There is huge demand in China now for baby formula as the one child policy has ended. Australia appears to have found itself caught in the middle, with people buying bulk and selling it in China for up to 4 times the price. A lot of online sales too.
Apart from what looks like a black market importation racket of baby formula (yes you read that sentence right) the result has seen Australian selling of formula triple this year, along with huge shortages of baby formula (yes you read that right too).
The latest mother outrage was this story, where a Woolworths supermarket in Melbourne let a bulk buy of trolley loads through the supermarket checkout. A mother who witnessed this outrage decided to blow the lid on this particular bulk buy racket, taking incriminating pictures of the "illegal" buy up, and posting them on the internet in abject horror. Yes, this was definitely an illegal operation and needed to be shut down!
Yes, the world has officially gone mad when mothers are battling over baby formula. Yes I'm a bloke, and yes I may be out on a limb here in suggesting this and be labelled some kind of extremist misogynist (I'm not; my wife and I were together for 17 years) but I do wonder about breastfeeding...... Just saying ladies.
*waits for the female apocalyptic reaction?*
Mrs Hay posted the images on a Facebook group for local mothers soon after the incident which occurred at Epping Plaza in Melbourne last Saturday afternoon.Yes folks, this is the level of suburban death we've reached now in Australia. Fighting over baby formula. I'm sure the diggers would be proud. *sheesh*
The photo is on the verge of hitting viral status. Another Facebook group member posted the photo to Woolworths' page, saying: "We are in a formula shortage and you are allowing this?! What happened to four tins maximum per person? Look at the empty crate in the picture?!"
That post has since gained nearly 6000 likes, 2500 shares and 2400 comments. Woolworths said in one of those comments it would investigate.
"When I saw them buying everything, I thought: 'Oh my god, it's actually happening, here it is'. Another customer walked past me and said: 'I can't believe that's actually happening', and I was like: 'I know'," Mrs Hay said.
Only two weeks earlier Mrs Hay had been struggling to find tins of S26 formula. She eventually located tins at a shop four hours away and had to ask her mother to buy them.
She said the employee serving the group at the checkout looked young and unaware of the store's four-tin limit.
If the group flogs all the tins on the e-commerce website Taobao.com, they could earn about $1500, since each tin sells for two to three times the Australian retail price.
Earlier on Monday, Fairfax Media reported that Woolworths was facing growing consumer pressure to nationalise and strictly enforce a four-tin limit.
At present, the limit is eight tins per customer. But stores are imposing whatever limit they see fit, or none at all. sydneymorningherald
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