Supermarket Weights and Measures Trickery - as eggs are surely eggs?

vyle

Won't somebody please think of the chickens!

2sides2everystory

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

No. Eggs sold in supermarkets must be "Class A", and these are not allowed to be washed at any time before they have been sold, so your questions b to f can't be answered.
The following link shows the basic EU requirements for a egg to be categorised as Class A.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2008/02/20110417/10

Thanks Shaun. Depends how suspicious of motive you are whether you then deduce that questions b - f are irrelevant. Question (c) might still squeak in perhaps? Interesting that the standards for Grade A you found mention cleaning and washing but that the old 2004 document linked to by pelirocco only mentioned cleaning I think as not permitted under the old Class A. I wonder why it was thought the extra word was required.

Rolandtheroadie

I remember cleaning eggs years ago using a slightly abrasive pad.

Double yolkers were sold to staff, cracked/too dirty supposedly went to bakeries.

Think the chickens went to soup once their laying life was over.

peachyprice

2sides2everystory wrote: »

I wonder why it was thought the extra word was required.

Probably because of the bird flu fiasco.

im-lost

Op you really need to get out more.

Considering that an egg size can have anything up to
a 10g size difference then its safe to assume a 20% difference
in the overall boxed weight is perfectly possible, depending on
the day / time the eggs are packaged.

Eggs are generally sorted as and when they are laid, out the
chickens !!!!, on to a conveyor, to the grading machines and
straight in to boxes, they aren't all stored up to get an 'average'
weight per box. They are packaged as they come so to speak.

Now why would the weights of boxes be so different, but within
the legal limits, I hear you ask.

Quite simply the egg facility will have a quota of xxx boxes of eggs
it needs to produce in any given hour, to meet this quota at various
times of the day they will need to package eggs for consumer sale
that are towards the maximum of a given size range, these eggs towards
the top of each range would normally go on to manufacturers who use
them, as they pay per tonne of egg.

Now a range of an egg will be 53g - 63g its up to the producer where in
that range their sizes fall at any given time in the grading, the one I worked
at for a time would at the start of the day box eggs towards the lower end of
the range, with ever so slightly larger eggs going for manufacture, why give
the consumer 5g extra when at the end of the day all those extra 5g of egg will
add up to an extra tonne for a manufacturer.

Towards the end of the day when most of the manufacturers orders were
fulfilled, then these slightly larger eggs would go on for boxing for the end
consumer, giving you the anal little !!!!!, something to moan about.

MamaMoo_2

Who cares.
If you want to save money, get your eggs at a farmers market. You can get some lovely large double-yolkers for a very nice price!
Also, if you want cheap smoothies, make your own or buy the supermarket's own brand.
Simples.


I swear, the staff must see you and your scales coming and die a little inside.

peter_the_piper

im-lost wrote: »

Op you really need to get out more.

Considering that an egg size can have anything up to
a 10g size difference then its safe to assume a 20% difference
in the overall boxed weight is perfectly possible, depending on
the day / time the eggs are packaged.

Eggs are generally sorted as and when they are laid, out the
chickens !!!!, on to a conveyor, to the grading machines and
straight in to boxes, they aren't all stored up to get an 'average'
weight per box. They are packaged as they come so to speak.

Now why would the weights of boxes be so different, but within
the legal limits, I hear you ask.

Quite simply the egg facility will have a quota of xxx boxes of eggs
it needs to produce in any given hour, to meet this quota at various
times of the day they will need to package eggs for consumer sale
that are towards the maximum of a given size range, these eggs towards
the top of each range would normally go on to manufacturers who use
them, as they pay per tonne of egg.

Now a range of an egg will be 53g - 63g its up to the producer where in
that range their sizes fall at any given time in the grading, the one I worked
at for a time would at the start of the day box eggs towards the lower end of
the range, with ever so slightly larger eggs going for manufacture, why give
the consumer 5g extra when at the end of the day all those extra 5g of egg will
add up to an extra tonne for a manufacturer.

Towards the end of the day when most of the manufacturers orders were
fulfilled, then these slightly larger eggs would go on for boxing for the end
consumer, giving you the anal little !!!!!, something to moan about.

Was going to thank you for the information until I read the last unnecessary sentence.

Dave_C_2

2sides2everystory wrote: »

Bought 12 Sainsburys Woodland Eggs the other day but not before I'd noticed that the size difference between L and M was ridiculously little.
<snip>
I held both in my hands and thought - strange, I can hardly tell the difference in weight. I opened the boxes and sure enough, very little difference. I tried another couple of examples - same - very little difference. Maybe a couple of eggs were a little larger than the rest in the L boxes.

And in your original post you said(my emphasis):

Far from being easy to spot such things, I contend that few customers would notice a 10% reduction in the size of an egg unless they had some of the originals side by side in the same box to compare them with.
Even a 5% reduction in diameter (that's 1/20th) results in an almost 15% reduction in the contents (that's getting on for a sixth)
I defy the clever dicks to argue they can tell this just by looking.

However all is not lost as one of these is quite cheap


Dave

mad_dr

The real crime that NO-ONE seems to be picking up on here is that the chickens at Cadbury's are now laying smaller Creme Eggs here in Canada than they used to!!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadbury_Creme_Egg#Reduction_in_size_of_American_eggs

You don't even need the square root of Pi to see that this is the shocking truth. I demand an eggsplanation, etc...