Food safety and eggs

Created this topic to allow discussion about whether egg eating is safe and ethical as per the post by @ccmpl

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You should all get hold of a copy of the May 2002 issue of National Geographic.

There is a leading article in it, on the quality of food in the USA.

And when they reach “eggs”, there is a chilling description of the dangers of eating eggs - at all - if they are not genuinely “free range” eggs.

In Australia, the “big end of town” - mostly, large cage egg producers and the big supermarket chains - found out that “free range”, in the English language, has been taken to mean eggs produced by allowing hens to roam, with no more than a thousand hens per hectare. Cage eggs is absolutely out of the question!

So they lobbied the government, and persuaded the [then] Liberal Coalition to pass an Act of Parliament, decreeing that practically anything at all could be called a “free range” egg in Australia, and that is not “misleading or deceptive conduct”. Go for it! To hell with the 26 million people who live in this country. This is all about making money - right?

Well it’s NOT right. That does NOT make those eggs “free range”. Climb over the barrier and you’re in the next paddock. Producing “genuinely NON-free range eggs”. And swapping labels.

Why does this matter?

Several reasons actually.

The National Geographic article basically tells you that unless these “things” are cooked to extinction, you face a VERY serious risk of getting E-coli or salmonella poisoning. You could be lucky and just be very sick - you could end up in hospital - and (also) it COULD actually KILL you.

So - no such thing as poached eggs! “NO” to scrambled eggs! Fried? - possibly - but NEVER “sunny side up” - cooked on both sides, till they’re practically burned.

And so on.

That’s one part of the story. The risks, the dangers, the lies. The absolute contempt shown to the Australian public by the people who want us to buy their product - and by the politicians who did this to us, instead of doing their duty to the Australian public and protecting us from “the forces of evil” - greed and corruption, in this case. I wonder what political donations were made to secure the passage of those amendments to our consumer “protection” laws? That would be interesting to find out!

The other is nutrition.

How many of you can remember farm yard eggs? How many of you have had chooks in the back yard, and just gone out there to grab some freshly laid eggs, for your breakfast?

How many of you can remember those rich, flavoursome, golden-yolked eggs, from a time before all this rubbish started - before we started trying to imitate a country which has already lost the plot, and put money before health & nutrition?

I have two sources of supply - one with less than 400 hens per hectare, one with less than 200. And there is absolutely no comparison, between their eggs and the rubbish you’ll find on supermarket shelves around Australia right now - today - clearly branded as “free range eggs”. When, in fact, they are nothing of the kind.

If on the other hand you want to save 10 cents and buy the “cheaper” (and nasty) version of an egg - do yourself a favour. Spend far more than that, maintaining top level private health insurance cover. Against the day you’ll find you need it. Like National Geographic warned you about. Over 20 years ago!

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Since 2018 free range is up to 10,000 hens per hectare, they get one square metre each, that ought to be plenty!

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Nice sarcasm there @syncretic, yes the spacing does not seem adequate in any way for a hen to roam.

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Before we get too excited, FSANZ has some information about:

https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/publications/Pages/publichealthandsafet5769.aspx

It is worth reading information on the Australian context and that in Australia risks are generally low (chemical contamination) to very low (microbiological contamination).

In relation to consuming eggs, FSANZ highlights where principle risks lie, that being the ‘Consumption of eggs that have cracks or are visually dirty (soiled)’. This simple measure is often seen by many when purchasing eggs (customers opening egg cartons to check eggs are uncracked and clean). If one happens to buy a cracked egg, don’t eat it like one would do with a new jar where the button has popped out, a can is bulging or other foods where there is evidence of spoiling.

The FSANZ presents information that caged eggs are safer to eat than free range eggs:

And in relation to nutritional value, from a poultry expert:

There is no difference in nutrition between cage-free and conventional eggs, Dr. Karcher said.

One wouldn’t avoid canned foods because of reading:

or

and fearing they might contain Clostridium botulinum (botulism). Likewise with eggs.

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I am having trouble finding that article. Are you sure it was May 2002? Could you tell me the title and author, that may make it easier.

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Accurate statistics on E. Coli and salmonella morbidity data are difficult to obtain. However, in this study, Escherichia coli bacteraemia in Canberra: incidence and clinical features | The Medical Journal of Australia showed 28 episodes per 100,000 population over a 5 year study period. N.B. this is E. Coli infection from all sources, of which eggs MAY be one. Salmonella infection rates are higher, at 66.6 per 100,000, taken from https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/8FA6078276359430CA257BF0001A4C42/$File/salmonellosis_in_australia_in_2020_possible_impacts_of_covid_19_related_public_health_measures.docx

As with E. Coli, salmonella can come from a wide variety of sources, not only eggs. The egg related morbidity statistics would be substantially lower than the total combined mobidity rate of approx 95 cases per 100,000 people per year - maybe a single digit percentage thereof.

Egg consumption in Australia was 262 eggs per person; or 26,200,000 per 100,000 people. Australia's Egg Industry: Everything You Need To Know

That means for every egg eaten, there is a 0.0003626% chance that the person eating the egg will become infected by either E. Coli or salmonella in that year - regardless of whether the egg is the actual source.

