Business

Many people occasionally travel for work.
But for some, travel is at the heart of their jobs.

CNBC Travel spoke with people from four industries about occupations where working from home — or an office for that matter — isn’t an option.

A year of travel

Name: Sebastian ModakJob: Former New York Times “52 Places Traveler”
Modak was one of 13,000 people who applied for a role that sent one person to every destination on The New York Times’ “Places to Go” list in 2018 — the first year the newspaper hired for the position. 
He didn’t get the job.
“A year later I figured, why not give it a shot again,” he said. “This time it worked out!”

As the “52 Places Traveler” for 2019, Modak traveled to a new destination every week — from Bulgaria to Qatar and Uzbekistan to Vietnam — in a year he described as both thrilling and grueling.
“I often say it was one of the greatest experiences of my life … but also the hardest,” he said.  “I didn’t have a day off for a whole year, and the constant pressure of deadlines was hard to cope with.”

Modak, who is now the editor-at-large for travel publisher Lonely Planet, said his advice for aspiring travel writers is to admit you know nothing. “The first step to finding and telling compelling travel stories is asking questions and admitting that you have so much to learn.”
Source: Sebastian Modak

Modak said the job requires someone who can “do it all,” from writing articles and posting on social media to shooting photographs and videos, he said.
“It was a lot!” he said. “Besides storytelling skills, they were looking for someone with the stamina to get through the whole year.”
He mostly credits luck for getting the job, but he said he believes his upbringing and enthusiasm for travel helped. Modak’s father is from India, and his mother is Colombian, he said, so “as a cultural compromise, they essentially decided to move constantly.” As a result, he grew up in places like Hong Kong, Australia, India and Indonesia, he said.
Modak said the job — which has been heralded as the quintessential “dream job” — was exhausting, stressful and even scary at times, yet one of constant growth and adventure.
“I wouldn’t take it back for the world,” he said. “It blew my mind wide open, introduced me to people on six continents … and cemented my love for going to a place and seeking out a story.”

‘Humanitarian hero’

Name: Sandra BlackJob: Communications specialist for the United Nations
Black’s job doesn’t take her to typical travel spots, and her work trips are anything but overnighters.
Since 2008, she’s lived and worked in Senegal, East Timor, the Central African Republic, Iraq and, more recently, Mozambique, in roles that last from several months to years.
“Each [place] has its cultural highlights and warmth,” she said, while noting that living “where movement is restricted due to security concerns” is the most challenging part.
Since October 2021, Black has handled external communications for the Mozambique office of the United Nations Populations Fund, an agency of the U.N. that focuses on reproductive health and rights and which is entirely funded by donations, according to its website.          
“I personally feel driven to support those in greatest need,” she said.

Sandra Black (left) with women participating in a carpet-making project in a resettlement site after Cyclone Idai hit Mozambique in 2019.
Source: IOM/ Alfoso Pequeno

Black wrote about people who were displaced by Cyclone Idai in 2019 — one of the worst hurricanes on record to hit Africa — while working for the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration. She recalled meeting a woman named Sarah who climbed up a tree with her baby after her house collapsed from flooding. The woman said she was rescued seven days later.  
Originally from New York, Black speaks French, Spanish, Portuguese and a basic level of Wolof, the national language of Senegal, and Tetum, a language spoken on East Timor. She said her language abilities are partly why she’s been urgently deployed to cover humanitarian crises.
“At night, I type until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer, and then start again at 6am the next day,” she said in an interview for the U.N.’s “humanitarian hero” campaign in 2014.
“The most meaningful part of humanitarian communications is to provide a platform for people affected by conflict and natural disasters to tell their stories,” she said. “Many sincerely want the world to know what happened to them and their communities.”

From chef to captain

Name: Tony StewartJob: Yacht captain
Stewart said he expects to travel for nine months in 2022 at the helm of the 130-foot tri-deck “All Inn” motor yacht. He’s already moved from the Caribbean to Central America and Mexico. From the West Coast of the United States, he’ll go to British Columbia’s Inside Passage and on to southeast Alaska, then fly to Florida and finish the year in the Bahamas, he said. 
That’s slightly longer than a “typical year,” he said, partly because of an increase in charter business this year, he said. 
Stewart said he started out in the yachting industry as a chef in 1998, and “immediately fell in love with the lifestyle, work and travel.” After a year and a half of cooking, Stewart made a career switch.

