Why American Eggs Would Be Illegal In A British Supermarket, And Vice Versa
forbes.com
forbes.com
"Amazingly"? No not really! Vaccination stops disease. It's completely expected, not amazing at all.
edit: Likewise it's not "amazing" that cases of Diptheria, Measles, Polio, etc have been drastically reduced - by 100% in some cases - since widespread vaccination began in the USA (source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2013/02/19/a-graph... )
To the remaining, thinking public, you're right. It's not amazing at all.
"My child ate chicken that was vaccinated, and it gave my child autism!"
On second thought, don't want to give them any ideas...
It is a small fringe of people who believe things like that; just unfortunately these same people are the most likely to catch the disease (and be unable to afford decent treatment).
I would be much more tolerant of the people who are afraid of vaccines, if it wasn't for the risk of them hurting other people with their decisions.
That one fact alone shows how truly reckless people who refuse to get their offspring vaccinated are.
Perhaps not a majority, but definitely a "large" number by my reckoning.
http://healthcare.thomsonreuters.com/npr/assets/NPR_report_v...
If forbes really are addressing those people, it's hardly helpful to describe the fact that vaccines work as "amazing".
It's lending weight to the idea that it's surprising that the vaccine worked.
Even if I was addressing flat-earthers, I still wouldn't call it "amazing" that a round-the-world yacht race ended in the same place that it started.
This is contrived, admittedly, but not implausible. There are other scenarios as well. While they may all seem very unlikely, eventually contamination will occur, given how often people fly back and forth nowadays. If you keep rolling a thousand dice, eventually they will all come up sixes.
A thousand sixes in a single simultaneous roll shouldn't happen in the entire lifetime of the universe. If your system is that safe, you're in pretty good shape. But rolling a thousand dice where you get to set aside each six you get, you should expect to get to all sixes in 30 or 40 rolls.
Whenever you're engineering a system for safety, the key is figuring out how much needs to go wrong for the system to fail, and how many opportunities you'll have for those things to go wrong. Diseases being carried from continent to continent is a fairly normal occurrence; contamination will happen fairly regularly, and the biggest protection against it becoming widespread is herd immunity.
Neither of those things are a problem in the UK.
It's amazing because it's the hens being vaccinated. Humans could get the infection from other sources, but apparently by and large don't.
This is almost always either because (a) the vegetables are fertilized with manure (organic vegetables, in particular, carry a higher risk of fecal contamination and associated diseases) or because (b) they're processed and packed in contaminated facilities. It is a self-fulfilling irony of the regulatory regime that vegetable-processing plants, which are more likely to be contaminated, are subject to less stringent safety standards than their meat- and poultry-processing counterparts.
0. http://google2.fda.gov/search?site=FDAgov-recalls&client...
If so, reducing/eradicating endemic chicken salmonella might also remove it from the manure.
http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/food-poisoning/news/201209...
I thought it referred more to the logistics of getting hundreds of producers coordinated and hundreds of thousands of chickens vaccinated in so short a time. Actually, if they have the data, it would make for fascinating study about epidemiology in vaccinated populations. Some chickens were probably missed, but once the vaccination rate reaches some critical level, the disease doesn't spread the same way.
So, no need to assume the writer is one of the "crazies" and no need to have an OT comment thread about it.
I don't think that interpretation is plausible really. The author mentioned nothing about logistics, scale, time-to-results. I don't see how you can claim that the "amazing" is supposed to refer to something the author didn't mention.
> so short a time
Twelve years?
> no need to assume the writer is one of the "crazies"
Indeed.
> no need to have an OT comment thread
I just made the comment, not the thread. No-one's baying for blood. I'm just saying it's very sloppy and potentially dangerous phrasing.
Granted this is probably one of those disagreements that falls under "the issues of least importance cause the greatest divides".
"Deadly [to rabbits] disease kills rabbits. It's completely expected, not amazing at all."
And yet, rabbits have regained a significant foothold in Australia, despite myx absolutely decimating the population in the 50s. It's not just about micro-scale effectiveness, it's about effective timing and implementation. Same goes for AIDs meds in Africa, or forest fires.
(that said, I'm surprised to find it on the front page of hacker news!)
Where I live in NH lots of small farms and people keep a few hens, and most of the smaller places will mention this to customers.