There’s no doubt that farm yard style eggs taste better. However, a dietitian would probably test them and find little difference nutritionally, gram for gram. There’s no way Australia can produce 6.6 billion farm yard eggs.

Prior to domestication, wild chooks were forest dwellers. Their natural predators are other birds and animals, and their instinctive defences include tree canopy cover. “Free range” in Australia usually means open field ranging. That won’t replicate the safety of the forest.

Salmonella on eggs, as I understand it, can exist on the outside of the shells. I wash my so-called “free range” eggs before using them, although I assume they’ve already been washed. Beyond that, I simply enjoy the eggs.

You can’t beat an egg, unless you like them scrambled.

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:+1:
Or home made egg mayo, leaving a supply of whites to whisk in a frenzy and meringue. :wink::yum:

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No it doesn’t. In your post you stated that

Which is correct. There are many reasons one may get a salmonella or E. coli infection which are high risk, rather than eggs which FSANZ has indicated are very low risk.

Such sources which are more likely to contribute to salmonella infection are outlined here:

and likewise for E. coli:

If eggs were such a high risk, they would have been highlighted on the above government websites and by the FSANZ as being high risk foods where the likely rate of infection is high at about 95 cases per 100,000 people, if the statistic of rate of infections in the Australian population is correct.

It is worth noting that FSANZ role is to ensure that Australia (and New Zealand) has safe food for consumption and wouldn’t down play of the risks associated with eating eggs through their independent scientific analysis.

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Ok, I expressed that poorly, I was being a bit too cute expressing the low risk. Statistically, there were some 6.5 billion eggs consumed in Australia last year, while there would have been approximately 7300 E. Coli and 17,000 salmonella infections based on the morbidity statistics irrespective of whether eggs were a causal factor.

The risk of infection from eggs is extremely low but not zero, and the actual risk is not worth calculating.

Simple food hygiene handling removes most risk.

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A bit of a side note, but for more general info on food safety and eggs this page presents a fairly comprehensive guide:

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From the article: “Don’t wash eggs as the shell becomes more porous when wet, making it easier for bacteria to get in.”

Interesting. I always wash them just before I crack them, and I’ve been doing it for years…

They also suggest you should never eat foods with raw egg in them. I don’t know how I survived my childhood - eating the left over cake mix from the mixing bowl and utensils, and egg flips after exercise. I never had any problems.

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I’ve got a bullet in five out of six chambers according to the dot points under “Avoid uncooked food that contains raw eggs”. It isn’t all six as I no longer eat eggflips.

Bearnaise sauce, aioli and homemade icecream are three of the five food groups. But I feel fine, perhaps my chooks have very clean cloacas. And I thought they only washed their feet in their drinking water.

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Yep, 1500 hens per hectare was the norm that I was aware of.

I actually Google the free-range eggs I buy to find out the number of birds per hectare. It’s not easy to get eggs from suppliers with only 1500 hens, but thankfully I can get them where I live. Sometimes they were SunnyQueen, but sadly the local supermarket doesn’t seem to get them now, so I buy others I know have low stocking densities.

Choice did do an article on stocking rates. Apologies if this has already been linked

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Eggcellent respose!

Being raised in the USA on a “farm” which i use loosely, for 3/4 of my life and now 12 years in Australia, the difference with our eggs and theirs is significant.

My mother bred race horses (and a Olympic Equestrian), so technically it was called a ranch. So while we had chickens, and had many people working the 10k acres we have, it wasn’t a “working food farm”. But the eggs were amazing. Eggs were kept out of the fridge all the time, something you cannot do with supermarket eggs in the US (99% of them). And when I moved here, I noticed most eggs were just on a shelf not refrigerated. Most I see now are refrigerated, but because most eggs here are not doused in chemicals et cetera to clean them prior to being “laid” out for the consumer, the article has really little significance here.

While fresh farm eggs are amazing, it’s the way we handle them that matters significantly. Most eggs in the US are white versus our brown eggs as well.

I do find ours much better overall, taste, not nutritionally. So while the media often attempts to scare us stupid, and the serious lack of quality journalism, it leads me to take little if any notice to anything “published” now-a-days.

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An interesting observation. It is common for people to prefer either white or brown and to tell you that their favourite is more nutritious or more tasty (I am not assuming that about you) and in different parts of the world sales of one predominates over the other.

The fun thing is that it isn’t the same colour that is preferred world-wide. There is no measurable difference in nutritional qualities between white and brown. The colour has nothing to do with the content in general, it is deposited in the layers of protein that are part of the shell.

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I always thought the shell colour has more to do with the chicken variety and colour, than anything else. Our son’s chooks are a beautiful orangey red colour and lay brown shelled eggs.

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It is, the genetics are fairly well described. There are also blue chicken eggs which are not common. Are they super-good, super-bad, or like the others, no different?

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This video explains what causes different chicken egg colours:

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The wellbeing of the chooks aside it’s the taste that counts. Our hobby farm chooks are happy, looked after well and fed with kitchen scraps, wheat, layer pallets, crushed maize, shell grit and a seperate daily mesh of bran mixed with all of the above. They also get green garden waste of whatever is in ‘season’. Surplus eggs get sold to happy neighbours and nobody died or got sick yet of salmonella or ecoli poisening. Happy Egg Eating!!

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