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I’m honestly more worried about the panic buying because of people going too far down the rabbit hole
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It depends on how you define specialty. I mean, it's not as simple as apples, corn, wheat, even bread. it requires cows milk to be processed to be more digestible, then added oils, minerals, etc. Some use soy, some are hydrolyzed proteins, then can be ready to go, concentrated, or powdered. So, there is some significant processing that goes into baby formula. That's what I meant by specialty. it's more manufactured than harvested. Just like wet cat food isn't all that special, but it comes in Aluminum cans, and that was in short supply for a month or so. Baby formula is more complicated than milk.
20% is substantial, but as I said, we also export a much more significant portion of our food supply. We do so, because some things are cheaper for us to import. However, we are one of a handful of countries that are considered to have food stability. meaning, we don't need food from outside countries to survive. We can make enough on our own. Russia, Canada, I think Mexico, and a few others are similar. As I and others have said, we use a lot of corn towards ethanol, we'd just stop that. There is plenty of food here.
And I did say we'd see price increases. Just not overall food shortages. Again, where is the OP going with this? Global food issues, or US food shortages? Is the expectation that we should all raise our own chickens and have urban farms? Should be go full "prepper" and have a 500 gallon tank of water in the garage, and a 50 day supply of MRE's?
The truth. I'm a storeroom clerk at Keesler AFB. We still have shortages from time to time, but they are temporary. WeNo. The US supply will mostly be fine. Specialty items, like baby formula will be problematic here and there. Also, certain products, or things that need certain packaging may be an issue. It's hard for manufacturers to just switch packaging / containers.
We are pretty self-sufficient on food. We only import about 13 - 20% of our food supply. We also export a ton of food items, especially soybeans (which we probably won't eat a lot of). We also subsidize corn or use it for Ethanol, if we had a corn shortage, that would be the first thing to go.
To be honest, there is a lot of bull floating around crying wolf.
Then you just become the prepper someone else will come along and kill.
Then what word should I have chosen to make my point that certain items could be hard to get from time to time?I define specialty as something that's special. I don't think anything that is produced en masse that (under normal circumstances) I can find in supermarkets, pharmacies, 7-11's, gas stations, etc. is specialty.
Wet cat food has a lot of ingredients, each with its own supply chain. For example, the ingredients from Purina's One True Instinct (went straight to Purina's website, looked up wet cat food, and selected the first one I saw), none of which Purina grows/manufactures: Chicken liver, wheat gluten, salmon, pork lungs, natural flavors, potassium chloride, magnesium proteinate, zinc sulfate, ferrous sulfate, manganese sulfate, copper sulfate, potassium iodide, corn oil, tricalcium phosphate, xanthan gum, taurine, carrageenan, choline Chloride, vitamins, vitamin E supplement, thiamine mononitrate (vitamin B-1), niacin (vitamin B-3), calcium pantothenate (vitamin B-5), vitamin A supplement, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (vitamin K), pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B-6), riboflavin supplement (vitamin B-2), vitamin B-12 supplement, biotin (vitamin B-7), folic acid (vitamin B-9), vitamin D-3 supplement, salt.
There are many types of corn. The corn that is used for ethanol is not the same corn you get at the supermarket. Same with the corn that's used as animal feed. I guess we could eat it, but...
Please don't bring in politics here. You could have written that same idea in a very different way to make the same point.
Since this is tangentially becoming a baby formula thread…: (the answers to the rhetorical question are interesting as well
Except that claim is patently false. Off the top of my head I am pretty sure Nestle is the worlds largest.
ETA: quick google search of top 10 manufacturers of infant formula: only 2 of the top 10 are USA based
World's Top 10 Infant Formula Manufacturers - Verified Market Research
World's Top 10 infant formula manufacturers are Nestle, Danone, Reckitt Benckiser, Abbott Nutrition, FrieslandCampina, Bellamy's Organic, Kraft Heinz, HiPP, Perrigo and Arla Foodswww.verifiedmarketresearch.com