MREInfo.com

This is mainly for curiosity: I received two cases of MRE's, inspection date 3/09. Yet they already had the red sticker on them. I thought that that meant they were good for another three years. And it's 07 (I think). What gives?
And they didn't have the "Property of the U.S. Govt. ..." warning on them, at least on the case. Has that changed?
Thirdly, this was a regular supplier of MRE's on ebay. Is the CID asleep, or don't they care. How can someone get a regular supply, without getting an all expenses paid tour of Levenworth?
Thanks.

Can you take any pictures of the cases? It'd be interesting to see what happened to that commercial resale warning.

As for the red sticker (the Time and Temperature Indicator), that goes on all the cases when they're packed. Check out this page for how to read it:

http://www.mreinfo.com/mre-longevity.html

I'd be concerned if the inner circle was already all-dark. Those MREs are only one year old so they're bound to still be good unless they were stored in a pretty hot place.

That's a good question about how regular suppliers of MREs get away with it on eBay. Selling MREs is not automatically illegal because there are perfectly legal ways for civilians to obtain MREs. Once a civilian gets given a case of MREs by someplace like FEMA, they're free to do with it as they please - eat them, sell them, make them into handbags, etc.

But sellers who seem to have an endless supply sure do make me scratch my head. There was actually a CID investigation into MRE sales on eBay in 2005 - you can find it here:

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06410r.pdf

At least one of the more well-supplied MRE vendors wasn't on that report so I can only guess that she was looked at and passed on.