By MJ Lee, CNN
Washington (CNN) — The CEO of a plant in Georgia that makes a special peanut butter paste for severely malnourished children around the world told CNN Sunday that his company’s contracts with the US Agency for International Development that had been abruptly canceled last week were all reinstated late Sunday night.
Mark Moore, the founder MANA Nutrition, shared screenshots of the rescinded contract termination notifications with CNN.
“Thrilled,” he said in response to the news.
He also told CNN that he was working to quickly start using USAID-labeled pouches in production again: “It’s a yo-yo. I just texted the factory and told them to switch back to USAID packaging as of midnight.”
The development came after Elon Musk said on social media earlier on Sunday in response to CNN’s previous reporting about the terminated USAID contracts that he would “investigate” and “fix it.” MANA’s canceled contracts had been the result of the Trump administration’s drastic efforts to slim down the federal government led by Musk, who leads a new government agency called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Moore’s company makes a special kind of peanut butter paste – a type of RUTF (“Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods”) – that many humanitarian aid workers are familiar with. It is fortified with milk and essential vitamins, packed with calories and sent to severely malnourished children around the world, including some countries in Africa. USAID has historically supported and funded the development and distribution of RUTF products over the years.
On Wednesday afternoon, Moore got word from USAID that MANA’s contracts with the agency were being canceled. CNN spoke with Moore just minutes after he said he received a series of contract termination letters from USAID. One of his first orders of business was asking his workers mid-production to immediately stop putting labels that say “USAID” on the pouches that the peanut butter paste is squirted into.
He said without contracts with the agency, he would not be allowed to distribute any products bearing the agency’s name.
The back-and-forth is just one of the many aftershocks of the Trump administration’s rapid decimation of USAID, which has suffered more severely than almost any other agency across the government. Thousands of positions at the federal agency have been eliminated and the vast majority of its officials have been placed on leave. Contracts are being canceled left and right, leaving many in the humanitarian aid world reeling.
In normal times, Moore’s plant produces 10 pouches of the lifesaving paste every second. Each small bag contains 500 calories’ worth of the special peanut butter — which does not require refrigeration or additional preparation.
In their warehouse, Moore said last week, there were around 400,000 boxes of USAID-branded RUTF ready to be shipped out. He estimated that if USAID didn’t pay MANA for those boxes, he would have at least $10 million in wasted peanut butter pouches on his hands. And that didn’t include an additional $14 million in reimbursements from the federal government that he was already waiting for.
Erin Boyd, a USAID nutrition adviser who was laid off from the agency in January, told CNN it was not an overstatement to say that children would die as a result of the decimation of USAID and funding for RUTF.
“Even before this happened, there wasn’t enough funding to treat all the children who were presenting wasting.” Boyd said.
Wasting, according to UNICEF, refers to a life-threatening form of malnutrition: “Children with wasting are too thin and their immune systems are weak, leaving them vulnerable to developmental delays, disease and death,” the group says.
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