149 



THE MARKETING OF EGGS. 



During one of the discussions in the course of the Poultry 

 Conference held at Reading in July, a gentleman who is 

 engaged in the trade, speaking on the marketing question, 

 said : "You are talking about your little baskets full of eggs, 

 while we are dealing with them not in little baskets full, but 

 by millions and millions/ 5 Such a statement at once indi- 

 cates the extent of the trade, and the difference in methods 

 adopted at home and abroad. The same speaker further 

 said : "If you go to the London dealers you will see stacks 

 of eggs labelled Austrian and Danish eggs. You will see 

 a few — not many — Irish eggs ; and if you ask them where 

 are the English eggs, they will shake their heads and say, 

 ' We have not seen one for years. 5 55 The fact must be 

 recognised that English eggs do not pass through the 

 hands of ordinary wholesale traders, except to a limited 

 extent, and that such as are sold by retailers come direct 

 to them with few intermediaries. Hence the wholesale 

 trade knows comparatively little of home produce. They 

 prefer to handle foreign eggs, which can be bought in large 

 quantities, and arrive properly and evenly packed. To 

 induce them to treat English eggs in the same manner, it 

 would be necessary to revolutionise our entire system of 

 marketing, which, however desirable in certain directions, 

 is not so in this case. If the wholesale trade were concerned 

 in the marketing of home eggs to the same extent as now 

 with foreign supplies, we should lose much of the advantage 

 we possess in nearness to markets, for the wholesale man has 

 yet to learn that a few days make a considerable difference 

 in the quality of eggs, and he does not take that trouble to 

 ensure rapidity of sale, which places English in a 

 position unapproachable by any foreign supplies. Unfor- 

 tunately, however, the position is to a large extent sacrificed 



