Taking up my little nitcomb...
Or, journos clearly do not even check Wikipedia.
From eggs to bacon - why food scares don’t scare us. But the industry doesn’t bank on consumers forgetting about risk and remembering how much they like burgers; it takes a major effort by food boards, manufacturers and retailers to manage crises. Few have pulled it off as well as the Egg Marketing Board, now the British Egg Industry Council. When Edwina Currie, then a junior health minister, said in 1998 that “most of the egg production in this country is affected with salmonella”, she almost killed an entire industry overnight.
The response, if not immediate (it came 10 years later), was the Lion scheme - a symbol of national pride added to eggs to show they come from vaccinated hens. The scheme improved safety and restored consumer confidence.
That would be the 'little lion' that I remember from my youth, doubtless revived because of all the people to whom that was a lovely nostalgic memory for the days when eggs was eggs.
Cannot, however, find any reference to the TV ad I remember in which some popular comic thesp of the day* (not Tony Hancock) exhorted housewives always to look for the little lion, in, as I recall, broadest Mummerset.
*ETA: Bernard Miles!
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