Those packets were made up some time ago, well before 9-11 or even 2001 in most cases. They've been sitting in warehouse somewhere. The design applies "lessons learned" trying to drop food to the Kurds in Norther Iraq, where some on the ground were killed or injured by falling sacks of rice and such. These packets are light enough, and have enough surface area, that they fall more or less like leaves, rather than a sack of potatoes. That means we can drop from higher up, as we did early on, and that in turn means we can start dropping before the air defenses are 100% supressed. The packets we're dropping in Afghanistan are the meatless variety, but there are others with meat. The last thing we wanted was to give the Tallywackers the oportunity to pull what other Afghans did on the Brits, telling the Muslim soliders of the British Indian Army that the bullet lube was pork fat, and the Hindu ones that it was beef fat. No meat, OK with everyone. But as Mick Dundee said "you can live on it, but...".