Have we considered where the initial matter for replicators comes from? Perhaps ships have a dedicated tribble store to be used for harvesting matter similar to modern day poultry farms.

Man what a cool episode. Also technically speaking really impressive how they managed to pull it off in the 90s. Even down to the color grading they managed to match the look exactly like they were in a TOS episode.

Ooh, interstellar 4H. Gonna glom off of that idea.