Are feds stockpiling survival food?

[Mullenite]

Are feds stockpiling survival food?

'These circumstances certainly raise red flags'


The news paper Wall Street Journal has advised people to "start stockpiling food" and Report says "there are worrying signs appearing in the United States where some … locals are beginning to hoard supplies." Now there's concern that the U.S. government may be competing with consumers for storable food.

[FunkyTown]

The US -should- have stockpiles of food. One of the greatest mistakes made in this world have been with countries that said, "We can always import food if things go bad."

Then, China clamped down on exports and countries started rioting over food.

[Loudmouth_Mormon]

Ugh. World Net Daily. Like the son of the morning, it used to be such a wonderful thing, it's heart wrenching to see how far it's fallen. It used to be full of edgy commentary and news that conservatives and libertarians needed and could use. Now, more and more, it's full of bad logic, unsupported leaps, statements stretched and tortured out of context, and blinder-wearing one-sided agenda journalism that sometimes ignores the other side of the story.

If I remember correctly, the WSJ article it mentions was talking about food as an investment - an inflation hedge. But it sort of loses it's yellow-journalism x-files-esque melodrama when you give the full picture, so hey, toss out the quote and watch the emotion take over.

At least this article gives us Oregon Freeze Dry's response. Maybe all is not lost.


For what it's worth, the initial hysteria about the #10 cans started on the 21st, with this post about how Mountain House somehow managed to be "out of stock" throughout 2009. Time to panic! End times! The millenium is at our door!

A friend from another message board posts the following:

I just called Mountain House and spoke with one of their customer service reps. The company has stopped selling #10 cans through their own retail section online. They have also decided that they were only going to sell to their largest distributors, Emergency Essentials, NitroPak (sp?) and Saratoga. I'm not familiar with the last two. She said that Mountain House has been swamped with emails about this issue and that this article has specific points that have been exaggerated. I thought it was interesting that she found it interesting that The Freeze Dry Guy was involved in this article, but would not elaborate. She said that product is continuing to be manufactured and said something about 2009 that I didn't understand.

I have seen "panic now buy now from me" type emails and articles that involve some of these smaller distributors in the past.

So, once again, the folks that run on adrenalin and the book of Revelation are trying to spread urgency, and once again, they're twisting reality to fit their agenda.

I'm still not buying it. If you want to buy a semi trailer or two of Mountain House Turkey Tetrazzini #10 cans, here are three websites that will be quite happy to do business with you.

Emergency Essentials - Be Prepared Emergency Preparedness Food Storage
Emergency Preparedness Experts
Discount Food Storage & Emergency Supplies - MRE, Freeze Dried Food, & Emergency Kits

LM

[kemct]

For one my blog posts yesterday I called Mountain House customer service, Nitro-pak customer service, and The ReadyStore and I got the same story as Loudmouth_Mormon.

That supply of #10 cans is continuing to top dealers but is on allocation. This means there is a limited amount available and as it is produced it is divided up among those dealers.

IMHO, the allocation is due mainly to increased demand as a result of "peak oil" believers who have been purchasing heavily in the last 6 months and especially since April stories about food price increase, shortages and riots.

As the price old declines the demand will subside and lead times will go back normal, if oil goes back up the demand will likely increase and lead times will go out farther.

I think what you see in some boards and blogs is regarding #10 cans is a mix of some exaggeration for;

1) a "good story"
2) businesses who didn't get allocation and/or want to steer people to other alternative products they sell

Oregon Freeze Dry, who makes the Mountain House brand products is one of only two Freeze Dry companies in North America that have facilities that meet USDA regulations for meat and poultry(The other is Freeze Dry Foods, but they do not market their own commercial brand).

As such OFD is the only domestic supplier of complete meal (meat, veggies, etc) freeze dried food product.

However Oregon Freeze Dry has many other products they supply food processor companies (to be used in products you consume at restaurants and grocery stores, pet food etc) other than the Mountain Brand. I would guess that it could be as high 90% or more of their business being products other than Mountain House.

According to Oregon's website;

"Our thirty-two drying chambers provide over 32,000 sq. ft. of freeze drying capacity. We are the largest multi-product freeze dryer in the world."

So if they are operating millions of dollars of this equipment at output capacity for most of your business, as you should be to maximize profits, then one 10% segment of your business has a demand explosion, are you going to buy millions more in equipment overnight to satisfy that demand?

The answer will be yes, if you think that demand will continue and increase long term.

The answer will be no, or wait and see, if you feel the demand might disappear if something such as the price of oil goes down some.

[Mykdiver]

Good info there guys. People are always going to over react. Remember the Millinium? Y2K? The huge crash! lol, yeah whatever.

[kemct]

An Update to the availability of Mountain House Freeze Dried Food;

Most of Mountain House online distributors are shipping orders of #10 cans in 24 hours now.

Mountain House has resumed selling #10 cans directly on their web site.

The demand for freeze dried food dropped with the price of oil, so the supply problem has gone away - for now.