On July 1st, USAID officially shuts down and transfers operations to the U.S. State Department. Amid growing uncertainty about the future of U.S. foreign assistance structures and funding, U.S. supply chains that deliver life-saving treatment to malnourished children worldwide have already broken down, triggering a global nutrition crisis.
90% of USAID's foreign aid contracts have been terminated, impacting tens of billions of dollars in global humanitarian efforts, including $1.4 billion cuts in emergency nutrition funding. Ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTF) - specialized medical treatments that have revolutionized the fight against child deaths from malnutrition - are running critically low, putting millions of children's lives at immediate risk. Massive stock-outs are projected to begin in the coming weeks and months, with nutrition experts warning of likely mass loss of children's lives.
USAID funding cuts are also impacting American agricultural communities. Peanut farmers in rural Georgia and dairy farmers across the country who supply key ingredients for the life-saving RUTF products are facing canceled contracts and uncertain futures.
Would you be interested in speaking with experts on this rapidly evolving situation? I can arrange interviews with people impacted across the value chain, from American manufacturers of RUTF to nutrition experts and aid workers who administer this life-saving treatment. B-Roll and photos are also available of children being treated for malnutrition with RUTF here.
Expert sources available include:
- Dr. Heather Stobaugh, Associate Director of Research and Innovation, Action Against Hunger, leading expert on malnutrition treatment and RUTF effectiveness
- Denish Ogen Rwot, South Sudan’s Communication and Advocacy Lead for Action Against Hunger, Action Against Hunger, whose team treats nearly 50,000 malnourished children each year in South Sudan
- Navyn Salem, CEO, Edesia - US RUTF manufacturer experiencing production disruptions based in Rhode Island
The Crisis: The recent destabilization of U.S. leadership in global humanitarian assistance has created major uncertainty in humanitarian nutrition funding. As a result, leading U.S.-based manufacturers of life-saving nutrition treatment products, like MANA and Edesia, are operating at just 40% capacity in 2025, with some receiving no new orders since December 2024. MANA Nutrition, based in Fitzgerald, Georgia, has been forced to significantly scale back operations, impacting local jobs and the economy in a rural community long committed to this humanitarian mission. Meanwhile, the global nutrition funding gap for the remainder of 2025 now exceeds $993 million. In the absence of urgent action, 18 priority countries are projected to face life-threatening shortages of RUTF starting this month, with over 2 million children at immediate risk of death. Restoring strong U.S. engagement in global nutrition is not just a moral imperative - it strengthens American manufacturing, supports rural economies, and advances global stability, making America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.
What's at Stake: RUTFs, including the well-known peanut paste "Plumpy'nut", are game-changing medical treatments that have improved the child survival rate of severely malnourished children from 25% to <90%. These nutrient-dense, fortified food products help severely malnourished children, who are 11 times more likely to die than healthy children, recover and regain strength to feed normally again in as little as six weeks. Without these supplies, children who could be saved with approximately $150 worth of treatment will instead face death.
I would be happy to arrange interviews and provide additional data, field reporting opportunities, and visual assets to support your coverage.
Thank you in advance for your consideration.
Shayna Samuels, on behalf of Action Against Hunger, +1-718-541-4785
Expert Quotes
"All our clinic staff are worried. We've already had to close many nutrition clinics, but are doing our best to still treat people where we can. There is drought, flooding, spiking cases of cholera, and more and more refugees coming in from Sudan. All of this increases the rates of malnutrition. Now life-saving supplies are about to run out; there is despair. It's tough here."
- Denish Ogen Rwot, Communication and Advocacy Lead, South Sudan, Action Against Hunger
"Our world has seen immense progress in preventing child deaths from malnutrition; unless we act fast and reverse the funding cuts, we'll regress 30 years, seemingly overnight. Without RUTF and the means to administer it, mothers will bring their sick and malnourished children to health centers for care, only to be turned away because no treatment is available where it once was. Children will start dying, that's the reality."
- Dr. Heather Stobaugh, Associate Director of Research and Innovation, Action Against Hunger
"Feeding children and mothers and families is a very important American value that has always been bipartisan and continues to be bipartisan. We are the ones who are there in a family's time of crisis. They will never forget that it was the American people who came to their aid."
- Navyn Salem, CEO, Edesia