new guy with a question

[BackwoodsPundit]

For a while, they had a few "Sweet Sue" brand pouch meals. Over on this news link, there's a picture of one of them along with an entree I found at Big Lots:

http://www.mreinfo.com/news/index.php?p=12

Awesome!

this might be a cost effective thing if I can get my hands on some of them

I saw the brand on some of those was Castleman - I just bought some 1 1/2 pound cans of their beef strew on sale for 1.39 this past weekend to put in the food storage area.. I figure I am going to have to use a good supply of canned foods as part of my food storage to be cost effective, but I won't be able to take too much of that if I have to bug out.

[kman]

Oops...I forgot to mention the cost of those entrees from Wal-mart. The Chicken Marsala entree was something like $2.89. I bought a few to try them but they just weren't practical for stocking up. Heck...if I wanted to spend that much money, I'd just load up over at Long Life Foods.

[Treesuit]

Kman,
I was just reading the threads for retort pouches and my questions is does Castleberry's have a website which you can order from? I don't have a Big Lots in our neck of the woods, so if a website is outthere then I guess anybody could go to it and order from them. Any ideas?

As for the debate of MRE's being produced by the civilian sector one story I heard back in the mid-1990's was that the DoD was quite careful about producing the MRE for fear of embarassment and being linked to crazed right wing fundamental groups that were aginst the US Gov't. You see back in the 1990's, I'm sure everybody remembers the right wing movement, the US Gov't was very cautious about MRE's getting into the hands of splinter groups. Say, for instance around the Pacifc Northwest where I live. And having some yokel local nut on TV proudly holding a MRE wouldn't look so good now would it. So eventually the US Military cracked down on that and began to limit distribution to soldiers. I rememeber this because I was still in back on active duty then and getting MRE's for field use was like pulling teeth. Also the Gov't beagn to limit what sort of technology could be put out to say, backpacking industries, etc. My theory would kind of go into your theory in that you posted some time ago about the DoD be cautious. It would make sense to a certain degree but unless soembody has something else to counter this I believe it would be plausible. What do you think?

[kman]

Hi Treesuit. I looked all over the place online for someplace to order those Castleberry retort pouches and didn't have any luck. I did find a place or two that had cans of the same food but I could never quite tell for sure if it was a can or pouch - the description usually just said "7oz".

As for why the govt. cracked down on MRE sales to civilians, that's a good theory - I hadn't heard that one before. I had heard that they were having problems of MREs disappearing off the backs of trucks and ending up in surplus stores. So they cracked down on "commercial" sale but didn't go out of their way to stop soldiers selling the occasional MRE. They did try to crack down on Ebay but fortunately, that didn't work.

[Treesuit]

Kman,
Thanks for the posting on the Castleberry's. I guess if I do find something like that or a Big Lots I will have to stop by and check it out.
As for my story. Well that was the rumor back then, and "yes" I believe that the gov't was trying to keep soldiers from swiping cases to re-sell out on the civilian market. I guess this is why so many wound up at gun shows and several "milita" groups like we have around the country. Certianly seems to fit in with many stories. As for Ebay: I read some of the earlier listings on this forum about the grey areas and confusing issues the Gov't was putting out to discourage people from selling them on Ebay. I guess they gave up after awhile.
One thing that did puzzle me back then, and somebody could do the research on this, is to find a law put out by the Clinton administration about the mysterious so-called "Food Hoarding Law" or something to that effect. Yes, that's right the gov't supposedly did something at that time back in, I think back in 1997. Although I just heard it was some kind of kooky law I didn't pay any attention to it. Does anybody know of this law or was it some kind of rumor? If it's true then can sombody post it for us to see or if it's not true them please dismiss it , thanks.

[kman]

Here are a couple of links I dug up on anti-hoarding laws:

http://www.millennium-ark.net/News_File ... s/EOs.html

http://members.aol.com/poesgirl/storing.html

Both pages look similar so it might just be one copying the other. It's a lot of stuff to read. Here's an excerpt from the top:

Can Our Government Really Tell Us How Much Food and Supplies We Can Keep?

The short answer is YES, in a roundabout way. Due to numerous discussions questioning the existence of federal anti-hoarding legislation, I wanted to see if such Executive Orders had been written. First and foremost, we do not want to suggest people store items beyond "legal limits" if such limits did exist. Second, we want to separate fact from rumor buzzing around the Internet which has only added to the confusion. This search has yielded no federal legislation aimed directly at prohibiting food storage. But this does not mean "hoarding" is legal, and here's why.

[BackwoodsPundit]

My understanding of the anti hoarding laws (I used to be a policy analyst before I got into software/IT) was that they are intended to supplement anti-price gouging laws. For example, here in Virginia at least, they said that if there was an emergency and a gas seller refused to sell gas unless they could "gouge", than the anti-hoarding provisions would kick in.

Of course, in a state of emergency, the government (at least, the military) iis going to do pretty much what they think is right including grabbing busses, water, gasoline, etc, for emergency purpose, and unless you have at least a full company with air and artillery support, an individual is probably not in a position to say "no" too easily.