Eggs from these "home hens" definitely taste different, though I doubt it has to do with washing and much more to do with hen diet.
(And now it's mid noon here, time to go home and make eggs. Far more important than any local food movement, for me, is living within walking distance to work!)
- The amount of work is fairly minimal - about as much effort as a pet rabbit - and you get eggs
- When you observe chickens up close, they're surprisingly attractive animals. And not as stupid as you would assume, either
- The eggs really do taste better. I think this is because a) they eat better, and b) they are much, much fresher
- You can feed most of your kitchen scraps to your chickens to recycle your waste. They're omnivores, so eat meat (although officially you're not supposed to feed them it).
I mean it varies from area to area, but foxes killing hens is a stereotype for a reason. Cats will try too as will many other predators depending on area.
You leave that door open one night and expect to return to a garden of feathers...
Our cat did try and stalk the hens for fun when we first got them, but never attacked them and he was a decent mouser.
In general, to a cat, "runs away" == "prey" and "comes right up to me" == "equal and/or potential threat"
Partly aggression - chickens are/can be nasty and will attack other animals with sharp beaks. Combine this with the fact that they're flock animals, one cat isn't going up against multiple flying, aggressive, pointy ended foes.
I love eggs, and have often thought about having my own chicken... although with my current urban living situation, it would be quite hard :)
In terms of diseases, there are some nasty ones like red mites that can suck their blood, but disinfecting the coop takes care of that (and I've never seen any evidence of it). The only thing my chickens have really suffered from is scaley leg, but you can get ointment for that.
I also find they decide to pluck their own feathers out at odd times due to moulting or broodiness.
//edit//Also, for urban chicken keepers: http://www.omlet.co.uk/
http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/raccoon-chicken-predators-...
Racoons are very sharp creatures and can open cages and pens that aren't designed well. If your wire mesh is too large and your chickens stay close to they edge they will lay wait and grab them thru the cage.
http://ag.ansc.purdue.edu/sheep/ansc442/semprojs/2002/predat...
- Being that dogs and coyotes are among the greatest predators of sheep, a llama can be very effective in alerting and protecting a flock of sheep against such predators. A good guard llama is very cautious and curious of these predators and will usually charge them, and if the predator does not retreat, kick and stomp them.
- One llama is capable of guarding up to 2,000 sheep in up to 300 acres, and can decrease the amount of predation in a flock up to 100%.
- Also, llamas ... often will protect birthing sheep and will alert producers to sick or hurt sheep.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_llama
- Some llamas may herd the animals they are guarding into a tight group or lead them away from danger and to the spot where they may feel the safest.
Quite impressive, what llamas can do.
On my dads farm one of our goats had babies (kids?), after a few weeks we allowed them to roam the pastures. For some reason the donkey had something against one of the kids and stomped it to death, then proceeded to throw its dead body around like a ragdoll for hours.
I never trusted that donkey again.
* Snakes (sometimes, having a snooze still full of young chickens),
* Eagles,
* water rats,
* wild dogs,
* foxes,
* feral cats,
* neighbour's dogs,
* pigs,
* kids,
* and others I have probably forgotten.
Did not have any issues with snakes or water rats (Sweden), but we did have a issue with flooding. With water just a hand deep, one or two would sometimes drown (the rest would either sit on the sitting sticks, or roosting).
On a more positive side, I never had any issues with cats (even feral ones from what I remember) or dogs. there are no wild dogs where I lived, but we did operative a store right next to the hen house, and customers dogs (and kids) were often running around.
Wow! I kept 20-25 laying hens in yearly batches when I was between the ages of 13 and 18. I found them to be singularly repulsive, all having the same rude, avaricious, gluttonous personality, and all behaving in the most horrible manner possible. I'm not against eating chicken mainly because of this experience.
I also had several pairs of ducks during those years, providing an avian contrast. Ducks have different personalities, aren't nearly as vicious to each other or to their prey, and are generally good sports.
Everything else you say about laying hens is true in my experience. The eggs are indeed much, much better than supermarket eggs.
Of course, chicken breeds, coop environment, and owner personality are huge factors in chicken behavior as well.
BTW, this is a great article in that it reveals a little about our industrial food chain. I suppose it's popular here on HN because it has a bit of the "How things work" vibe. There should be articles like this for every type of food sold in stores.