Tony Stewart has captained three motor yachts since 2006, he said, including the 130-foot Westport tri-deck yacht named “All Inn.”
Source: Fraser Yachts

“I decided I wanted to work towards getting my license and become a captain, at which point I took a job as [a] deckhand and started my journey,” he said.
The job requires strong problem-solving skills, organization and a high tolerance for stress, said Stewart. Captains do “a little bit of everything,” he said, from trip planning and accounting to “HR duties” for the crew and golf bookings for guests.
As to whether it’s a dream job — “it absolutely is,” said Stewart.
“We endure long days, and sometimes weeks without days off,” he said, but “I couldn’t imagine doing this … and not loving it.”

Italian villa expert

Name: Amy RopnerJob: Head of villas at the U.K.-based luxury travel and villas company Red Savannah
Of the 300 villas that Red Savannah works with, about 120 are in Italy, said Ropner. She estimates she’s visited about 80% to 90% of them.
She travels from London to Italy to assess the company’s collection of “exceptionally high-end” villas and to evaluate new homes to add to the company’s roster, she said. During a recent trip, she traveled from Milan to Lake Como, down to Tuscany, then further south to the towns of Amalfi and Positano, she said. Her next trip is to Puglia, she said, “because it’s beautiful and rugged and really popular at the moment.”

Red Savannah’s Amy Ropner said her work mainly focuses on Italian villas, but also rental homes in Greece, Spain and the Caribbean. “I’m always ready to go at any point … we’re always moving.”
Source: Red Savannah

Some 90% of the houses are privately owned, said Ropner. She meets owners and analyzes everything from the size of the pool decks to the beds (“there’s a difference between a British king and an American king”).
Most bookings involve children, so she checks that staircases and balconies are safe for all ages; if not, the company notes this on the website, she said.
“We need to [know] whether there’s cats on the estate, whether it’s down a dirt track … which obviously takes a little bit longer to get to … where the sun rises, where the sun sets,” she said.  
Ropner often stays in the villas, which rent for $5,000 to $200,000 per week, she said. She also explores local areas, so she can advise on restaurants, boat rentals and new services such as e-bike trips and gelato-making classes, she said.  
“I think people think it’s all glamorous [but] it’s a lot of work,” she said, noting that she once saw 50 villas in one trip.
“It is glamorous,” she said, “but it also can be tiring.” More

There were 573 more billionaires in the world by March 2022 than in 2020, when the pandemic began, Oxfam said in a brief on Monday.
On top of that, it estimated that 263 million people could be pushed into extreme levels of poverty in 2022.
The organization pointed out that billionaires are now collectively worth $12.7 trillion — equal to nearly 14% of global gross domestic product.

Olga Shumytskaya | Moment | Getty Images

A new billionaire emerged every 30 hours during the Covid-19 pandemic, and nearly a million could fall into extreme poverty at around the same rate in 2022. Those are the sobering statistics recently released by Oxfam.
There were 573 more billionaires in the world by March 2022 than in 2020, when the pandemic began, the global charity said in a brief that was published on Monday, the first day of the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland. That equates to one new billionaire every 30 hours, Oxfam said.

On top of that, it estimated that 263 million people could be pushed into extreme levels of poverty in 2022 because of the pandemic, growing global inequality and rising food prices that have been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. That’s the equivalent of nearly a million people every 33 hours, Oxfam said.
The organization pointed out that billionaires were collectively worth $12.7 trillion as of March. In 2021, billionaire wealth represented the equivalent of nearly 14% of global gross domestic product.
Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International, said that billionaires were arriving at the Davos summit to “celebrate an incredible surge in their fortunes.”
“The pandemic and now the steep increases in food and energy prices have, simply put, been a bonanza for them,” she said.
“Meanwhile, decades of progress on extreme poverty are now in reverse and millions of people are facing impossible rises in the cost of simply staying alive,” Bucher added.

