Here are a couple of cases of MREs with the date packed.

MRE Cases

All MRE cases have some sort of date code on them that you can use to determine when they were packaged. A typical case will have both a packed date and an inspection date. The inspection date on MREs is usually three years after the packed date.

Sometimes you'll have a nice date packed such "03/09/01" which you know to mean March 9, 2001. However, some cases will use a different form such as "1068". In this case, the first number "1" stands for the year (2001) and the next three numbers indicate which day of the year (365 days in a year) it was packed. So "068" would be day 68 of the year 2001...or March 9, 2001.