Within the limits of the time that goods may be carried in cold storage profitably, long storage has no more bad effects on eggs and poultry than refrigeration for short periods. Cold-storage products are usually of better than average quality if used immediately upon being withdrawn from storage.
=Methods of selling at retail.= For convenience in handling and counting them in quantities, eggs are packed in cases containing thirty dozen each, and wholesale transactions in eggs are by the case, but with the price usually quoted by the dozen. Consumers who use large quantities of eggs buy them by the case. The ordinary consumer buys them by the dozen. There is a widespread impression that, inasmuch as eggs vary greatly in size, the practice of selling them by count is not fair to the consumer. This feeling sometimes goes so far that laws are proposed, and even passed, requiring that eggs shall be sold by weight. Such a law does not remain long in force, because weighing small quantities of eggs is troublesome and the greater number of consumers prefer to buy them by the dozen. In fact, while eggs are nominally sold by count both at wholesale and at retail, they are usually assorted according to size, and the prices graduated to suit. Considering size, condition, quality, and color of shell, as many as ten grades of eggs are sometimes made. Although the color of the shell of an egg has no relation whatever to its palatability or its nutritive value, eggs of a certain color sometimes command a premium. Thus, in New York City white eggs of the best grades will bring from five to ten cents a dozen more than brown eggs of equal quality, while in Boston the situation is exactly reversed.
When most of the poultry of each kind in any market is of about the same size and quality, it is customary to sell live poultry at wholesale at a uniform price by the dozen, and to sell at retail by the piece or by the pair. But as soon as any considerable part of the poultry of any kind in a market is larger than the general run of supplies, a difference is made, in the prices per dozen or per piece or per pair, between small birds and large ones. If the size of the largest specimens further increases, the range of weights becomes too great to be classified in this way, and selling by weight soon becomes the common practice. Conditions are the same for dead poultry, except that the change to selling by weight comes more quickly.