A sibling comment mentions flock size as a factor, but there are many factors in chicken personality. Most farmers create scarcity across almost all resources, from food to grooming space, to running and flying room, to pasture time, and so on. Almost any creature, in constant competition for scarce resources amongst her peers, will develop a deplorable personality, sadistic or vindictive.
I don't understand your reasoning there. To me, whether it's ok to eat an animal should depend on whether it can experience suffering, not on whether it has a good personality. I mean, is it ok to eat people who are jerks?
A lot of people respond to the "why is it ok to eat these animals" question with, "because chickens/cows/turkeys are dumb." Following that logic, it's ok to eat people with a low enough IQ, or mental handicaps, no?
The argument maratd gives thus is a justification for eating animals that are not smart enough to to look at our behaviour and decide whether or not we're fair based on whether or not we also eat animals.
But it explicitly rules out cannibalism (or eating intelligent aliens).
He's not saying it's okay as long as you don't get eaten he's saying "as a human, I do not want to get eaten. Therefore, I do not want to inflict this on other humans either".
"smart enough to to look at our behaviour and decide whether or not we're fair based on whether or not we also eat animals"
Yes of course an IQ number is a ridiculous way to draw a line; moving on.
'Animal' is a logical measure but 1. who cares about sea sponges and 2. it's not universal, what if aliens show up.
Drawing the line at creatures that are intelligent enough to draw this same line is a very clean and clever solution to the problem. Anything with minimal critical thinking skills is saved. Any dumb brute is fair game.
Another way of going about it would be to allow/disallow in aggregate, not in specific cases. AKA all humans or no humans. In which case it wouldn't be allowed even with a braindead person.
And you could say that being part of a species gives you special moral standing if other members of your species have the attributes required for it, even if you don't personally have them, but it would be a completely arbitrary thing to say.
But it still gives a misleading impression when someone hears you ate "a human".
That is absolutely not testable by our current means, not for any rigorous definition of knowledge. There are numerous instances, for example, of mothers of one species nursing the young of another species. Sometimes even of predator mothers nursing prey young. So, prima facie, assuming a reasonable definition of "fairness" it would seem that a vast number of species are capable of exhibiting this trait, including many of the ones you eat.
Second, it's also completely arbitrary. Why test for fairness? Why not ability to generate a profit on the stock market, or to do square roots, or tie shoes? It's a stupidly chosen metric that, at its heart, embodies circular logic -- choose a human trait, and then apply a human-centric test (which we don't even do by the way) to see if the species can be eaten. What do you expect the result would be? Even dolphins can fail this exam.
The bottom line is, your criteria is arbitrary and untestable. And it cannot even be applied consistently, as you would have to admit the consumption of severely encephalitic fetuses and the like -- which is something only a person arguing an abstraction could endorse. No socially well-adjusted person can seriously admit that they want such a thing to be permissible in their civilization.
However, prepared correctly with enough heat, possibly also frozen beforehand (that's what works on pork), I hear humans can actually be quite tasty.
It's seen as a bit of a social faux pas in our society though, so you might want to find a different society first if you'd like to enjoy tasty humans.
Are you honestly this much of a relativist?
I've also grown up knowing that cats and dogs are not for eating. And yet, even just a hundred kilometers away, I hear Italians eat plenty of cats and even consider it normal in some areas.
Maybe surprising (or not), but I find people who farm/hunt/fish to be the more intelligent kind of people when discussing food and ecology. Sure there are people who just want to exploit things for money, but many others do have a understanding for maintain a balance with nature.
One answer I have received to the question about "why is it ok to eat animals", was that the ecology balance in nature would break down if humanity suddenly stopped eating meat. Not only have we forced our self to be part of almost everything, but our actions have cemented us to a central position. Farmers has chased away predators to the point where hunters are needed to maintain balance in many forests. Some lakes are so polluted with nutrients, that you need to maintain fishing just to keep some species from extincting other less common fish species.
This doesn't address however why breeding animals for meat is fine. This is speculation, but some local farmers might say that as long the animal can live a happy life, then why shouldn't we eat them. The farmer job is to maintain a happy flock of chickens/cows/turkeys, and makes sure it stay healthy and in appropriate size. If they do that, then morality should be on their side.
maintain a happy flock of chickens/cows/turkeys,
and makes sure it stay healthy and in appropriate
size
- Have their beaks burned off because they live in crowded conditions where they will attack and main / kill each other.