Pandemic windfalls

Honing in on soaring wealth in specific business sectors, Oxfam said the fortunes of food and energy billionaires rose by $453 billion in the last two years, equating to $1 billion every two days.
For instance, food giant Cargill was reported to be one of four companies that control more than 70% of global agricultural market, Oxfam said. The corporation, owned by the Cargill family, generated a net income of nearly $5 billion last year — the biggest profit in its history. There are now 12 billionaires in the Cargill family alone, it said, up from eight prior to the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Oxfam said the pandemic created 40 new billionaires in the pharmaceuticals sector. The billionaires are those who profited from their companies’ monopolies over vaccines, treatments, tests and personal protective equipment.
In order to prevent even starker wealth inequality, and to support people with rising food and energy costs, Oxfam recommended that governments impose one-off solidarity taxes on the pandemic windfalls of billionaires.

Ending ‘crisis profiteering’?

The charity also suggested that governments end “crisis profiteering” by introducing a 90% temporary excess profit tax on the windfalls generated by big corporations across all sectors.
Oxfam also proposed a permanent tax to rein in extreme wealth, monopoly power and the higher carbon emissions produced by the super-rich.
It said that an annual wealth tax starting at 2% on millionaires and 5% on billionaires could generate $2.52 trillion a year. That would be enough to lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty, make enough vaccines for the global population, as well as deliver universal health care and social protection for those living in low and lower-middle income countries.
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FedEx Express has secured a government contract to bring another international shipment of infant formula to the U.S. on Wednesday, NBC News reported.
The move is meant to address a critical shortage of baby formula in the U.S.
Regulators are increasing baby formula imports from other countries to help. The first shipment, carrying 78,000 pounds of specialty infant formula, arrived Sunday.

Pallets of Nestle Health Science Alfamino Infant and Alfamino Junior formula are unloaded from a US military aircraft at Indianapolis International Airport in Indianapolis, Indiana, US, on Sunday, May 22, 2022.
Kaiti Sullivan | Bloomberg | Getty Images

FedEx Express has secured a government contract to bring another shipment of infant formula to the U.S. on Wednesday, NBC News reported.
The Express plane will fly Nestlé baby formula from Ramstein Air Base in Germany to Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C. From there, the formula will be transported to a Nestlé facility in Pennsylvania. It’s unclear how much formula the plane will carry.

The move is meant to address a critical shortage of baby formula in the United States after top formula maker Abbott Laboratories closed a manufacturing plant following reports of bacterial infections in four infants.
Abbott said it would take about two weeks to reopen the plant and up to eight weeks for products to hit the shelves nationwide. That’s left a wide gap for scores of parents across the nation.
In an effort to ease the burden, the Food and Drug Administration is increasing baby formula imports from other countries. Dubbed “Operation Fly Formula,” the first shipment, carrying 78,000 pounds of specialty infant formula, arrived Sunday.

Empty shelves show a shortage of baby formula at a Target store in San Antonio, Texas, May 10, 2022.
Kaylee Greenlee Beal | Reuters

President Joe Biden has also invoked the Defense Production Act to increase baby formula manufacturing. His administration is seeking to stock shelves with 1.5 million containers of Nestle specialty infant formula.

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SpaceX is raising a massive round of fresh funding, CNBC has learned, sending the private company’s valuation to about $127 billion.
The space venture is looking to bring in up to $1.725 billion in new capital, at a price of $70 per share, according to a company-wide email on Friday obtained by CNBC.
SpaceX’s valuation has soared in the last few years as it raised billions to fund work on two capital-intensive projects: Starship and Starlink.

A Falcon 9 rocket launches a batch of Starlink satellites to orbit on April 29, 2022.

SpaceX is raising a massive round of fresh funding, CNBC has learned, sending the private company’s valuation to about $127 billion.
The space venture is looking to bring in up to $1.725 billion in new capital, at a price of $70 per share, according to a company-wide email on Friday obtained by CNBC. Notably, SpaceX split its stock price 10-for-1 in February, which reduced the common stock to $56 a share – with the new valuation representing a 25% increase.

