Egg austerity

Tesco, Asda and Lidl are all restricting how many eggs customers are allowed to buy. Avian flu, high energy costs and rocketing grain prices are to blame for the supply shortages. But perhaps there is another factor at work.

Wartime egg rationing came to an end in Britain only in 1954. A year later, Sir Anthony Fisher – a man who grew rich by introducing the UK to industrial methods of chicken farming, first for meat but then also egg production – used his new laid wealth to fund efforts to challenge the then dominant statist orthodoxy.

It took 25 years, but eventually Mrs Thatcher overturned this dispensation with the help of the bodies that Fisher backed. Statism is becoming economic orthodoxy once more – is the return of egg rationing its augury?