Washington women and their babies could lose access to benefits under a key nutrition program in the case of a prolonged federal government shutdown.

The Women, Infants and Children program, or WIC, has about two weeks’ worth of funding to keep feeding low-income Washingtonians, according to the state Department of Health. But if participation rises beyond current levels, that could be more like one week.

Nicole Flateboe, executive director of Nutrition First, the state’s WIC association, pegged the available contingency funding on Tuesday as lasting one week.

She called money running out a “disaster.”

“We will have babies being born to low-income women who will not have any breastfeeding support, and they will have no way to get infant formula if they’re not breastfeeding,” Flateboe s

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