Vanishing oysters
Sir: Margaret Drabble's cry for more and cheaper oysters for the proletariat wins on points against Auberon Waugh's retort that they are expensive simply because there are not enough of them (Another voice, June 25).
Fifteen years ago the White Fish Au- thority subsidised the bedding out of millions of 'spats' or Pacific oyster seed- lings around our coasts with the promise of a deluge of cheap oysters for the masses. Housewives were told that they would soon be buying a dozen pan-ready oysters in the supermarket just as they might buy a dozen eggs. It never happened.
The oyster trade, we were told, saw to it the harvest never reached Billingsgate, because it feared the inevitable fall in prices it would bring. The argument ran that the market was content enough with the comfortable profits earned from that scarcer commodity — ostrea edulis, our elite and native bivalve — which is tradi- tionally supplied to us nobs and snobs in London clubs and restaurants.
Patrick Forman
25 Devonshire Road, Cambridge,
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