U.S. rejects Katrina meals, offers them to others

The United States on Friday offered needy countries more than 330,000 packaged meals donated by Britain to feed Hurricane Katrina victims but rejected due to a U.S. ban on British beef.

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the "Meals Ready to Eat," or MREs, had been held in a warehouse in Little Rock, Arkansas, for more than a month after U.S. Agriculture Department officials said they could not be distributed in the United States because they contained British beef products.

"We are certainly, for our part, looking to dispose of these MREs that were offered in the spirit of friendship and charity. We are looking to dispose of them in the same way," Ereli told a State Department briefing.

The United States bans the import of products containing British beef because of fears of mad cow disease, a chronic, degenerative disease affecting the central nervous system of cattle.

An additional 33,000 MREs from Germany, Russia, Spain and France had also not been distributed to hurricane victims because of U.S. legal restrictions, Ereli said without elaborating.

More than 100 nations offered assistance to the United States after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and other U.S. Gulf Coast communities on August 29.

The U.S. relief effort to help victims of the hurricane was criticized as too slow and inefficient and bogged down by bureaucracy and in-fighting among government departments.

Early on, there was a need for about 500,000 readily packaged meals and the State Department asked its embassies worldwide to seek food donations. Britain was among the first countries to offer MREs.

The State Department said it did not want to appear ungrateful for the British donation and that it was working hard to pass on the meals to another country in need.

"We obviously want to find needy populations and get them these supplies as soon as possible, because if you need them, you need them now. So we're eager to resolve this soon," said Ereli, adding he did not know what the expiration dates were on the food packages.