By David Fleet
Editor
As the out-of-stock rate for baby formula increases nationwide, the Ortonville Community Emergency Fund, which provides food assistance locally, says donations are welcome to supply the Oxford Pregnancy Center.
“Here in our community we provide formula to just a few families with infants,” said Karyn Milligan, OCEF Food Pantry Coordinator. “Any donations of baby formula or funds go to the Oxford Pregnancy Center where the need is greater.”

According to Tysons, Va.-based Datasembly, the leading provider of real-time product pricing, promotions, and assortment data for retailers and CPG, has released custom data that reveals baby formula out-of-stock rates continue to climb.
As of May 8, the nation-wide out-of-stock baby formula is now at 43 percent.
“This issue has been compounded by supply chain challenges, product recalls and historic inflation,” said Ben Reich, CEO of Datasembly. The category started to see stocking challenges beginning in July 2021, and the situation has continued to worsen into 2022.”
Datasembly’s real-time hyper-local data analysis shows that baby formula stock was relatively stable for the first half of 2021, with out-of-stock (OOS) fluctuation between 2-8 percent. The OOS detail shows that in April 2022 baby formula shortages hit 30 percent and jumped to 40 percent at the end of month.