The European Commission is to give a further €117.25 million in food aid to lessen the impact of rising food prices on the world's most vulnerable people.
"In March, we already decided to put aside €160 million in food aid," EU Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid Louis Michel told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
"We decided to free up €57 million more that had been budgeted for 2008 but it will be available much earlier in the year. We'll be mobilising €60 million of fresh money."
The rise in basic food prices was a worldwide humanitarian disaster in the making, he said, adding that existing food aid programmes were under enormous pressure with less food available for people already on the brink of starvation.
Millions more, who were just about coping before, now risk going hungry, he told the EU assembly.
The Commission's latest food aid provision would raise the EU's total humanitarian food aid budget so far in 2008 to €283.25 million, Michel said.