With Hurricane Season Looming, Freeze Dried Food and Emergency Supplies May Be Hard to Find

Recent News Updates and Personal Experience Reflect Longer Wait Times and Shipping Dates

Within the last year, food prices started to soar and people started to stockpile food, a topic I covered here: www.associatedcontent.com/article/737057/why_and_how_americans_are_stockpiling.html .Much of that article focused on a rice shortage and a decision by some big box retailers to limit the amount of rice consumers could purchase during a single shopping trip. I was hoping that the situation would be only temporary. Food rationing just seem amazingly surreal, although it was also true.

At the time, we were already buying some freeze dried food, including Mountain House and Honeyville products. They all arrived quickly, some within days. We weren't doing this to stockpile food but to prepare for a camping trip. Recently, I decided to get some more supplies. That is when I was quite surprised to discover that things seem to have taken a turn for the worse. When I tried to order replacement supplies today, I was told there were shortages of freeze dried foods.

There may well be a nationwide shortage of freeze dried food products, a point echoed by information found at the WWay Tv Channel 3 website here: www.wwaytv3.com/hurricane_preparedness_supplies_you_may_need_this_hurricane_season/05/2008 If you read the comments on that site, you'll see that some are already complaining about food shortages, including freeze dried food.

But there is more evidence than this. Check out the home page of Nitro-Pak foods, one supplier, and you'll see that the lead time for shipment is a minimum of 10-18 days, as they note here: www.nitro-pak.com/ in an update made on June 5, 2008. Many orders aren't even shipping right away and some are taking six to eight weeks to get to customers!

This seems rather ominous when we are heading into hurricane season. Could people be growing so fearful of food shortages that they are stockpiling even freeze dried food and endangering the welfare of people who are trapped at home during hurricanes or other natural disasters? I hope not but it doesn't seem good. When I tried to place orders, I got info about shipping delays too. Other foods were in short supply or hard to find.