Back when Congress was controlled by the Democrats, it told the Department of Agriculture to come up with a regulation that eggs being processed or in transit must be refrigerated at 45 degrees. It took the department seven years to develop the rule, but perseverance has triumphed and American consumers can rest assured that as of August 1999 their eggs will be chilled while en route to their breakfast tables.

The rule-development process, though, was really messy and more than one bureaucrat was left with the debated substance on his face.

• In the late 1980s, the egg industry itself began pressing Congress to decree that eggs be refrigerated after some outbreaks of salmonella enteritis occurred.

• After Congress eventually complied and served notice to the USDA, some food safety experts got into the act and tried to shift the focus to the internal, rather than the external temperature of the egg -- a tactic some observers believe was prompted by a desire to extend control over the largely unregulated egg industry.

• No fewer than three federal agencies are responsible for egg safety, however -- the Food and Drug Administration, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service and the department's Agricultural Marketing Service -- and all got involved in the egg rule.

The Food Safety and Inspection Service got stuck with issuing the rule -- and made clear it did so only because it was forced to. Out to have a larger say over eggs, it protested that the rule "does not address many of the underlying food safety problems posed by eggs."

A deputy administrator at FSIS warns that "there may be more in what we require..." She added that this "will be part of an overall strategy."