Enough food to feed about 1.5 million children for a week expires today

Toward the end of the Biden administration, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spent about $800,000 on high-energy biscuits used to help people impacted by natural disasters or fleeing war, according to a report by The Atlantic. Following Donald Trump‘s return to the White House, the food meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan reportedly languished in a Dubai warehouse as Trump and former DOGE chief Elon Musk dismantled much of the federal government, including the government’s foreign aid department. 

The publication said that previously, career staff could have handed off the biscuits to the World Food Programme to distribute them, but employees said that since Musk’s so-called DOGE devastated USAID — firing and placing thousands of workers on leave — aid items cannot move without the new political leaders of the agency. And while the responsibility originally was given to Trump appointee Pete Marocco, it passed to Jeremy Lewin, who became deputy administrator for policy and programs for what’s left of USAID. (Rolling Stone previously reported on Lewin’s alleged history of violence and racist remarks.) Staffers who sent the memos requesting approval to move the emergency food said they never got a response, however, and its unclear if either Marocco or Lewin ever received the memos.

Now, enough food to feed about 1.5 million children for a week — equal to nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food — is set to expire today, The Atlantic reports. Despite Secretary of State Marco Rubio ensuring representatives on the House Appropriations Committee in May that food aid would reach its intended recipients, the Trump administration reportedly plans to spend $130,000 to burn the biscuits instead of sending them to children in need.

While improper food storage, a flood, or a terrorist group may lead to a few dozen tons of food aid being lost a year, a USAID staffer said that he has never witnessed this many biscuits wasted over his decades with the agency.

Unfortunately, USAID inventory lists show that as of January, more than 60,000 metric tons of food already purchased by the U.S. government were sitting in warehouses across the world including 36,000 pounds of peas, oil, and cereal. A former senior official at USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance told The Atlantic that when she left her job earlier in July, only a small portion of the food appeared to have moved, while a current employee said small shipments are starting to leave a warehouse in Djibouti. However, given that USAID has been gutted of key employees essential to coordinating and distributing the food to people across the world, whether those parcels will land in the right hands is uncertain.