Fact Check: The video of a child eating grass has nothing to do with the recent food crisis in Pakistan due to floods

New Delhi (Vishvas News). A video is viral on social media where a child can be seen eating grass. The post claims that the video is from Pakistan where heavy rains and floods have created a serious food crisis. Vishvas News in its investigation found that this claim is misleading. The viral video has nothing to do with the recent food crisis caused by the floods in Pakistan. The video has been on the internet since February 2022.

What’s in the viral post?

A user named Iqbal Afridi posted this video using the hashtag #FloodsInPakistan2022.

See the archive link of the post here.

Investigation

To start the investigation of this post, we searched the screengrabs of the viral video on Yandex Reverse Image. We found this video uploaded on a Twitter handle named Delhi XpRess claiming that it is from Syria. The video was uploaded in March 2022. Along with it was written “Syrian boy is eating grass against the bread #allah rahm on all people in the world”

We also found this video on Twitter handle named Tariq Rafi in March 2022 with the same description that it is from Syria.

Taking clues from here, we again searched this video on Yandex reverse image with the keyword ‘Syria’. We found this video uploaded on 25 February 2022 on a YouTube channel named Atif Maqbool. Along with it was written “Child eating grass due to lack of food in Syria: where is humanity? – Atif Maqbool”

We also found this video uploaded in February 2022 on YouTube channels named Nayab نایاب and Bibi-Hawa with the claim that it is from Syria.

However, in some places, we found the video uploaded claiming that it is from Ukraine.

We contacted Mohammad Kamran, a journalist working with Pakistan’s news channel 24 News HD, regarding this matter. “It is true that Pakistan is currently grappling with the food crisis caused by floods, but the viral video is not from Pakistan. It has been on the internet for a long time. It has nothing to do with the recent floods in Pakistan,” he said.

Pakistan has been battling the crisis of heavy rains and floods for some time now. There are many news reports about the food crisis in the country. According to the September 12 news of thehindu.com “Pakistan is grappling with food shortages after deadly floods left the impoverished country’s agriculture belt underwater, the Prime Minister told the Turkish President by phone, as authorities scaled up efforts Monday to deliver food, tents and other items.”

According to the news of theprint.in, “The massive flooding of farmlands, destruction of crops, and loss of livestock in Pakistan have raised questions about the country’s food security, especially as the winter approaches……. Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, in an interview with CGTN earlier this week, offered an even starker outlook by saying that “about 80 to 90 percent of the country’s crops have been damaged by the floods.”

Vishvas News does not independently confirm where and when the video of a child eating grass is from, but it is clear that the video has nothing to do with the recent floods and food crises in Pakistan. The video has been on the internet since February 2022.

The viral video was shared by a user named Iqbal Afridi with a misleading claim. According to the profile, the user is a resident of Peshawar, Pakistan.