literally how most people knew this was happening.*

Here's the headline on that first story:

NEW: McConnell is forcefully opposing a provision in the omnibus spending bill that would extend waivers that have allowed schools to serve universal free meals during the pandemic, per sources close to the talks. Extending the Agriculture Department’s authority to extend the waivers, which expires in June, had been previously seen as fairly noncontroversial, even bipartisan.

GMO labeling is finally here & basically no one cares.

Supporters of labeling are unhappy bc USDA's rule has so many loopholes it's in no way what they asked for.

Food cos. are grumpy bc supply chains are a mess & now they have to comply w/a new reg (as of Jan. 1).

A quick 🧵 If you read @Morning_Ag you already got lots of this, if not here's a brief rundown:

This used to be a hot-button issue! Years ago, consumers and advocacy groups were pushing hard for mandatory labeling at the state level. Huge $$$ fights.

Happy New Year! Without a doubt my most notable accomplishment in 2020 was raising a fun little human to the age of one (HBD, Hank!), but I also did some other work I’m proud of…

<<a thread>> Covid-19 took hold in the U.S. while I was on maternity leave. When I returned to work in mid-April, everything in the food/ag landscape had changed.

There was no going back to read months of email or catch up on articles I'd missed. There was no point and also no time.

Thread >> Five years ago, I started recording audio on my phone of my beloved grandma Helen talking about her life. Each time I visited her in PA, I asked a few questions while we cooked or putzed. What's your earliest memory? Have you always been interested in politics? What did you want to be when you grew up? Things like that.

Not sure what originally possessed me to do this, but I kept it up over the years. Sometimes I recorded our conversations for 5 minutes, sometimes more than an hour. I have tons of these files now and I TREASURE them.

THREAD>>

One of the most infuriating things about reporting this over the past several weeks w/@Ximena_Bustillo & @liz_crampton: Everyone we talked to had been warning this would happen since the early days of the pandemic.

It was extremely predictable. And yet here we are. We wrote in May about how advocates were very worried about Covid-19 spreading on farms, especially after watching the horrific number of cases and deaths tied to meat plants:

politico.com/news/2020/05/1…

*A thread* Big changes are happening in the food landscape here in Washington. The industry's main lobby (@GroceryMakers) is trying to reboot after a mass exodus of members (@Nestle, @MarsGlobal, @TysonFoods, etc) left GMA half the size it once was. I recently sat down w/GMA's new president & CEO Geoff Freeman to chat about how the group is navigating the fact that food companies disagree on a growing list of issues, from nutrition to climate, as consumer tastes and demands are rapidly changing. Sharing a few takeaways...