Posted on 02/17/2006 5:51:49 PM PST by Libloather
Resale of Meals, Ready to Eat questioned after eBay trading spotted
By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, February 18, 2006
WASHINGTON — Meals, Ready to Eat, the prepackaged rations infamous among servicemembers, remain hot collectibles on the online trading site eBay.com, despite defense officials’ efforts to stop the practice.
MREs typically cost about $4.50 to produce, and are intended solely for use and distribution by members of the military, according to Defense Department rules.
But the water-activated rations are being marketed on the site as both survival gear and collector’s item, with some cases of 12 going for upward of $100.
On Friday, more than 90 unopened cases with U.S. military markings were for sale on the site, and more than 300 other listings featured individual meal packets, MRE desserts and other related foodstuffs.
In many of the listings, warnings reading “U.S. Government property — Commercial resale is unlawful” are clearly visible on the packaging.
“If they’re on eBay, they shouldn’t be,” said Gregory Kutz, managing director of the Government Accountability Office’s special investigations department. “They weren’t intended for that. In all of those cases, that’s wasted government money.”
The GAO testified before Congress about the issue this week, as part of a larger examination of abuse of relief supplies intended for Hurricane Katrina victims.
In a sampling of some of the MRE sales on eBay last October, the GAO found a few sales of the food packets by Katrina victims, a practice Kutz admitted is probably legal even if it’s not what military relief workers had in mind.
But his investigators also referred six cases to the Defense Department Inspector General’s office for possible charges of theft and misappropriation of government property. Four of those involved active-duty troops who claimed to have obtained the MREs legally.
Kutz said his investigation was only a snapshot of one day of eBay MRE sales, and does not provide any statistical evidence of a systemic problem.
In 2002, the Defense Supply Center in Philadelphia, which handles procurement of military MREs, requested the trading site voluntarily shut down all MRE sales by their sellers since the meals are “owned by the government until consumed by authorized personnel.”
GAO officials said MRE sales on the site dropped sharply after that request, but have picked up again in recent months.
Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke said the Defense Criminal Investigative Service has been investigating the sales, but would say only that eBay has been “very cooperative” with those efforts.
EBay spokeswoman Catherine England said the company has no plans to halt the MRE sales.
“These are perfectly legal to own and perfectly legal to sell,” she said. “When the Defense Department approached us we asked them to show us a law that prohibited the sale of these items, and they could not do that.”
Without such a law, England said, a ban on those transactions would be unfair to sellers and buyers on the site. The only MRE sales prohibited by the company are meals with already expired use dates, for safety reasons.
Some servicemembers are having a tough time swallowing the idea of MREs as a collectible, luxury item.
“I’d pay someone to take them off of me,” said Airman 1st Class Aaron Stauffer, of the 603rd Air Control Squadron at Aviano Air Base in Italy.
Stauffer and friends laughed off the idea of seeking out the prepackaged meals, and were even more surprised at the idea that someone might be making a profit off them.
Sailors at the U.S. Naval Hospital Okinawa had the same reaction.
“I wouldn’t eat them if I didn’t have to,” said Petty Officer 3rd Class Kathryn Newbill, a corpsman there. “I can’t believe people actually want them.”
Newbill said while deployed for six months last year she ate MREs twice a day, and that’s more than she would like to remember. The pork chop meal was particularly “disgusting.”
Petty Officer 3rd Class Orlando Atencia, another corpsman at the hospital, said he has eaten enough to figure out ways to make the meals bearable. Mixing the cheese pouches with any pasta dish makes a good meal, he said, and adding Tabasco and salt makes it even better.
Still, he can’t imagine a GI or former servicemember going online and seeking out the MREs.
“It’s got to be civilians who are curious about these things,” he said. “For us in the military who go out to the field and eat these, they aren’t our favorite things.”
Still, at least one servicemember wasn’t surprised by the online sales.
“Everything’s on eBay,” said Airman 1st Class Sean Yates of the 603rd ACS. “If they want some bad food, then go for it.”
ping
The local surplus store sells MREs.
Correction, that's stolen government money.
This is unfortunately common, but it would be hard to put a stop to it -- the amounts of money involved are too small to justify any kind of crackdown.
MREs are tops, why can't we buy authentic civilian versions? (the civilian versions are very different)
If I'm going to buy some MRE's for my own use, I always look for the "resale is illegal" tag -- it's the symbol of quality.
Local civilians form a chain to expedite the unloading of 100 floor-loaded Meals, Ready-To-Eat (MREs) in addition to the six pallets of water and MREs unloaded by forklift from a U.S. Army CH-47D Chinook in Livingston, Texas, September 26, 2005. The U.S. Army is contributing to the Hurricane Rita humanitarian assistance operations being led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in conjunction with the Department of Defense.
ROFL! :-)
In the Bx, I used to buy C-rations. I like them far better than MREs. :-)
Why buy C-rats. I always made my own. A few cans of canned fruit, canned meat, some crackers or cookies... A lot cheaper too.
I was getting em for 25$/CASE. :-)
Great price. :-)
They aren't very good. One of the dads of a guy in my scout troop when i was a teenager, was in the Army. We had MRE's on some trips we took and they terrible. I remember the good one, if you call it that, was hotdogs. I remember he said GI's call them Meals Rejected by Ethiopia.
"In the Bx, I used to buy C-rations. I like them far better than MREs."
When the first MREs hit it was arguable which was best, but the newer versions of MREs kick butt. C-rations were okay in the field, but the real test for military rations is to eat them for a couple of days in your civilian home. So why can't the civilian market make an exact copy of the MRE with a different package.
I have had MREs. :-)
I like C-rats much better.
The reason I'm not interested in surplus MREs is I want them for long term storage. when you buy MREs at a garage sale or the surplus store , you don't know their remaining life.
He also passed around some survival rations that were produced by "Cadillac"....woof, woof as it were.
OTOH, C-rats last basically for ever. I was eating ones with date codes of 1947 on the bottom. LOL!
I hear ya. However, when I was poor. I did eat C-rats in my apt. Better than ramen and/or macs&cheese every day. :-)
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