Food stockpiling has been a point of debate in negotiations at the World Trade Organization because some critics say it distorts trade flows. For example, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) bought surplus dairy products, which it distributed to Americans via various welfare programs.

The government has in the past stockpiled food, but these programs were mainly to support farmers hurt by low prices. The Pentagon also maintains a National Defense Stockpile of about $1.5 billion worth of various metals. Additionally, the Defense Department reportedly stockpiles rare earth minerals, which are used to manufacture advanced weaponry, and lithium, a critical input for advanced batteries, to curb its reliance on Chinese sources. While it was initially hoarded for use in military blimps, helium today is used in rockets and in superconductors. The federal government used to maintain a stockpile of helium near Amarillo, Texas, but Congress ordered the reserve to be shut by 2021, and the government transitioned it to private-sector use. The Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve is a stockpile of one million barrels of diesel fuel kept in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Massachusetts to supply the northeastern United States, where the majority of heating oil is used. The United States also maintains a few lesser-known stockpiles. In 2022, the Joe Biden administration made historic withdrawals from the reserve in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent oil price inflation. The SPR is able to hold more than seven hundred million barrels of oil in a network of underground caverns that runs through Texas and Louisiana. Perhaps the most well-known stockpile is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, an extensive oil storage system created in response to a 1973 oil embargo by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Robert Kadlec, the Donald Trump administration’s official in charge of public health preparedness, acknowledged that his focus coming into his role in 2017 was readying the country for a bioterrorist attack involving smallpox, anthrax, or other deadly pathogens. The composition of the stockpile is determined by a special interagency body that includes experts from the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health. The exact contents of the stockpile are kept secret for security reasons, but it holds over $8 billion worth of inventory, according to Greg Burel, who directed the SNS for more than twelve years. Some of the materials are organized into “twelve-hour push packages”-each contains fifty tons of medical supplies that can be rapidly deployed to another part of the country. The SNS contains a slew of medical supplies and equipment, including antibiotics, antivirals, vaccines, ventilators, and beds, stored in secret locations across the country to supplement state and local resources. In 2003, amid a sweeping government reorganization prompted by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it became the SNS, and in 2018 was placed under the authority of another body within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

It was overseen by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The ASHP database takes reports of shortages from the public and they’re then verified by pharmacists.The SNS grew out of an earlier program, the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile, which Congress created in 1999 to serve as an emergency supply of drugs and vaccines in the wake of a terrorist attack or other crisis affecting public health.

Some generic versions of brand-name Tamiflu are listed as being in shortage in the database maintained by the American Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists, known as ASHP. But pharmacists and consumers have reported difficulty finding generic Tamiflu, or oseltamivir, in some areas. The US Food and Drug Administration does not currently list Tamiflu as being in shortage. As a result, jurisdictions will be able to get the support they need to keep Americans healthy as flu cases rise this winter.” “The country is more prepared for this surge because the SNS holds strategic stores of Tamiflu. “The actions taken today to increase access to Tamiflu show our preparedness system at work,” Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Dawn O’Connell said in a news release. States that have run out of Tamiflu in their stockpiles can also request more from the national stockpile. Some stores are implementing purchasing limits on some over-the-counter medications.Īdministration for Strategic Preparedness and Response regional teams will work with jurisdictions to evaluate any requests for Tamiflu. CVS, Walgreens limit purchases of children's pain-relief medicineĪside from antivirals, certain antibiotics and common pain relievers/fever reducers, especially liquid formulations used for children, have also been in high demand.

Strategic national stockpile