Abbott Laboratories has agreed to pay more than $384 million to settle allegations that it manufactured infant formula under conditions that posed a risk of contamination and then sold the products to federal and state programs, the U.S. Justice Department said on Monday.
The settlement relates to a lawsuit originally filed by three whistleblower employees following a 2022 recall of Abbott baby formula products after complaints that they were contaminated with a potentially deadly bacterium. The Department of Justice partially intervened last year, filing a complaint in intervention in November.
Specifically, Abbott was accused of knowingly manufacturing infant formula at its Sturgis, Michigan, facility in an “environment that put the products at unacceptable risk of microorganism contamination,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a Sept. 14 statement….