BLAME THE FOWL

Timaru Herald, Volume CLIII, Issue 22476, 11 January 1943, Page 6

BLAME THE FOWL

“Fusty” Eggs Lack of proper feed for fowls and the consequent deterioration in the constitution of the eggs was given by an officer of the Internal Marketing Department at Wellington, as a possible reason for the fact that some eggs sold to bakers and the public recently have been "fusty”—not bad, but hardly what the consumer would call good. Because of the war, it was explained, some poultry farmers had not been able to maintain a sufficiently continuous standard of feed for their fowls, and the result might show in the quality of the eggs. If the constitution of the egg was below normal its life would be shorter than normal and it would deteriorate more quickly between the time it was graded and tested and the time it reached the consumer. ' An egg which passed the testing and grading machine could, in hot weather, "go off” by the time it was sold two or three days later, and even in prewar days it was common to re-test eggs held in store over a hot weekend. Eggs which went out to the public, said the officer, were tested for freshness before dispatch, and there was no delay in the process of testing, grading, and distributing them to the retailers through Combined Distributors, who were the sole distributing agency for eggs in Wellington. Any lack of freshness in the eggs was due to thenbeing kept for too long before being used, especially In hot weather.