Did President Donald Trump cancel 20 truckloads of food en route to Ohio food banks and throw it away rather than give it to needy people? No, that's not true: While the U.S. Department of Agriculture in March of 2025 cut federal funding for local food purchased for food banks and schools, there is no evidence this required fresh food on its way to food banks to be dumped. The spokesperson for the Ohio Association of Foodbanks confirmed the claim is false. The allegation had been posted with no documentary evidence, no witnesses corroborating it and no links to proof.
The claim appeared in a March 30, 2025 post on Threads (archived here) where it was published under the caption: "Trump threw all this food away rather than give it to food pantrys for poor communies." It opened:
It's just sick man.
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing this fact check:
(Source: Threads.com screenshot taken by Lead Stories)
Lead Stories inquired by phone and email on March 31 and April 1 of 2025. Greater Cleveland Food Bank, which had been identified in a Cleveland.com report as the agency to which 20 truckloads of Local Food Purchase Assistance had been directed, did not respond.The Cleveland.com report had been corrected to drop the claim the trucks had been recalled en route. We will update this story, as relevant, when Greater Cleveland Food Bank responds to our questions: were trucks recalled and was the food dumped.
"...Rumors circulating that food was on its way to foodbanks and left to rot or turned around mid-delivery are not true," Audrey Vanzant, Director of Communications for the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, wrote in an April 1, 2025 email to Lead Stories.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was unable or unwilling to answer if 20 truckloads of USDA-subsidized food had been recalled en route or thrown away.
Through a spokesman paid to speak for the USDA who declined to be named, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a March 31, 2025 email that the agency is closing down Local Food Purchase Assistance and Local Food for Schools, two pandemic-era programs. The spokesman did not answer Lead Stories' questions about whether food was dumped rather than delivered, "a question that was repeated in a follow-up email. This story will be updated, as relevant, when the USDA responds.
Close examination of the post's image of a convoy of semi-trailer trucks provides multiple indications it is not an authentic photo:
1. None of the six trailers has cargo or "swing doors" that keep loaded goods from falling out;
2. The produce is depicted as loose-piled, which would not comply with USDA rules on safe shipping of produce in boxes to prevent moisture buildup and spoilage;
3. The produce is depicted as a jumbled mix, which also does not comply with rules to prevent the ethylene released by some produce from spoiling other produce that is degraded by ethylene;
More fact checks about the USDA are found at this link.
