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Comment by bobleeswagger | Hacker News Reader

I always thought salmonella risk came from poop that could be on the outer shell, so wash the eggs and you can safely eat them raw. Is this not true?

I guess this story is related to the egg beaters product becoming popular, since it was pasteurized.

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So this is a weird one, and I have no idea why I remember this...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-05-15/gecko-in-chicken-egg-...

  Gecko in chicken egg may be salmonella breakthrough
  The Northern Territory president of the Australian Medical Association says he may have accidentally discovered how the potentially deadly salmonella bacteria gets inside chicken eggs.

TIL the word "chook"

  chook
  noun
  plural noun: chooks
  1.informal•Australian a chicken or fowl.

Just in case people are confused by how to pronounce this, it is oo as in book, not moo. If you are from northern England/Scotland that probably won’t help you much though.

It’s also used in a range of phrases such as “you silly old chook!”

That was your main learning from that article ;)? Not that a gecko can apparently climb up a chickens cloaca and have an egg shell formed around them? I didn't really have a clear mental picture of how eggs are formed, but whatever I did have certainly didn't admit the possibility that something could climb in before the shell arrived. Nature is pretty amazing

lol Sometimes I forget our language colloquialisms can be really alien to others.

Chook is such an every day usage word in my part of the world..

"Cooked chook" (roast chicken) "silly chook" (silly woman)

etc etc

I thought maybe I had imagined this!

I understood that washing eggs also removes a protective skin from the eggs that would otherwise stop bacteria from passing the shell. Maybe it's a chicken and egg problem then.

the problem is washing the eggs prior to distribution.

eggs should be washed just before use and not before, but in the us we wash them before shipping

The protective coating is just oil. Best option is wash them at packaging plant and then spray with oil to regain the protection.

Which is, in fact, what the US does.

What kind of oil? Is there any chance of it getting into the egg?

It can also be inside the egg: "Salmonella also can contaminate the egg’s contents while it is forming inside the chicken before shells are formed. Today, a lot fewer egg-laying hens have this problem than during the 1980s and 1990s, so eggs are safer. But some eggs are still contaminated with Salmonella."

https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/communication/salmonella-and-...

As far as I've been able to tell salmonella is capable of entering the inside of the egg through the shell, but whether this is the reason eggs are either washed immediately or not at all is something I've not been able to figure out. Salmonella happens to have some tricks to invade various types of tissue, but I don't know if that is related, or even unique to salmonella.

Eggs sold in the US are illegal to sell in the EU. Eggs sold in the EU are illegal to sell in the US. The US mandates washing eggs; the EU forbids it. The rationale being to force egg farmers to raise their hens in more sanitary conditions where the eggs won't get covered in crap in the first place (since consumers are less likely to buy eggs covered in crap).

I believe the rationale for NOT washing eggs is that the process removes a natural coating that prevents bacteria from passing through the shell into the egg contents (the white and yolk), but this leaves the outside of the egg potentially (probably) covered with harmful bacteria.

This is correct. And also why eggs are refrigerated in the us but not in europe

Depends. I put mine in the fridge soon as I get them. They last longer that way.

But you're right that the super market displays them on ordinary (not refrigerated) shelves.

Sort of. In the US they refrigerate the eggs not because of some coating but in case there is salmonella it's less likely to spread.

You don't actually need to refrigerate eggs in the US if you never eat them raw. I have not refrigerated mine in decades - I buy them, then just leave them on the counter.

Here in europe eggs are sold refrigerated. Some people keep them refrigerated, some people do not.

Generally not refrigerated at point of sale in the UK (if we still count as in Europe, sniff).

How do you teach a chicken not to shit on its eggs?

You vaccinate the chicken so that it doesn't get salmonella.

Also you can raise them in special trays that remove both the eggs and the waste immediately, reducing how much gets on the egg.

Luckily commercial chickens come with an instruction manual for everything hatching, housing, vaccinations, diet etc. https://www.hyline.com/filesimages/Hy-Line-Products/Hy-Line-...

That natural coating is just oil. The US washes the egg, then reapplies the oil.

The EU forbids washing to encourage producers not to have salmonella in the first place, the US prevents the salmonella by washing. In practice the EU vaccinates their chickens against salmonella. Around half of US producers do as well.

ha! that is a fascinating insight into Gov's trying to control market forces.

There is no such thing as a sanitary chicken.

Washing eggs is correlated with a material reduction in salmonella cases in countries that adopt it, there is science behind the practice. It is why the US adopted this practice several decades ago, and it produced the desired effect.

US food regulations require stronger mitigations against bacterial contamination than most countries pretty consistently. If you look at the long list of foods prohibited for import into the US from Europe, it is almost entirely due to insufficient mitigation of bacterial contamination. This largely revolves around traditional food processing techniques that don’t pass modern food safety standards but which get an exception in Europe for being “traditional”.

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