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LOWELL, MA – Today, Congresswoman Lori Trahan (MA-03), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, sent a letter to Abbott Laboratories once again requesting a full accounting of the safety and health complaints filed by employees at the company’s Sturgis manufacturing facility before its baby formula recall.

“It was widely reported that a former employee had filed a whistleblower complaint about health issues at Abbott’s plant in Sturgis, Michigan long before Abbott recalled its Similac baby formula and shut down that plant,” Trahan said in her letter. “Abbott’s witness at the hearing, Christopher Calamari, a senior vice president, was asked to quantify the number of internal complaints that Abbott’s employees made about safety and compliance issues. Mr. Calamari did not know the exact number during the hearing but promised that he would subsequently provide that number.”

The letter sent today follows an Abbott executive’s pledge to Trahan to answer the question following a May hearing on the baby formula shortage facing millions of parents across the nation. During the hearing, Trahan questioned the executive about the number of complaints filed by employees at the facility. The executive said he did not have the information on hand and would follow up after the hearing. Yet, in Abbott’s Questions for the Record responses two months after the hearing, the company failed to adequately answer the question.

“Abbott explained that because it had several processes available for employees to report these issues that it could not quantify the total number of complaints,” Trahan continued. “For a company that proclaims to take ‘product safety and compliance issues very seriously’ it is extremely concerning and frankly surprising that it remains at best unable or worse unwilling to account for the number of times employees have issued internal complaints about products that millions of infants consume.”

The new request asks Abbott to tally up safety complaints the company has received dating back to January 1, 2021, through the many different internal processes laid out in its written response. Trahan requested the answers by August 19, 2022.

A digital copy of the letter sent today can be accessed HERE.

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