Eggs, we now know, are a rich source of protein, vitamins, minerals, controversy and – I should warn any readers of a sophisticated disposition – puns. The controversies around cholesterol and caged birds are now depressingly familiar, but were something of a novelty in 1973 when the New York Times reported on a row between the egg industry and health bodies, with a Humpty-Dumpty inspired pronouncement that “the egg has fallen on hard times”. In the late 1990s, I worked with someone who was trying to sell low-cholesterol eggs, but he was swimming against the tide. Even committed ovotarians sighed that the cholesterol would wreck your cardiovascular health, if the salmonella hadn’t already got to you. Headline writers were overjoyed in 1988 when “Eggwina” Currie fried the egg industry with her announcement that “most of the egg production in this country, sadly, is now affected with salmonella”. Those fragile egg sales plummeted by 60 per cent over a few weeks. Although the then junior minister for health had somewhat overboiled her claim, it seems that there were significant problems with salmonella in laying flocks. The industry cracked, cleaned up its chickens and its act, and announced the red “British Lion” stamp of food safety, supported (some time later) by Mrs Egg Currie herself.
Until the 1930s, salmonella across a whole, year-round industry would have been unheard of. Hens naturally lay only in warmer, lighter months and egg-free winters were part of human and bird life. Fertilised eggs were off-menu in spring, to enable the flock to regenerate. This was revolutionised by American businesses in the 1930s that separated birds for meat and for eggs, and set us on the road to the enormous, egg-first industry we have today. It really got going in the 1950s, in a UK hungry for fresh food after the rationing of the Second World War, when most chickens were slaughtered, leaving enough for one fresh egg per person per week.
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