I found myself in a bit of a state of disbelief yesterday when I read in the paper that the EU are no longer going to let us sell eggs by number.  Instead, retailers will have to sell them by weight.

This doesn’t mean you won’t get 6, 12 or 24 eggs in your packet when you go shopping, it’s just that the packaging can’t tell you that there are 6, 12 or 24 eggs in your packet – you’ll be told how heavy they are instead.  The same will apply for some fruit, bread and a raft of other items that are at the moment sold by number.

To be completely honest I don’t get it – I can’t make any sense of what is achieved by doing this, or what difference it will make to either the consumer or the retailer.  I’m assuming that selling these items by weight means that some kind of clever ‘fee by weight’ can be levied on one or both parties.  It’s got to be down to money, hasn’t it?  It usually is.  The amount of money wasted in retailers having to change packaging and actually weighing these items will probably end up appearing on our weekly shopping bills too.

At this stage I really want to end the post with some kind of pun about somebody being left with egg on their faces, but that would be way too obvious (even though it will probably end up being the consumers or farmers – I doubt the supermarkets will suffer much).

Looking on the bright side though, the EU haven’t always won.  At least we can still eat smoky bacon crisps.