Earth's Best Withdraws Infant Formula Due to Fishy Smell

I read about Earth’s Best taking their infant formula off the shelves on my friend Arthur’s blog on Babble.com today and freaked out a little because I fed my daughter this formula for months after she stopped nursing when I got pregnant and the taste of my milk changed.

I blogged about the various organic formulas available for The Daily Green, and came out in favor of the dairy-based Earth’s Best formula. My friend Arthur lives in Oregon, so I figured maybe the recall was a local thing, but when I tried to find the formula in the local Brooklyn organic market where I bought tons of it last year the owner told me not only that they didn’t have it, but that they weren’t going to be able to order any more.

I turned to Google, but all I could find was a short story on About.com about how the company took the formula off the shelf because it had a fishy smell that babies didn’t like.

When I called Earth’s Best and asked to speak to someone about the formula recall the woman who answered the phone told me that, first of all, it wasn’t a recall, but a voluntary withdrawal. She gave me an email address and told me to write to a woman in the company who would answer my question, but it's four days later and I still haven’t heard back from her.

I know that the formula we fed our daughter never had a fishy smell, so hopefully everything will be fine, but I’m not surprised to be implicated in a recall drama. This seems to be the year of the recall – from bagged spinach to Chinese toys to infant formula. A lot of things are turning out to be less safe than we assumed. And sometimes safe alternatives don’t even exist. I just spent a couple of weeks searching for a PVC-free mat for the base of my bathtub so that my daughter wouldn’t slip and crack her head, and finally gave up because the potential fall seemed a lot worse than the polyvinyl chloride.

One of the only good side effects of this has been to reduce my instinct towards consumerism. Doubting the safety of everything sure helps keep down the amount of junk you bring into your house. I remember having a moment of panic when we decided to replace all our plastic toys with more natural ones. It seemed like we were potentially going to be depriving our daughter of something. Or, weirdly, even depriving ourselves of something. But her favorite toy by a mile is a wooden wine crate that she likes to sit in.

The plastic hasn’t been missed.

Of course if you have to feed your baby you don’t have the luxury to sit around talking about the virtues of anti-consumerism. You need to know what’s the best option and if there’s anything fishy about that fishy smell. I’ll keep you updated as soon as I hear anything, and if you hear something first please pass it on.