Food that could feed 3.5 million people for a month has reportedly been left to rot in warehouses across the world because of US aid cuts.
Around 60,000 metric tons of supplies meant for hunger stricken regions such as Gaza and Sudan are stuck in warehouses in Houston, Djibouti, Durban and Dubai, according to aid agency sources.
It comes after Donald Trump cut funding to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in January.
Some stocks are due to expire as early as July and are likely to be destroyed or used as animal feed, the sources told Reuters.
The warehouses are run by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), while the food is sourced from US farmers and manufacturers, they said.
The supplies are worth more than $98 million, according to a document reviewed by Reuters, which was shared by an aid official and verified by a US government source as up to date.
That food could sustain over a million people for three months or feed Gaza’s entire population for six weeks, according to World Food Programme data
Around 343 million people are facing acute levels of food insecurity around the globe, says the World Food Programme.
Of those, 1.9 million people are experiencing catastrophic hunger. Most of them are in Gaza and Sudan, but areas of South Sudan, Haiti and Mali are also affected.
The US government has issued waivers for some humanitarian programmes but the food is stuck at the warehouses due to the cancellation of contracts and freezing of funds needed to pay suppliers, shippers and contractors, according to the sources, which include former USAID employees.
They said a proposal to hand the stocks to aid organisations able to distribute them is on hold and awaiting approval from the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance.
Almost all of USAID staff will lose their jobs in July and September, according to a notification submitted to Congress in March.
The former USAID sources said many of the critical staff needed to manage the warehouses or move the supplies will leave in July.
The United States is responsible for at least 38% of all aid contributions across the world, according to the United Nations and distributed$61 billion in foreign assistance last year.
Just over half of this was through USAID.
US food aid includes ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) such as high-energy biscuits and Plumpy’Nut, a peanut-based paste.
Navyn Salem, the founder of Edesia, a US based manufacturer of the paste, said USAID’s termination of transportation contracts had created a 5,000 tonne stockpile that could feed more than 484,000 children.
She said she was hopeful, however, that the product could still be distributed to those who desperately needed it.
Action Against Hunger, a charity that relied on the US for more than 30% of its global budget, said last month the cuts had already led to the deaths of at least six children at its programmes in the Congo, due to projects having to be suspended.
Jeanette Bailey, director of nutrition at the International Rescue Committee, which receives much of its funding from the US, said it was scaling back its programmes following the cuts.
She said the impact of Trump’s cuts was difficult to measure, particularly in places where aid programmes no longer operate.
‘What we do know, though, is that if a child’s in an inpatient stabilization centre and they’re no longer able to access treatment, more than 60% of those children are at risk of dying very quickly,’ she added.
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