I have written the letters. I have submitted the parents’ testimony. I have printed the parents’ own words and asked members of the House and Senate to read them. Now I am going to hand every member of Congress something they can hold in one hand — a little plastic baby bottle with a message rolled up inside it.

It is a compressed t-shirt, shaped like an infant’s bottle. On the front it says what I have been saying for months: For Babies’ Sake, Test for Botulism in Infant Formula. Underneath, it names the bill — H.R. 7867, the Infant Formula Safety Modernization Act of 2026 — and the three things that bill delivers: stronger standards, modern testing, and healthier babies. And at the bottom, the whole point in six words: Because every baby deserves a safe start.

I have ordered enough. In the coming month my colleagues and I will be handing them out — on the Hill, at hearings, wherever we can put one in a member’s hand. It is a small thing. A shirt in a bottle is not a vote. But it is a reminder, and reminders matter when the record already tells you everything you need to know.

Here is what the record tells you. In the last year, two powdered infant formulas gave babies botulism. ByHeart’s Whole Nutrition formula sickened 48 infants across 17 states — the largest infant botulism outbreak in this country’s history. Months later, Nara Organics’ Whole Milk Organic formula sickened three more, in California, Pennsylvania, and Washington. Both were whole-milk powdered formulas. Both, as the FDA’s own traceback now confirms, traced back through the same upstream supply stream — the same milk supplier, the same spray-dryer. The contamination did not strike two unrelated companies by chance. It traveled through one chain the system missed the first time and then missed again.

And the hazard was named in writing before any of it happened. On March 8, 2023 — two years before the first ByHeart baby fell ill — the FDA sent a Call-to-Action letter to the entire powdered infant formula industry, signed by the Commissioner and the Director of the food-safety center, naming Clostridium botulinum by genus and species and telling manufacturers to account for it. The warning was there. The mandatory test was not. That is the hole these babies fell through, and it is the hole H.R. 7867 closes.

This is not a bumper sticker. It is a bill that is already halfway home. The Senate has shown what is possible — on April 29, 2026, the HELP Committee reported the Protect Infant Formula from Contamination Act, S. 272, by a vote of 22 to 0, and the full Senate passed it the same day by unanimous consent. That bill is a real step, but it reaches only the contaminants already on the books. It does not name botulism. H.R. 7867 does — it puts botulism on the testing list, mandates environmental monitoring inside the plant, and holds foreign manufacturers to American standards. The House Subcommittee on Health has already held its hearing. The next step is to act.

That is what I have asked them to do, in writing, and that is where I want to send you now.

To the House, I wrote in support of H.R. 7867, with an appendix of the affected families’ own words — statements many of them wrote for Congress. You can read that letter here: Support for H.R. 7867, the Infant Formula Safety Modernization Act of 2026.

To the Senate HELP Committee, I wrote to give credit for S. 272 and to ask two things: take up companion legislation that closes the botulinum gap S. 272 left open and hold hearings on why the system missed this twice. You can read that letter here: Letter to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Read them. Then read the parents’ statements inside them and picture the two-month-old on feeding tubes and monitors, treated with a plasma-derived antitoxin called BabyBIG because spores germinated in a gut too young to fight them off. That is the picture I want in the room when this bill comes up for a vote.

We turned the Jack in the Box tragedy into a rule that made hamburger safer for a generation of children. We can do the same for the formula we feed newborns. Pass H.R. 7867. Hold the hearings AND invite these parents. And if a little bottle with a t-shirt in it is what it takes to keep these babies in front of you until you do — I have hundreds of them, and I am on my way.

Because every baby deserves a safe start.