More than 400 000 packaged meals sent by Britain to feed victims of Hurricane Katrina at a cost of nearly £2,7-million have been sitting in a warehouse in Arkansas because of fears of mad-cow disease and a long-standing ban on British beef.
The United States State Department is said to be quickly and quietly looking for a needy country to take the meals, which are costing the American taxpayer more than $16 000 a month to store and are due to pass their use-by date in early 2006.
With the fallout from the hurricane continuing to haunt the US authorities, the tale of the British meals was on Friday being held up as an example of the slow, inefficient and at times wasteful response to the worst natural disaster to strike the US in living memory.
The Washington Post described the long and costly journey of the food as a ”tale of good intentions colliding with a cumbersome bureaucracy”.
According to the newspaper, no fewer than six federal agencies or departments had a role in accepting, distributing and finally rejecting the food. At one point, the meals — routinely eaten by British troops and comprising high-calorie foods such as burgers, sausages, beans and cheese — were shipped to 14 locations in Louisiana before being sent back to Arkansas.
The food’s journey began on September 5, when the packs were stacked almost 2m high and loaded on to pallets in Oxfordshire. It was then flown by chartered aircraft the 7 000km to Arkansas — according to the British embassy in Washington — at a cost of nearly £2,7-million to the British taxpayer.
It was then shipped the 568km to New Orleans, with Agriculture Department inspectors in hot pursuit. They had received a belated warning that the donated food might need checking.
Flooding prevented the inspectors from reaching four shelter sites and, according to The Washington Post, by the time they reached 10 others, 115 000 packs had already been distributed. The remaining shipments were turned around and sent back to Arkansas.
A spokesman for the British embassy told The Washington Post: ”There was a specific request for emergency ration packs, and we responded … We had no reason to believe there would be a problem.”
State Department officials have considered sending the meals to Guatemala, devastated by mudslides, but the country does not have the vehicles to transport the pallets. For cultural reasons, they cannot be sent to earthquake victims in Pakistan.
”Everyone wants a happy ending,” a State Department official told The Washington Post, apparently requesting anonymity because of feelings already bruised in Britain. — Guardian Unlimited Â