SpaceX is also conducting a secondary sale to company insiders and existing shareholders for up to $750 million in common stock. The company conducts these secondary offerings regularly, as a way for long-time stockholders to sell equity, given that SpaceX remains private more than 20 years since its founding.
Details of the cash infusion were not previously reported. The New York Post first reported SpaceX was looking to bring in more funding, and noted, citing unnamed sources, that the capital increase has seen “tepid demand” so far.
The company’s valuation has soared in the last few years as SpaceX has raised billions to fund work on two capital-intensive projects: the next generation rocket Starship and its global satellite internet network Starlink.
The company’s funding round comes as founder and CEO Elon Musk is embroiled in sexual harassment allegations reportedly from a former SpaceX jet flight attendant. The billionaire has denied the claims made against him as “wild accusations.” The flight attendant reportedly did not sue SpaceX, and instead reached a $250,000 severance agreement in 2018.

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Fans are eager to get out and experience live sports, even as inflation keeps rising everywhere.
Demand for sports attendance is usually “unresponsive to price changes,” said Dennis Coates, a sports economics professor.
“Work hard, play hard,” said one fan at a recent NBA playoff game. “I work so I can spend.”

People are changing their spending habits as prices surge at rates not seen in four decades, making choices that favor experiences. That means big demand for live sports.
Demand for sports attendance is usually “unresponsive to price changes,” said Dennis Coates, a sports economics professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “Good times, bad times, high prices — it doesn’t change consumers’ behavior” around spending on sports.

Now that pandemic restrictions are easing, even as cases remain elevated in several places, people are looking to get out more. “I think people want high-end experiences, want to get out, and they’ve been pent-up for several years now,” Ari Emanuel, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship owner Endeavor, said recently on CNBC. “They want to live life a little bit.”
That was illustrated earlier this month, when ticket prices for upcoming 2022 NFL games were averaging $307 immediately following the release of the league’s schedule, said secondary market platform SeatGeek. Though that price is down from an average of $411 out of the gate last year, it’s higher than the average of $305 in 2020, when attendance was restricted due to Covid. The average in 2019, before the disease gripped the globe, was $258. Ticket prices reflect demand, and they usually fluctuate throughout the season.
As demand surges, teams and organizations are raising prices. A concession menu for the PGA Championship this week showed $18 beers. Spending rates per fan grew for the NFL and the NBA in their most recent seasons, according to the Fan Cost Index produced by Team Marketing Report, a sports marketing firm in Chicago. The index calculates what it would cost for nonpremium seats, two beers, four sodas, two hot dogs, merchandise and parking costs, according to the firm’s CEO, Chris Hartweg.
This spring, fans are packing arenas for the NHL and NBA playoffs. Hugo Figueroa, 29, said he paid $1,200 for three tickets to a playoff game between the Boston Celtics and the Brooklyn Nets.
“Work hard, play hard,” Figueroa told CNBC last month as he stood inside the Nets’ fan shop at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. He said he purchased a beer at the game but “ate before I got here because I didn’t want to pay for food.” Concessions are typically marked up higher at sports and entertainment venues than at typical restaurants and food courts.

Figueroa said he works two jobs, so he can contend with rising prices. “I work so I can spend,” he said.

Sports fans shop at the Brooklyn Nets Fan shop at Barclays Center.
Jabari Young | CNBC

Strong consumer balance sheets, bolstered in part by previous Covid stimulus payments and support programs, are helping people afford to pay more on sports, according to Judd Cramer, a sports economist at Harvard University who served in President Barack Obama’s administration.
“It seems like consumers have been able to deal with it,” Cramer said. “When I look back historically, we’ve had low inflation for a long while — but during the recession in the early 1980s, when GDP declined, sports spending was actually strong.”
If ticket prices get too high for some fans, “there’s another person who is there” to purchase inventory, Cramer said.
Emily Ushko, 32, told CNBC she has “a little bit of disposable income” and wants to spend it on sports. She said she paid over $600 for two tickets for a Nets-Celtics playoff game last month.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime type of thing,” Ushko said. “You want to see these players live, get the feel for the audience and experience it.”

