The director of a company producing ready-to-use therapeutic foods, or RUTFs, said of the products while aid programs stalled: “It’s not about expiration. It’s not going to expire — it has a two-year shelf life. But the problem is [malnourished] children have hours or days or weeks, and we do not have time to make decisions like this on how we’re going to ship product to the countries that were expecting it this past spring.”
Date: 9/25
Region: Global
Country: Global
Topic: Food & Farming
Policy Lens: Moral Leadership
Entry Type: Field Observation
Additional Context: A Rhode Island maker of a lifesaving paste for malnourished children was forced to innovate to ensure products reach children who need them while contracts stalled, reports Tania Karas from a Devex event on the sidelines of the 80th U.N. General Assembly.
This quote is attributed to Navyn Salem, the CEO of Edesia, a Rhode Island-based nonprofit producer of lifesaving foods for malnourished children, including RUTFs. As of September 2025, the organization had 185,535 boxes of its products sitting in its warehouse for months waiting to get clearance from the Trump administration to ship to countries that need them.
Source: Devex