MREInfo.com

I just opened a 2007 Menu 8 - Beef Patty - for dinner and found the contents to be more than just a little bit off. The official Operational Rations booklet (and this site) list the contents as:

Beef Patty
Mexican Macaroni & Cheese
Nacho Cheese Pretzels
Cheese Spread w/Bacon
2 Wheat Snack Bread
BBQ Sauce
Beverage Base, CHO Fortified
Hot Sauce
Accessory Packet B
Spoon
Flameless Heater
Hot Beverage Bag

and I've had this particular menu plenty of times before - that list is accurate. I snagged it off the shelf in my pantry because I was really craving that bacon cheese In this particular pouch, which I've verified isn't a Menu C or anything, I received the following:

Beef Patty - Success!
Tortillas - Interesting choice for a side...
Pretzels - Not Combos, just regular pretzels
Mayonaise - Hey, cheese spread with Bacon is tasty and all, but who doesn't LOVE fat free army mayonaise?
2 Cookies with Pan Coated Chocolate Discs - Cookieburger!!! .... ???
Peanut M&Ms - I guess the package is a rectangle, like the BBQ sauce packet is?
Strawberry Dairyshake - Much better than Orange Drink!
Seasoning Blend Salt Free (loose) - Instead of Hot Sauce
No Accessory packet included with this meal at all.
Spoon - Success!
Flameless Heater - Success!
No Hot Bev. Bag

So whatever or whoever packed this one got 3/13 items correct in the bag - not too shabby! Guess a mistake like this would be a welcome surprise for someone with a sweet tooth with all the extra sugar!

At first glance that menu looks like Tuna (#21 i think EDIT it was 10 that year /EDIT ) and they just swapped a beef patty.

But there are 2 cookies and no accessory pack that's odd, maybe someone was calibrating the packing machines that day

I had that thought too - seemed like some of the contents of a Tuna menu - but even then it's not quite accurate with the extra cookies out of nowhere and the lack of an accessory packet of any kind.

Overall I assume there are mistakes of this level on a regular basis considering the target audience. A soldier in a combat situation isn't going to return a meal because it was wrong. They aren't going to submit a field report days later stating accurately what items were and weren't correct in their meal. With that in mind a company with a long term military contract like SoPackCo can afford to be a little less accurate than their purely civilian counterparts. Where a civilian would complain if the Hormel Chicken and Dumplin's they just bought was actually a Beef Stew, someone 5000 miles from home beating sand out of everything they own on an hourly basis wouldn't even stop to consider it.

I bet errors of this magnitude are less common than you would think.

With out getting in to too much math
Think about it like this 99.999% reliability is 5.26 minutes of down time per YEAR

If a ration was a minute that would be 5.25 out of every 525,948,766 rations.

If the error rate was say 10% thats 52,948 out of 525,948,766 rations

which means
MRE's are made on such a scale that even a few errors every so often would ruin the statistics, and you would notice it in something like one per every 10 cases

(this is all rough and the 10% is just a easy guess as to the error rate, i hope this delivers what im trying to say)

But i agree with what you said, no one will complain in most cases due to the situation, no matter the error

I'm wondering if this might be a possibility: in some of the rations from other countries, the box says "due to supply reasons, one item may be substituted for another" (not sure exact quote). While this would not seem likely without some mention of it through "official channels" it may be a possibility. Anyone's thoughts?

Rationtin440 said
I'm wondering if...

Absolutely, and this is much more common, a single item substitution.

But the scale of 3 out of 13 items correct in this example i think is much more rare.

Kicking this up since I've just had something similar.

I've recently received a case B of 2011 MRE's (my introduction to them actually, many followed ). Completely sealed just like the others I have for reference now.

While unpacking, I noticed something strange: Instead of a Menu 21 Lemon Pepper Tuna, I received a Menu 8 Meatballs w/Marinara Sauce.
I've kept the thing for a few months, but now decided to open it. It's contents:
Meatballs w/Marinara Sauce - Okay, it isn't a bad dish. Kinda wanted to try the Tuna too since it's the only one I haven't tasted.
Tortillas - Meh, went good in taste with the meatballs. Mashed potatoes fitted the amount of gravy better.
Patriotic Cookies (more like crumbles) - I don't know what happened to these, but calling them cookies isn't something I'd do.
Cherry Blueberry Cobbler - Nothing wrong with this.
Chocolate dairy shake - Gross. It tasted like there was twice as many milk power than in the normal choc dairy shake.
Mayonnaise - Being Dutch, I'd have tried tried the meatballs with mayo. If it wasn't gross fat free I-wouldn't-call-it-mayo.
Accessory packet B
Hot beverage bag - I'm totally gonna need this.

It also lacked a spoon.
Other than the mayo, cookies and the lack of candy, nothing seemed that bad at first.


"Now how do I heat my damn meatballs?!"
Overall, I'd be pretty pissed to get this in the field.

"Now how do I heat my damn meatballs?!"

Why, stick it in the exhaust pipe of the closest vehicle, of course!