In this Oct. 4, 2020 file photo is an empty Levi’s Stadium before an NFL football game.
Tony Avelar | AP

Yet while consumers have remained resilient in the face of booming inflation, there are concerns that the U.S. economy could be headed for a recession, forcing some middle- and working-class fans to make tougher choices about spending.
“People could get hurt a little bit,” Harvard’s Cramer said.
Hartweg of Team Marketing Report warned more consumers could eventually “tap the brakes” if prices for essential items increase.
Figueroa, the NBA fan, said he “would reconsider coming” to the Barclays Center next season if inflation persists.
Still, there are fans who will keep coming, even if prices keep going up and economic uncertainty rises. Philadelphia fan Kevin Washington, 58, and his wife, Tawana, 53, have been Sixers season ticket-holders for five years and don’t want to lose their seats.
“Never entered my mind,” Washington said. “You just have to budget a little better. You still need some enjoyment. You need some time away from the reality of life.”
A recession has yet to materialize, however, and it might not happen at all. It’ll take a “huge catastrophe” with high unemployment to cause another slowdown, said Coates, the sports economics professor. The unemployment rate stands at 3.6%.
“If it’s a normal size recession,” he said, “I think people ride it out for the most part.”

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Dwyane Wade still moves fast but this time it’s off the basketball court.
The retired three-time NBA champion for the Miami Heat has investments in media companies and consumer products. Wade, 40, has purchased an equity stake in two sports teams, the NBA’s Utah Jazz in April 2021 and in January 2022 joined Blackstone executive David Blitzer as a co-owner of MLS club Real Salt Lake.

He’s hosting a TV show on TBS, “The Cube,” and co-founded Budweiser Zero, the iconic brand’s entry into nonalcoholic beer. And this doesn’t even touch on the deals he made during his playing days in South Florida.
More from Invest in You:How to save $1 million for retirement if you make $90,000 a yearMeet a human trafficking survivor who built her own business with $400How to get a free pair of Nike sneakers and other life hacks
Wade retired from basketball in 2019 and earned nearly $200 million during his 16-year NBA career, according to Spotrac, a website that monitors sports contacts. 
With such financial success, Wade has learned how to make strategic financial decisions. Watch the video to learn about Wade’s three keys to managing his money.
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An estimated 42,915 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2021, a 10.5% increase from 2020 and the highest rate since 2005, according to federal data.
Experts say the increase stems from a combination of factors including reckless or distracted driving as well as record levels of vehicle performance and weight.
Compared to 2019, fatality rates have risen 18%.

Cars and trucks are wedged together after a deadly multi-vehicle pileup on the ice covered I-35 in a still image from video in Fort Worth, Texas, February 11, 2021.
NBC5 | via Reuters

New vehicles on sale in the U.S. today are the safest and most advanced ever made, yet roadway fatalities last year reached their highest level in 16 years.
The problem is complex: It’s a combination of reckless or distracted driving, largely due to cellphone usage; increased sales of trucks and SUVs; and higher performance of vehicles, among other factors. Plus, the expected proliferation of electric vehicles, with weighty batteries and record performance may not help the issue going forward.

“We have a conflicting culture in America around cars,” said Michael Brooks, acting executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a consumer-advocacy nonprofit. “People want these flashy, big ticket items and we want to be able to do what we want in our cars, but at the same time, we’re killing each other at a rate (nearly) higher than ever before, and something needs to be done.”
An estimated 42,915 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2021, a 10.5% increase from the 38,824 fatalities in 2020 and the highest rate since 2005, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a division of the Department of Transportation.
Compared to 2019, fatality rates have increased 18% — the highest two-year increase since 1946, when crashes increased 37.6% over 1944 levels, according to NHTSA data analyzed by CNBC.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called the situation “a crisis on America’s roadways that we must address together,” while touting efforts by the Biden administration to reverse the deadly trend.
But turning around the fatality rate on U.S. roadways isn’t an easy problem to fix.

For one thing, safety watchdog NHTSA is infamously slow to adopt new guidelines or laws. And the vehicles consumers are buying now — including increasingly popular electric ones — are faster and heavier than current cars, potentially posing a greater risk to pedestrians and people in older and smaller vehicles.