- Are sorted male from female as chicks, where the males are then immediately killed in bulk. The 'industry standard' way to do this is to put them all in garbage bags to suffocate them, or to toss them all into a wood chipped en masse[1].
[1] Note: Even the chicks sold to people raising chickens in the city go through this process. E.g. in Portland, you can only raise 6 hens on your property. Roosters are not allowed.
In England the standard way is to gas the chicks. Killing off the males is a problem for dairy cattle too. Cows produce milk to feed their young.
Beak trimming is normally reserved for egg laying birds. (Meat birds are slaughtered for meat before pecking becomes much of a problem).
| In England the standard way is to gas the chicks
| Killing off the males is a problem for dairy
| cattle too
Dairy cattle males may not be suitable as commercial veal, like not all sheep breeds are suitable as meat sheep.
If they are suitable, then you've got to deal with either raising them from birth as white veal or, allowing them a bit more freedom in movement and food, as rose veal.
Just to add another animal to the mix, the same problem can be seen in dairy goat herds in countries where goat isn't consumed by the majority of the population.
It might be added, that in Europe, farmers get subsidies from the European union, and thus can keep the flock in rather low size and still earn a living on it. It is still a rather small income however, so many local farmers now days only supplement their earning with cows/chicken/eggs/sheep, and their main income comes from something else.
Same goes for male chicks. Those that aren't eaten (keeping the flock happy and appropriate sized), are observed closely when they reach mature age. If they don't fit well with the flock, they get bartered with a other farmers with an male from their flock. This was often the first step in handling an fight between two males that fought aggressively over dominance of the flock.
Sure, there will always exist bad apples in the world, and people should try avoid those. In the past, it was a strong asymmetrical information problem for buyers. Hopefully, with more information sharing and systems where buyers can rate sellers, we might get improvements where local suppliers that treat their animals well are encouraged.
There are different breeds that are raised as layers and for meat. Layers have been bred to produce more eggs than normal, and meat birds to produce more meat than usual. Layers are not raised for meat. But farmers do need to fertilize and hatch a certain number of eggs to continue to get new generations of layer hens. Somewhere around 50% of those are males. If you're lucky, you can keep 1 rooster for 6 hens, and even that is pushing it. Those numbers just don't work.
I know that many small farmers and families with small flocks already get their hens from large hatcheries. I would like to know what happens to that minority of male chicks that are hatched on small farms though.
This is what I'm going to hell for.
It's the death that's required to eat them not the eating itself. And yes, I feel much less bad when jerks die vs non-jerks.
Oh! When you get infected by a micro organisms do you kill yourself or do you take antibiotics. And what about mosquitoes? Plants?
Besides to survive as a human you have to kill something.
Of course not! But there are a few people for whom I wouldn't shed a tear, if they were devoured by a giant chicken.
Go figure.
Now, I've also spent some time with ducks and I'm not going to do any sort of contrast like you have. Ducks can be just as pleasant to be around. They can also be horrible to each other. I knew one duck who was prone to getting picked on by his flock mates, who occasionally attempted to drown him.
I've gotta laugh a bit at your use of the word avaricious to describe a chicken. I'm not sure where that could even be coming from. I'm not trying to discount your experience, but it really doesn't seem to me that you spent the time getting to know the animals in any way. And using that as a justification to eat them. Well I've got some coworkers you might be interested in too...
Get yourself some Silkies. They lay smaller eggs but have a very pleasant disposition.
We had 5 in our backyard in urban Oakland. It was a true joy, esp letting them out of their cage into the chicken run at 6:30 AM EVERY DAY.
All the above you said about better eggs and feeding them kitchen scraps is entirely true. Basically they "recycle" almost everything. They eat fruits, vegetables, nuts, bread and all. No waste.
Plus, having hens is like having dinosaurs (direct descendants, apparently: https://www.ted.com/talks/jack_horner_building_a_dinosaur_fr...).
BTW, I think all birds descend from dinosaurs. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird: "Paleontologists regard birds as the only clade of dinosaurs to have survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 65.5 Ma (million years) ago."
