412 COMMERCIAL POULTRY RAISING 



figures. I want it to become vividly apparent and to sink in — 

 just how appalling, how profligate, is this enormous waste. 



Such a loss should be considered sinful, not alone because of 

 the financial loss to the farmers, who bear the greater part of the 

 burden, but because it is a community loss of so much valuable 

 food, the most nourishing kind of food, of which thousands are 

 in such urgent need. 



A depreciation of fifty millions of dollars in the value of our 

 eggs is equivalent to throwing away 2,000,000,000 eggs, or about 

 280,000,000 pounds of one of our finest food staples. Reducing 

 this loss to a per capita basis, it means that every man, woman 

 and child in the country is deprived of about twenty eggs each 

 year. If we consider that very young infants do not eat eggs in 

 any form, also that the majority of the poorer classes can seldom 

 afford them except in the preparation of other foods, the loss 

 pro rata to those who do eat table eggs would probably be in the 

 neighborhood of four dozen each year. 



Breakage. — Let us regard the waste in still another way: In 

 New York City about 5,000,000 cases of eggs, or 150,000,000 

 dozens, are received each year. Records show that in the spring 

 and early summer months it is not unusual for 200,000 cases to 

 be received in a single week. The breakage on this egg supply, 

 not the total damage, together with the depreciation result- 

 ing from such breakage, is about three and a half per cent, or 

 5,250,000 dozens annually. 



Until a few years ago the railroads and other carriers were 

 held accountable for the greater part of this breakage, and their 

 claims in the New York district alone amounted to over a million 

 dollars a year. Their claims still amount to about a half million 

 dollars annually. This reduction in claims does not mean that 

 the breakage has lessened, merely that the carriers have shifted 

 a certain portion of the responsibility to the shoulders of the pro- 

 ducers, shippers, packers and wholesale distributors, where it 

 rightfully belongs, as I will explain later. 



In a case heard before the Interstate Commerce Commission 

 two years ago, between the New York Mercantile Exchange, a 