Weight and performance

Both the weight and horsepower of vehicles are estimated to be at all-time highs, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Those record numbers are particularly concerning to safety advocates. “The heavier the vehicle is and the higher the vehicle is, the more likely it’s going to kill a pedestrian and the more likely it’s not going to be compatible with the little sedan and do some serious damage,” Brooks said.
The EPA reports the average horsepower of vehicles has steadily increased for more than a decade and is up nearly 80% compared with 1975. Preliminary data for the 2021 model year reached an average of 246 horsepower, with some newer performance ones topping 700 horsepower or more.
The average weight has risen, too, as sales of trucks have grown in recent years, and reached a record of more than 4,100 pounds in the 2021 model year, according to the EPA.
While large trucks and SUVs can have luxury price tags and high-tech safety features, their added weight may be particularly dangerous to pedestrians. Such vehicles are more lethal to pedestrians than cars and are substantially more likely to hit pedestrians when making turns, according to studies from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“The higher ride height in general gives you a longer view down the road, but one of the trade-offs, especially in a big vehicle, is the fact that there is a portion of the road immediately in front of your vehicle which is blind to you,” said David Zuby, chief research officer at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
NHTSA estimates more than 7,300 pedestrians were killed by motor vehicles in 2021, a 13% increase compared with the previous year.
“The bigger the vehicle, the heavier they are, the more deadly they are during a crash, especially with vulnerable road users like pedestrians and bicyclists,” said Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. “The trend to drive bigger, heavier trucks is to the detriment of everyone outside of the vehicle.”
Electric vehicles pose their own added risk to U.S. roadways. EVs often weigh more than their internal combustion engine counterparts due to the heft of their batteries. Conversely, though, many newer EVs do come equipped with the newest safety technologies.
The performance is also higher in many EVs. For example, the over 9,000-pound Hummer EV, which is more than double the weight of an average vehicle, has a Watts to Freedom, or WTF, mode that launches the truck 0-60 mph in about three seconds. The feature can be used anywhere. That’s an acceleration time previously exclusive to sports cars.
And safety experts are still studying whether EVs catch fire more or less often than traditional vehicles.

Changing behaviors

The research shows that it’s not just the vehicles that are changing.
Americans collectively drove the fewest cumulative miles in 18 years in 2020 when coronavirus lockdowns curtailed travel, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
Many assumed that fewer miles driven would mean fewer accidents. But in fact drivers were more careless and reckless, and fatalities rose, according to officials and federal data.
Likewise for 2021, a higher number of fatalities corresponded with an increase of about 325 billion miles driven, or about 11.2%, compared with 2020, according to preliminary data reported by the FHA.
Despite the additional miles traveled, the fatality rate based on miles driven remained about the same from 2020. Estimates put the fatality rate for 2021 at 1.33 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, compared with 1.34 fatalities the previous year.
Experts say to reverse the fatality trend there needs to be a combination of regulatory and behavioral changes.
Simple driver-based changes, like traveling at lower speeds or buckling up, could help. The NHTSA reports fatalities of unrestrained occupants have increased nearly 21% since 2019.
“It looks like the major component of this rising fatalities is very behavioral, but that doesn’t mean we can’t stop it. We just have to be willing to,” Brooks said.
Vehicle-safety advocates also say standardizing new technologies such as automatic emergency braking and blind-spot monitoring can assist in lowering crashes and fatalities. The majority of fatalities involve vehicles that are 10 years or older and aren’t equipped with the newest safety technologies.
“It takes a while for vehicles with new technologies to infiltrate the population,” Chase said. “That’s why it’s so important that there be a requirement that these technologies be included as standard equipment in new cars, and not just options and in higher-end vehicles, as they are now.”

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Abbott Laboratories CEO Robert Ford apologized in a new Washington Post op-ed for his company’s role in a nationwide shortage of baby formula.
The shortage has moved Congress and the Biden administration to take emergency actions to alleviate it.
The apology came hours after President Joe Biden signed into law the newly passed Access to Baby Formula Act.

