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Fact check: Baby formula conspiracy theory based on falsehoods

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The claim: Baby formula shortage occurred within two weeks of Pfizer saying not to breastfeed and Bill Gates promoting artificial breast milk technology

As parents continue to struggle with a severe shortage of baby formula in the U.S., a May 11 tweet has gone viral for noting events purportedly related to infant feeding. It reads:

Pfizer says do not breast feed.

Baby formula runs scarce.

Bill Gates promotes new artificial breast milk technology.

All within 2 weeks.

The tweet gained about 30,000 retweets and 79,000 likes in a matter of days, and dozens of Facebook users shared screenshots of the post about COVID-19 vaccine developer Pfizer and billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates. 

“Just a coincidence, nothing going on here,” reads one iteration of the claim in a Facebook post from Just Another Anarchy Page, which was shared more than 700 times in two weeks.

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Yet two out of three of the events comprising this “coincidence” didn’t happen in the first place.

Pfizer did not discourage breastfeeding in recent weeks, despite a persistent rumor claiming it did. And while a fund founded by Gates invested in an artificial breastmilk startup in 2020, Gates himself has never promoted the company. The product is not on the market and will not be for several years.

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USA TODAY reached out to Jones and other users who shared the claim for comment.

Katherine Gibson-Haynes, top, helps distribute infant formula during a baby formula drive May 14, 2022, in Houston, Texas. Parents seeking baby formula are running into bare supermarket and pharmacy shelves in part because of ongoing supply disruptions and a safety recall.

Pfizer didn’t tell women to avoid breastfeeding

The formula shortage began with supply chain issues late last year, but it was significantly worsened when suspected bacterial contamination caused major producer Abbott Nutrition to halt production for several weeks while undergoing an investigation by the Food & Drug Administration. 

The post suggests the shortage of breastmilk alternatives coincided with a warning against breastfeeding from Pfizer. But there’s no evidence this is true.

Pfizer did not release any such statement in recent months, USA TODAY found. Users who shared the claim did not provide evidence to support it. 

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The rumor likely stems from viral but false claims that a document supposedly from Pfizer said breastfeeding mothers should not take the vaccine.

As USA TODAY reported, the document these claims were based on was not written by Pfizer and does not include recent information. Instead, it was published by a U.K. government agency in December 2020, before data on the reaction of pregnant and breastfeeding women to the vaccine were available.

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Vaccination has been found safe for mothers-to-be and nursing newborns, as USA TODAY has reported. 

Infant formula is stacked on a table during a baby formula drive to help with the shortage May 14, 2022, in Houston.

Gates’ fund invested in Biomilq long before the shortage, and Gates has not publicly promoted the company

Contrary to the post’s claim, Gates has not publicly promoted an artificial breastmilk technology company in recent weeks, according to USA TODAY’s searches of news articles about Gates as well as his Twitter feed.

Gates is indirectly invested in artificial breastmilk startup BIOMILQ via Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate-change-focused investment firm that Gates founded in 2016, as USA TODAY reported.  

The fund invested $3.5 million in BIOMILQ in late 2020, long before the baby formula shortage began.

BIOMILQ is a small part of Breakthrough Energy’s portfolio. The fund has raised more than $2 billion and invested in more than 50 companies since its founding, its website says. And the company is unlikely to benefit from the timing of baby formula shortage given its stage of development.

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Co-founder Leila Strickland told CNN this month that it will still take at least three to five years to obtain regulatory approval and bring the product to market. Formulas like Similac, on the other hand, are expected to reach shelves in around six to eight weeks. 

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that the current baby formula shortage occurred within two weeks of Pfizer saying not to breastfeed and Gates promoting artificial breast milk technology. There is an ongoing baby formula shortage, as the claim suggests, but it’s not true that the other two events occurred within any two-week span. Pfizer did not recently recommend that women avoid breastfeeding, and the “new artificial breast milk technology” in which Bill Gates invested several years ago will not be on the market for another three to five years. We found no evidence Gates has publicly promoted it, recently or otherwise.

Our fact-check sources:

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This article has been archived for your research. The original version from USA TODAY can be found here.

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