Might get you kicked out of a startup for animal cruelty;
if it is led by a Zuckerberg ;) (at least according to The Social Network film)
It was as embarrassing as it was frustrating to see the quality of their debate over the health risks, which the city's public health department confirmed is no greater than the health risk of a pet cat or dog.
At the point that there is such a huge variation in practice, for most of these steps, I can't imagine that they are very significant/important. The two systems are made to sound like there is significant justification for each step, which protects one from the shortfalls of other steps, but I can imagine that a combinatorial approach for each of the requirements would work just as well.
Then again, I don't know anything about hens. Just my thoughts.
Now compare eggs to something more complex and broader in scope like healthcare, taxes, etc and it really makes you wonder how we ever come to agree on anything.
This article puts the cost at ~0.05 cents per egg ($0.14 per hen, each of which lays dozens of eggs).
Do you have reason to doubt the $0.14 per hen quoted in the article? I'm interpreting the $0.14 as the incremental cost of vaccinating the birds, is that the wrong interpretation? Is the article flat out wrong?
It seems a little premature to jump to that conclusion. The US and Great Britain are entirely different countries with different geography, climate, history, culture, laws, economies, etc.
Farming doesn't exist in a vaccum. It's affected by all of that, so it stands to reason that those things will influence policies and practices.
What I found interesting about the article was that while each system was different, each was internally cohesive. Trying to cherrypick one facet of one country's system and applying to the other would almost invariably make things worse. You have to understand the entire system.
That's an important lesson to keep in mind when we constantly read articles like "Country X does Y and it makes Z B% better so we should too!" We need to always remember that X is doing Y in some context that likely matters deeply.
I would say that there is also significant intra-country variation. I have a hard time imagining that there isn't some part of the US where conditions are not similar to the UK. At the point that these regulations work for these locales, I don't see compelling evidence that it wouldn't work elsewhere.
My argument isn't that there isn't culture, climate, or a variety of other factors that influence how things are done - rather, at the point that there is variation, but they all generally work, I have a hard time imagining each of them are important.
> What I found interesting about the article was that while each system was different, each was internally cohesive.
Hence the idea that these narratives are contrived. If we look at any system (that works/is real), there is internal consistency. It is very easy to point to any particular aspect of the system, and say that it is crucial/unique/signifantly valid and valuable.
I would say that this argument is very similar to creationism arguments that the universe's constants/parameters are uniquely functional because we are here. I'm not saying it can't be true, but it seems like a logical fallacy to presume that a particular aspect causes the system in place.
I always figured it was a matter of cultural tradition and that eggs weren't really as sensitive as I've been told. I had no idea there was so much process and science behind it.
This kind of fits as a rough analogy for software. Consumers may see eggs in either market as just eggs. Maybe they have a slight different taste, maybe some are kept in a fridge, but they're still plain, simple, safe eggs. Getting to that point of consumption though is a choreography of processes that has no "right way" and is more complex than the average consumer wants or needs to know.
This applies to Sweden as well. Every supermarket I know of sells the eggs refrigerated (by the dairy products).
Does it drive anybody else a little nuts when newspapers don't either 1) leave the numbers in their original units and put the conversion in parentheses (or vice versa) or 2) round sensibly? It's misleading to suggest that anybody is measuring supermarket temperature to the tenth of a degree Fahrenheit by using so many significant figures.
It would both help people understand the metric system and be a more accurate description of the situation to say that what's actually specified is 20 degC +/- 1 degC in the winter and 22 degC +/- 1 degC in the summer.
More, in Swedish on http://producenter.svenskalantagg.se/tvaettade-/vi-tvaettar-...
Prior to 2004, the EU rules was that "class A" eggs could not be washed. The only EU country that used egg-washing was Sweden (where about 50% of eggs were washed), and producers who washed them sold them as "class B" eggs.
In 2004, the EU merged class B and class C, and forbid selling class B eggs directly to consumers. This would have banned washed table eggs, so Sweden objected. In response, the European Commission passed a derogation where egg producers who already washed eggs can continue to do so, for 3 years, provided they are authorized by the national food and safety agency, and sold in areas where that agency has jurisdiction (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/Notice.do?mode=dbl&lang=en&...). I.e., Swedish producers can sell washed eggs in Sweden.
