US Food Aid Disruption Impacts Global Malnutrition Efforts

When the Trump administration dissolved USAID over a year ago, it disrupted the system sending a special food made from American-grown peanuts to starving children around the world. Two U.S. factories make this ready-to-use therapeutic food - Georgia-based Mana Nutrition and Edesia in Rhode Island. They're now looking for new delivery channels, as Georgia Public Broadcasting's Grant Blankenship reports.

A production line chugs along as Mana Nutrition compliance officer Andrea Hines leads a tour of the factory for dignitaries from near and far, including colleagues Edesia Nutrition and Trump administration officials. Hines points to cardboard cases sliding by on a conveyor belt.

"Each case represents 2 1/2 lives that are going to be saved."

For a malnourished child, three pocket-sized packs a day for six weeks of what's like a sweetened peanut butter can mean the difference between life and death. This factory in Fitzgerald, Georgia, population about 8,000, is one of only two in the nation, making this ready-to-use therapeutic food, or RUTF. For peanut farmer and Georgia Peanut Commission vice chair Joe Boddiford, this is a point of pride. A friend - a peanut sheller - used to bring back photos from trips to Africa where kids were given RUTF.

"You got the before picture, and you got the after picture. Now, unless you're blind, you can pick them out."

"I mean, I think this is the best humanitarian effort that the peanut industry has."

Or had. USAID had been responsible for over half the orders annually for RUTF before the Trump administration dismantled the agency over a year ago. Now orders are at a trickle, and cases of RUTF are stacked beneath a huge American flag hanging from the rafters, waiting to be deployed. That's why Mana put on this tour for the dignitaries, including a big lunch, where they and Edesia heard from Alabama native Lynda Blanchard.

Blanchard is President Trump's ambassador to the United Nations World Food Programme, and she explains his take on humanitarian aid.

"And now this President's doing it bigger and better..."

With some changes.

"Instead of its continual aid without showing something and raising these countries up, it's more humanitarian trades."

Humanitarian trade, or as some State Department documents call it, commercial diplomacy. The idea is that the U.S. will want something in return for food aid.

"Under a new umbrella, and it's DHR."

DHR is the Bureau of Disaster and Human Response, a new arm of the State Department. It only has about an eighth of the funding of the former USAID. Research published in the medical journal The Lancet estimates that some 163,000 more children could die annually as a result of the end of USAID, which is why...

Maria Kasparian with Edesia, says they have to find new ways to move their product, with or without the U.S. government.

"Our ultimate need is getting these lifesaving foods to children when they need them, which is now, right? The need didn't stop."

For now, both companies are seeing what help is left from private philanthropy. Mana is also selling branded peanut butter to make up shortfalls.