Washington, DC – Representative Gregory W. Meeks, Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, today sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio requesting information and documents in light of concerning reports that the Trump administration would destroy hundreds of tons of now-spoiled emergency food commodities after it failed to distribute them before they expired. 

The food provisions have already been paid for by the American taxpayer and could have provided life-saving nourishment to millions of hungry people around the world. These reports come even after the Secretary testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in May that there would be “no State Department delays” in distributing life-saving emergency food aid abroad. Following that testimony, Meeks had sent a letter to Secretary Rubio asking him to clarify his dubious claim that no one had died as a result of the administration’s deep cuts to foreign assistance.  

Text of the letter is below. A PDF copy of the letter is available here.

Dear Secretary Rubio,

I write to express serious concern regarding reports that nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food assistance procured by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is set to be destroyed instead of reaching recipients in need. The U.S. government had reportedly already purchased $800,000 worth of high energy biscuits, which were stored in a warehouse in Dubai and could have fed as many as 1.5 million children for a week. It is unacceptable that USAID and Department of State officials would allow these supplies to expire on shelves rather than distribute them to food insecure populations, and the agency leaders who permitted this morally reprehensible waste of taxpayer dollars must be held accountable.

Media reports indicate that the U.S. government must pay an additional $125,000 to incinerate the emergency food in line with a policy requiring the destruction of any expired food commodities. This is an egregious misuse of taxpayer funding that will result in nearly $1 million dollars of waste. It also could have been avoided, given that USAID staff made agency leadership aware of the need to distribute this emergency food aid well before its expiration date, including by documenting the situation in memoranda reportedly sent to agency leadership on May 5, 2025, and May 19, 2025. If not for President Trump’s harmful aid freeze and agency officials’ inaction to approve this shipment in the proper timeframe, this emergency food aid would have reached beneficiaries in time.

This situation is emblematic of challenges arising from the Trump Administration’s hasty and haphazard dismantling of USAID and its efforts to subsume it into the State Department—namely, sweeping terminations of experienced staff, program freezes and cancellations, and disruptions to waiver and distribution authorities.

During your testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on May 21, 2025, Committee Vice Ranking Member Gabe Amo specially inquired about the State Department’s delays in shipping Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) supplies. He detailed a situation involving 123,000 boxes of lifesaving RUTF purchased by the U.S. government to feed malnourished children in Sudan left sitting in a Rhode Island warehouse for months because the appropriate government officials had not signed off on the transportation contracts needed to move it. You responded that “there were no State Department delays” in getting that food out and stated, “we are going to continue to do food aid.” Yet at that very moment, it appears that memoranda sat in front of your USAID leadership team warning them that emergency food assistance was at risk of expiring, and no one acted to send the food out in time.

The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” has already awarded you four Pinocchios for your claim during your May testimony to the Committee that “no one has died” because of USAID cuts. Now it seems your assertions that there were no delays in food aid distribution are also false. As the Congressional committee responsible for oversight of foreign assistance, the Foreign Affairs Committee has a clear interest in understanding the stewardship of foreign assistance resources and in agencies’ capacity to accountably manage lifesaving aid, including commodities. As such, I request that you please respond in writing to the following questions by August 12, 2025.

1. Has the State Department now destroyed the approximately 500 metric tons of expired high energy biscuits reportedly allowed to expire? Are there additional U.S. food assistance commodities in warehouses that are at risk of expiring?
2. Are press reports accurate that estimate nearly $1 million in total cost to the American taxpayer associated with the procurement and incineration of these food supplies? What is the exact cost?
3. Which official(s) received memoranda requesting their approval on the delivery of this assistance before it expired?
4. Why did such officials fail to approve the distribution of these commodities before they expired?
5. Have any senior USAID or State Department staff been held accountable for this failure to use USAID-procured emergency food assistance before it expired? If so, what position(s) do they hold and what disciplinary action did the State Department take? If not, why not?

Additionally, I request copies of all USAID and State Department communications (to include, but not limited to, cables, memoranda, emails, and electronic messages) generated since January 20, 2025 that refer or relate to the distribution or potential expiration of food assistance commodities, with productions of these agency documents to begin on a rolling basis by August 19, 2025 and conclude on a timeline negotiated on a good-faith basis with the Committee.

This Administration has displayed a troubling pattern of squandering lifesaving foreign assistance resources and commodities rather than using them to reach people in need around the globe to extend American influence and goodwill. This is a textbook example of government waste and an affront to the generosity of the American people. I look forward to your responses and transparency regarding this important matter.