Assessing Food Aid – Does It Deliver What Malnourished Populations Need?

Food aid is critical to the health and even survival of vulnerable recipient populations. Building on our past efforts to ensure that food aid delivers what it is meant to, SUSTAIN is focusing new program efforts to ensure the consistent quality and to maximize the nutritional benefits of U.S. food aid commodities. Specific attention will be given to improving the government's quality audit program and the systems used to assure quality in manufacturing to minimizing micronutrient losses during the cooking of food aid commodities. Specific attention will be given to improving USDA's Total Quality Control Systems Audit (TQSA) program, established to monitor the quality of U.S. food aid commodities; to minimizing micronutrient losses during the cooking of food aid commodities; and to maximizing the bioavailability of their micronutrients. This activity will include a comprehensive evaluation of how well food aid commodities, as now formulated, meet the current and emerging needs of recipient populations, including those living with HIV/AIDS. We hope not only to recommend concrete improvements to current formulations, but also to create a blueprint for an open, transparent interagency process for reviewing and encouraging future innovations by private sector manufacturers of food aid commodities.

Background:

Among the people most at risk from a nutritional standpoint are the mothers, children and refugees who depend on emergency and developmental feeding programs in developing countries. Under U.S. Public Law 480, Title II--the Food for Peace Program--the United States annually donates more than 2 million metric tons of food aid commodities to refugee and maternal and child feeding programs worldwide, with the dual goals of enhancing food security and supporting broad-based economic growth. In emergency situations, food aid may be the only buffer against starvation.

The addition of micronutrients to the government specifications for food aid commodities beginning in the 1980s represented the most significant change in the nutritional requirements for food aid since the program's inception. It also reflected the growing awareness among health professionals and the international aid community of the vital role minerals and vitamins play in human health and development. For example, the most common nutritional disorder worldwide is iron deficiency anemia (IDA), which lowers resistance to disease, impairs development, reduces stamina and increases the risk of neonatal, infant and maternal mortality. Clinical vitamin A deficiency also presents a chronic problem for developing country populations.

Adding micronutrients to food aid commodities was a critical improvement to the Food For Peace Program, but nearly two decades lapsed before the government instituted requirements for the regular testing and monitoring of micronutrient levels in P.L. 480 commodities (USDA, EOD-56).

The new federal attention to quality control came as a response to findings from an investigation that SUSTAIN undertook on USAID's behalf in 1997. Our work on the Vitamin C Pilot Project and the Micronutrient Assessment Project involved a comprehensive evaluation of food aid micronutrient content from points of production to consumption. SUSTAIN's investigation also served as a basis for the To begin to address these issues, SUSTAIN, working with advisors from USAID, USDA and the food industry suggested more rigorous micronutrient specifications for food aid commodities, improved quality control protocols, and auditing at the points of commodity manufacture. USDA issued new regulations to this effect as well as a Total Quality Control Systems Audit (TQSA) program designed to assure future compliance with micronutrient specifications. When SUSTAIN subsequently reviewed the situation for USAID, (see the micronutrient compliance review) we found that important progress had been made by commodity manufacturers in complying with the new regulations. However attention to specific protocols for quality control audits still is needed. Moreover, questions remain about micronutrient losses during cooking; nutrient bioavailability in food aid commodities; and whether current formulations meet the needs of today's at-risk populations. These are the questions SUSTAIN is now beginning to address. To set the stage for improvements beyond the lifetime of this project, we will develop strategies to encourage future private-sector innovation in food aid commodity manufacture.

For more information about SUSTAIN's projects related to enhancing the quality of food aid commodities, click below:

MAP and Vitamin C Pilot Projects Compliance Review