The World Food Program (WFP) has announced that it will halt supplying ingredients to factories that produce rations for impoverished North Koreans in November.

WFP spokesman Gerald Bourke said Thursday that his organization will stop providing the raw ingredients needed to make fortified cereals, biscuits and milk at 19 factories in North Korea at the request of the Pyongyang government.

The U.N. food agency has been operating the factories in cooperation with the North Korean government since 1999.

Last month, Pyongyang asked international organizations and non-governmental organizations operating in the North to end their monitoring of food aid distribution by the end of November.

North Korean officials also called on the foreign aid agencies to do "development" work instead of emergency relief.

The suspension of supply comes ahead of a complete WFP emergency aid pullout by the end of the year.

Factory production accounts for part of the 500-thousand tons of WFP food aid expected to go towards feeding six-and-a-half million poor North Koreans, mostly children and the elderly, this year.