Foreign News: Scrambled Eggs

Another ambitious Socialist scheme flapped sadly home to roost last week: the government confessed that its taxpayer-financed poultry farm in Gambia, West Africa, was a failure.

In 1949 the government had promised: "Within two years, British housewives will be getting 20 million eggs and 1,000,000 pounds of dressed poultry yearly from Gambia." The idea was that cheap native (nonunion) labor could grow feed for the chicks and harvest the eggs, but trouble hatched early. An American appointed to head the project got $14,000 to buy hatching eggs from Rhode Island Reds. Beaverbrook's Daily Express blew its patriotic top, offered to fly 1,000 day-old chicks or good British hatching eggs to Gambia. While waiting for the local feed supply to be produced, the government authorized spending of more scarce dollars for American grain. British poultry farmers protested because their production is curtailed by government restrictions on purchase of overseas grain.

The Socialists, however, stood by the great Gambian egg scheme.

Last week Colonial Secretary James Griffiths told the House of Commons that the plan had failed and would be abandoned. Reason: the government planners had regrettably failed to find out whether Gambian land would grow chicken feed. The fact: it would not.

The House of Commons, ever alert to possible cruelty toward dumb animals, had some questions. Richard Hurd, Tory member for the Newbury division of Berkshire, asked Griffiths: "Can the Minister tell us how the birds that will survive are to be fed for the next few months?"

Tory members roared an answer: "On promises and groundnuts." (This was a cruel reference to the government's £36 million scheme for growing peanuts in Africa; failure of the groundnut scheme was announced Feb. 20.)

Edward Keeling, Tory member for Twickenham, asked Griffiths: "Can the Minister say if it is true, as was reported in the Daily Telegraph, that the new director of the scheme has stated, 'I hate chickens'?"

Griffiths, could not or would not say. He announced that the farm's total exports to Britain have been 38,620 eggs and 58,617 pounds of poultry. Horrified Britons realized last week that on a total outlay of £825,000, each egg and each pound of poultry cost around £8.