We had 2 emails this week from miscellaneous vendors eluding that there may be a crisis in the near future.
The first email had to do with the drought conditions in the US. We can only judge things from our point of view and farm production in our “neck o’ the woods” looks to be very good. Fields are full of corn and soybeans in Northern Indiana and South West Michigan. I can count on one hand the number of fields that I’ve seen either empty or drought damaged.
The second email appears to be trying to revive a scare from late 2010: the FEMA Food-Stockpiling rumor. In fact, the email title even reads “Feds Stockpiling Even more Survival Food”. The email states that FEMA has requested bids on a large supply of self-heating meals. We checked into it and they did post the RFP in August 2012.
I feel that there are couple misconceptions about this that are being twisted into a sales pitch. First, this is only a request for bids, or RFP, and it doesn’t mean that FEMA is stockpiling them or even purchasing them. Second, and IMO, this would be a normal process for any disaster response organization.
Isn’t being prepared the main reason that FEMA and Homeland Security exist? The fact that they are requesting a source for relief supplies doesn’t necessarily mean that they will need that many meals nor does it mean that a disaster of that scale is imminent. It just means they are looking for a contractor that can have that many meals ready to ship in a short period of time. I believe they are requesting 1 million meals ready to go at a moments notice. Which would be about 3 days of food for a city of 110,000 people.
We’ve tracked down the website that posts the Federal Business Opportunities and you can access it here:
FEMA postings can be found under Homeland Security. Bookmark that link and from now on, you can verify the authenticity of these rumors and see for yourself how accurate they are.
Please don’t allow anyone you know to be scared into an irrational purchase.
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