MREInfo.com

I came across this auction on Ebay for MRE entrees; http://cgi.ebay.com/12-MRE-MEAL-ENTREES ... dZViewItem

The pictures look a lot like regular MRE entrees, but the selection includes items not on recent menus like Beef Frankfurters and Pork Slices in Jamaican Sauce. The name on the entree boxes is "Shelf Stable Foods" which is a new one on me but I notice that they share the same zip code as Wornick.

When you check the merchants listed on MREinfo they all carry entrees from Sopakco, MREStar, and Ameriqual but not Wornick. Anyone know what's going on?

IIRC, Shelf Stable Foods was either a subdivision of Wornick or another company they bought. A few things in that auction screamed out "1990s" to me...

First, there was the company name "Shelf Stable Foods" that you mentioned - they went away in the mid- to late- 1990s. Then there's the Beef Frankfurters entree...those were taken out of MREs in 2001 (so 2000 was the last year for the "Smoky Franks"...aka "Four Fingers of Death" :-) ) But most telling is the datecode shown in the auction: 7031 would mean January 31, 1997.

I'd bet that they're still good. I still have a bunch of late 1990s entrees laying around and everytime I try one, they seem to be ok.

However, the guy in the auction is saying they're from 2006 and later. So he's either lying on purpose or just doesn't realize that the 7 in "7031" means 1997 and not 2007.

Those are definitely OLD entrees.

Wornick was originally named "Right Away Foods" then changed the name to "Shelf Stable Foods." They finally became "Wornick's" in 1981.

But it looks like they continued to use the "Shelf Stable Foods" name until at least 1997, when these entrees were produced. Maybe Shelf Stable Foods was just their rations-producing division?