The South Georgia manufacturer of a peanut-based emergency food for starving children is expecting new production orders from the U.S. State Department.
Fitzgerald-based Mana Nutrition had a steady contract with the U.S. Agency for International Aid, or USAID, which sent Mana's vitamin-fortified peanut paste to the most malnourished kids on the globe in places like South Sudan, much of Central America and Ukraine. But when Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, cut USAID, Mana got cut, too.
Mana CEO Mark Moore said the new orders from the U.S. State Department come after the Mana production line had wrung what it could from a March contract with the diminished USAID which kept everyone employed and producing 400,000 boxes of the company’s product.
“So we're just finishing,” Moore said. “It's going to be good timing. I can't say we planned it, but I think it's going work out.”
Most of those orders from March had been sitting in the company warehouse and trickling out of the loading dock. This month, Moore put in Mana's bid for some portion of the 800,000 boxes of product the government wants now.
Mana will be competing with the only other U.S. manufacturer of so-called ready-to-use therapeutic food, or RUTF. The CEO of Rhode Island-based Edesia Nutrition told NPR last week that, based on the new orders, she was planning on rehiring six of the 16 employees she let go after the initial USAID cut in the spring.
Moore does not imagine Mana will win the whole contract.
“I'm assuming about half of it will come our way,” Moore said. “And that'll keep us busy for many months.”
He estimated that would mean about $20 million in new orders to keep the Fitzgerald factory humming into the fall.
The new orders come after reporting that suggested the pause in international aid after the DOGE cuts left months’ worth of RUTF idled in warehouses. Reporting in The Atlantic suggested the government had let some of the food expire in warehouses and would therefore incinerate it.
Moore said he expects the United Nations agency devoted to helping children in crisis globally, UNICEF, to be tasked by the U.S. State Department to direct the new food aid to the kids most in need.
Meanwhile, a little of his product has been finding its way to children through private nonprofits.
“We've already had some go to Gaza,” Moore said. "We've been shipping it through Samaritan's Purse to Gaza quite a bit the last two, three weeks. They've been airlifting it in there."
Now, about six months after the DOGE cuts, Moore sees a silver lining.
“The kids who are the worst of the worst, the ones who are most critically in need, are, it appears, being served by this administration,” Moore said.
Moore said he hopes there will be more orders after the announced 800,000 boxes.
“The press I've read is [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio saying, 'Hey, we've now decided to spend about $90 million,'” Moore said. “That means another $50 million is probably coming, but I don't have that in a memo for them. That's just me backing the math out of press.”
Moore said he hopes it turns out to be true so Mana Nutrition’s production line can stay up and running past the fall.
