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Food rations that could supply 3.5 million people for a month are mouldering in warehouses around the world because of U.S. aid cuts and risk becoming unusable, according to five people familiar with the situation.
The food stocks have been stuck inside 4 U.S. government warehouses since the Trump administration’s decision in January to cut global aid programmes, according to three people who previously worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development and two sources from other aid organisations.
Some stocks that are due to expire as early as July are likely to be destroyed, either by incineration, using them as animal feed or disposing of them in other ways, two of the sources said.
The warehouses, which are run by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), contain between 60,000 to 66,000 metric tonnes of food, sourced from American farmers and manufacturers, the five people said.
If all it takes to cause famine is one country no longer sending aid, you are extremely vulnerable to that country. The desirable alternative is food sovereignty - under conditions of international pressure there may be scarcity but not starvation.