Full of flavour

FURTHER to the letter from David Damant (November 7), my husband recalls being a butcher boy in the 1960s in a London suburb. Pheasants were brought in by customers and hung in the storeroom for a fortnight or so.

After that, ripe and full of maggots, they were plucked and cleaned, but the odd grub got left inside. The enhanced-flavoured birds were then delivered back to the owners.

Thinking of today’s ‘hygienic’ birds, we wonder if any of those maggots proved to be dangerous to health. Margaret Crockett, London