In 2005 a safety study was commissioned, which turned out positive: "Taking into account the very low prevalence of Salmonella spp. in Swedish egg production, the risk associated with egg washing using the current system under strict rules is considered to be outweighed by the advantages of egg washing." (http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/269.htm)
Apparently 9 Swedish egg packeries and one in the Netherland was granted the exception, which was subsequently extended at least to 2007. I couldn't see any information about the current status, but if Swedish producers still sell the eggs, they probably do it under the same form of exemption.
In the US, the regulations are primarily to serve the corporate interests (consistent production at scale, distribution over a wide area)
In the UK/EU, the regulations are primarily to protect the citizens, often to the point of impeding business to a degree.
I'd rather see the latter but it goes against pretty much everything we're taught from birth in the US.
In the US, the citizens are basically protected just enough to keep them complacent/prevent lawsuits, but the goal is to let the corp. maximize profit.
I hope that cooks are frequently washing their hands when preparing food, especially when moving between items that cary a risk of contamination (raw meats, etc) and already prepared items (cooked meats).
Also: egg yolk colours are controlled by feed additives. Farmers can get colour charts and specify the colour of the yolk they want.
Or can I get blue yolks?
Blue would be hard since blue + yellow = green.
(http://www.robotmation.co.jp/keiranycceng.htm)
Range from a very pale yellow to a deep orange colour.
Different countries have different preferences.
EDIT: Here's a Tufte page about Salmon colour charts.
(http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...)
[1] http://www.splendidtable.org/episode/july-17-2010
edit: (Or do you feel that this segment is malarky!)
[Following up: the answer appears to be "it's a designation for premium eggs at the supermarket".]
I suppose similar things exist in the US?
Organic eggs are by definition free range eggs (in the US at least), but the reverse is not necessarily true.
Well, it's a designation as to the conditions in which the chickens are kept.
I think that both Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall have done programs that have covered how poultry is farmed, but which ever one it was that I watched it definitely left me with the lasting belief that I don't want to eat eggs or chicken that isn't free range.
"free range indoors" means large stables, no cages, multiple levels and a maximum of 9 hens per m^2.
"free range indoors and outdoors" is the same as indoors, but with the addition of an outside yard with at least 4m^2 per hen.
Battery cages were banned in 1988, but cages are still allowed. max 13 hens per m^2 and max 16 hens per cage, and there needs to be a nesting area.
So it's not all crap, but the day when we can synthesize food cannot come fast enough.
If you're not an egg person, the difference is probably subtle.
There is an obvious difference in freshness between supermarket eggs and farm eggs. Egg freshness is uncontroversial; as they age, the membrane around the yolk breaks down and the whites thin. Supermarket eggs are usually around 2 weeks old.
There is an obvious difference in color between supermarket and farm eggs; farm eggs have orange yolks and supermarket eggs have yellow yolks. This does make it hard to blind an egg taste test, though. The color difference comes from the feed of the chicken.
Apart from cooking up better, farm eggs taste richer to me, and don't have "off" flavors (a small number of supermarket egg chickens get feed that includes fish meal).
Nope: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_year_egg#Modern that's with alkaline, and you can use acid to make a pickled egg.
Think of hardboiling eggs as a recipe for getting the most out of old food, much like making french toast with stale bread or fried rice with yesterday's steamed rice.
reads rest of comments
What? How can you people not know this? Oh wow, I love these little cultural snippets where you assume that everyone else knows some things you do, because you were taught them as a child. :-D
Hm, eggs here in Sweden are generally washed, but not refrigerated, so it's neither like the situation in the UK nor the US. Interesting.
//deleted// feeble attempt at ascii art.
An unfresh egg has a flat white, with a dome for the yolk.
A really fresh egg has an extra raised bit just before the yolk. In cross section it has three levels, rather than two.
And from reading the article, I get the impression that weeks-old refrigerated eggs are the norm in the US. I had no idea. Yuck. :-)
(I know I'm wrong, refrigerated eggs last a long time, and they're perfectly fine, it's just not what I'm used to or were brought up to.)
As home-laid eggs age, they become pretty much identical to supermarket eggs, though there are still some differences: they are not as perfectly identical as supermarket eggs (their sizes, colors and shell thickness vary), and they have a small black dot which is the embryo (which some people don't like -- you can prevent it by only having female chickens like most egg plants).
