Business & Finance: Bluepoints, Inc.

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It would take a hen, however earnest and diligent, 240,000 years to lay as many eggs as a female oyster will toss into the water on a single midsummer day. No less splendidly fecund is the male who will presently fertilize this brood. A few weeks elapse, and upon some clean, hard rock begins the life-struggle of 60,000,000 infant oysters.

Unchanged has been this ordered routine for 15,000,000 years, unless the Smithsonian Institute is deceived about the age of the shells in its cases. But not until the year 100 B. C. did the world take an active interest in the sex life of the oyster. The first to make a study of oyster love was one Sergius Grata, who founded an oyster farm on Italy's Lake Lucrine. The last was omnivorous General Foods Corp. which last week announced the formation of a new subsidiary. Bluepoints Co. Inc., to take over the assets of the North Atlantic Oyster Farms, Inc. operating in Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York. North Atlantic Oyster Farms, Inc. is the largest unit in the industry. Through five subsidiary companies it holds some 35,000 acres of oyster beds, has a fleet of 30 boats, prepares oysters for market in five shore plants.

After the initial effort, which the oyster must perform unaided, General Foods Corp. can do much to aid the progress of the baby mollusc from the sea to the dinner tables of U. S. oyster-lovers. Old shells and brush, to which oysters happily cling, can be strewn upon the breeding-beds. Twice must the oysters be trans planted: first to a growing bed in deeper water, where they will not be buried under new spawn, then to a finishing school in waters rich with food. Such a fashionable spot is Cotuit, Long Island. Here, for the last six months of its life, the oyster gains flavor. Finally, if the oyster is to be shipped great distances, it can be frozen and preserved by the Birdseye process, recently purchased by General Foods.

It is not surprising that the oyster's prodigal fertility has generated a vigorous industry. No other fishery product is as valuable. Of pure water, minus shell and waste matter, 73,000 tons, worth $14,000,000, are marketed annually. Their food equivalent is the meat of 250,000 steers. A million acres of oyster land are under cultivation; at least another million are natural oyster farms.