The Great Egg Debacle
Feb 22nd, 2009 by Nick
[G] at Icewishes blog [Raytheon Polar has taken disciplinary action against the blog's owner for this egg story, and the blog has been removed.] writes:
Every year, for lord knows how many years, South Pole station, just before it closes for winter receives 8 months worth of fresh eggs. This year we received 44 cartons of eggs, 660 dozen fresh eggs, fresh out of the chickens of New Zealand.
[...]
Oiling the eggs keeps them fresh longer. It stops the pores of the shell from exchanging air with the outside.
This year, Raytheon purchased pre-oiled eggs. Factory oiled eggs. They were delivered last week. As they flew from NZ to McMurdo and thence here to the South Pole, an email was arriving just ahead of them.
We couldn’t keep the eggs. 660 DOZEN eggs for our winter and we couldn’t have them.
Why? The factory in NZ that oiled them? Well, they didn’t WASH them first. They oiled them straight out of the shit-covered undersides of the chickens who laid them.
[...]
What we did get on Saturday were about 1/4 of that, in unoiled fresh eggs, to take us entirely through the winter, which amounts to about one egg per week per person for 8 months.
But we won’t even have that. Because Raytheon’s authoritarian streak reared its ugly head, yet once more, and told us that we could not even oil these new fresh eggs.
We. Can’t. Oil. The. Eggs.
Polies have ALWAYS oiled eggs.
But no, suddenly the health effects of oiled eggs were too risky for us, and we could no longer oil eggs to have fresh eggs for the winter. Even though these eggs were cleaned, and we could clean them again ourselves. Nope, it was the oiling itself that was the risk.
Here’s a recipe for oiling eggs for long-term storage:
Update: Here’s a management email thread regarding the egg decision.
Update: Here’s a piece on the egg story from New Zealand TV:
I weep for you, truly.
Sigh. Personally, I’ll raise a glass when Raytheon is but a memory in Antarctica. The damage they’ve caused in the last decade will be lasting.
Good riddance.
I cannot believe that Raytheon is taking away [G]‘s rights to freedom of speech. Why make a polie pay the price for the mistakes of the employees that sent “unclean” eggs for them to eat? Raytheo should praise [G] and even give her a bonus for pointing this out. She may have saved the lives of everyone at the South Pole from unclean eggs. Raytheon management – Grow up and accept responsibility.