The Abbott manufacturing facility in Sturgis, Michigan, on May 13, 2022.
Jeff Kowalsky | AFP | Getty Images

Abbott Laboratories CEO Robert Ford apologized Saturday in a new op-ed for his company’s role in a nationwide shortage of baby formula, which this week moved Congress and the Biden administration to take emergency actions to alleviate it.
Ford also detailed steps the company is taking to stem the shortage, and vowed, “We are making significant investments to ensure this never happens again.”

Ford’s apology in a Washington Post op-ed noted that the shortage was sparked by the company’s recall in February of formula made at Abbott Nutrition’s plant in Sturgis, Michigan, after federal health officials found a potentially deadly bacteria there. The plant was responsible for producing up to 25% of the nation’s baby formula.
“We at Abbott take great pride in helping people with diabetes check their glucose, providing critical coronavirus testing and making lifesaving heart devices,” Ford wrote in the op-ed.
“And yes, we take great pride in manufacturing nutrition and formula to feed America’s infants, including our most vulnerable,” Ford wrote. “But the past few months have distressed us as they have you, and so I want to say: We’re sorry to every family we’ve let down since our voluntary recall exacerbated our nation’s baby formula shortage.”
Ford wrote that Abbott believed that the voluntary recall “was the right thing to do.”
“We will not take risks when it comes to the health of children,” he wrote.

Four infants who drank formula from the Michigan plant were hospitalized with bacterial infections. Two of the babies died.
But in April, federal health officials told NBC News that the bacterial strains found in those infants did not match strains found at the Abbott facility.
“However, the FDA’s investigation did discover a bacteria in our plant that we will not tolerate. I have high expectations of this company, and we fell short of them,” Ford wrote.
The apology came hours after President Joe Biden signed into law the newly passed Access to Baby Formula Act, which is aimed at making it easier for families eligible for the federal WIC program to buy formula. WIC is formally known as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.
Biden on Wednesday invoked the Defense Production Act to deal with the formula shortage, requiring suppliers to ship ingredients to baby formula manufacturers before any other companies who may have ordered the same products.
On Sunday, U.S. military aircraft are scheduled to fly 132 pallets of Nestle baby formula to Indianapolis, Indiana, from the Ramstein Air Base in German. More formula is expected to be flown on U.S military planes later.
In his op-ed Saturday, Ford outlined the steps Abbott has taken in response to the shortage, writing that he knew “some children have been hospitalized because of the lack of EleCare, a specialized formula for children who cannot digest other formulas and milks.”
“Given their unique needs, children who lose access to it can require medical supervision until the formula is returned to the shelves,” Ford wrote. “I will not mince words — this is tragic and heartbreaking, and it is consuming my thoughts and those of my colleagues.”

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Ford said Abbott will “prioritize EleCare when manufacturing resumes and get that out the door first,” and in the meantime has established a $5 million fund for families affected by the lack of EleCare with medical and living expenses.
He also wrote that consumers “can feel safe buying any Abbott product you find on the store shelves.”
“What is available has passed rigorous inspections and is ready for your babies,” he wrote.
Ford noted that Abbott converted production lines for its adult nutrition products at a plant in Columbus, Ohio, “to prioritize production of ready-to-feed liquid infant formula.”
“And we have been air-shipping millions of cans of our most widely used powdered infant formula from an FDA-approved facility in Ireland to the United States since the recall,” he wrote.
Ford said Abbott expects to restart the Sturgis plan in the first week of June, after entering into a consent degree with the federal Food and Drug Administration.
He wrote that after the plant reopens, it will take between six to eight weeks before formula from the facility is available on store shelves.
But he also said, “When we are operating our Michigan facility at full capacity, we will more than double our current production of powdered infant formula for the United States.”
“By the end of June, we will be supplying more formula to Americans than we were in January before the recall.
“These steps we’re taking won’t end the struggles of families today,” Ford wrote. “Some solutions will take weeks, others will take longer, but we will not rest until it is done. I will not rest. I want everyone to trust us to do what is right, and I know that must be earned back.”
Read the complete Washington Post op-ed here.

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