Our chickens are sometimes in their run (which is roughly 5x bigger than the requirements to call it free range, but is mostly scratched to bare earth), and sometimes out in the yard. When they've been in the yard for a few days, the yolks get a much deeper golden color.
The research for chicken food is amazingly thorough.
The gas on a tomato really does ripen it, it's not just appearance (although that doesn't necessarily help the taste).
You actually don't want to pick a tomato when it's red (ripe), the best is to pick them just at the start of the ripening process (a hint of red), then put them in sunlight to let them finish, the taste and texture is much better because it doesn't get diluted with extra water if you left it on the plant (and also avoids the risk of the skin splitting).
With some plants they bred the ability to self ripen out of them, so ethylene gas is required. But I'm not sure if that was done to tomatoes.
As for tomatoes, yes, that was my point: supermarket tomato color is the product of manipulation. Color is a necessary but insufficient indicator of quality. (I'm not saying there aren't good supermarket tomatoes, if you buy them at a sane time of year).
You suggest that battery farms are boosting beta carotene to alter the color of egg yolks. Ok, I believe you. What I'm saying is that I doubt that the family in Michigan who sells us dirty chicken eggs in the summer is manipulating the beta carotene content of their feed to market their eggs; they don't do anything to market their eggs at all. Whatever they're eating, it's (a) naturally high in beta carotene and (b) sharply different from what battery hens eat.
2. I don't buy "clean" eggs. They look fake. Eggs come out of a hen's butt, deal with it. But then again, I'm neither American nor British (but French).
[Edit] Fair enough, parent didn't say "anus" "intestine" "digestive tract" or anything more specific. And the "last mile" is a shared pathway. "Butt" works :-)
Basically, it's a vent that everything comes out of. (and in, in the rooster -> hen case)
Yes, it's called a cloaca: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaca
Complete conjecture, but I know we (Britain) had a food crisis after the war. We were on rationing for years after the end of the war. Maybe we imported eggs too.
1) People do weird things with food. Seriously, there's huge amounts of bush meat and all kinds of odd stuff found at borders every day.
It doesn't matter whether anyone does but it does matter a lot that you could, if you wanted, considering the discussions on a free trade agreement between the US and the EU.
It might sound ridiculous but regulatory differences like these are actually the only significant problem that prevents such an agreement, in fact these differences make such an agreement rather unlikely. Any other issues such as taxes are generally considered to be minor, easily solved and therefore practically irrelevant.
These are manageable. Some EU countries have derogations on local practices which would be illegal under food safety law; those goods obviously cannot be imported into other EU countries. In practice, this doesn't present a major barrier to generally free trade.
After all, even within the US, there are goods which are legal in some states but not others.
That's just the breed of chicken, not the post processing. You can get eggs in almost any color. Brown, white, and everything in between (peach) are common.
The other thing is a general lack of free-range or even what we would call "barn eggs" in the UK.
You also need identical reporting regimes, which may actually be a greater problem; salmonella is not generally a mandatory reporting thing, and many people infected with it don't go to the doctor with it anyway; if you're a healthy adult it's pretty much just nasty food poisoning.
Kinda cool, learned something about eggs today.
But if you do that, I guess it's prudent to cook them. (BTW salmonella from home use of eggs is rare. It usually happens in restaurants where they mix a bunch of eggs together.)
Its too bad because from a technical standpoint I think sous vide "hard boiled" eggs would be very interesting, but not interesting enough to risk food poisoning.
Either your eggs are terribly cooked, or you have terribly bad eggs, or we have terribly different tastes.
I'd be interested in knowing how much alcohol you'd have to put in uncooked eggnog to render it safe. The recipe in The Joy of Cooking suggests 4 to 6 cups (a liter to a liter and a half) for 18 servings. That seems like rather a lot from a drinking standpoint, but maybe not that much from a sanitizing standpoint considering that there's also 2 cups (half a liter) of heavy cream and a pound (half a kilo) of sugar.
(I've never made eggnog so not sure if the recipe demands a different order.)
Let's review the approaches:
- EU relies on natures own mechanism along with responsible farming and vaccination - US relies on energy intensive washing, coating with a chemical spray and constant refrigeration
Hmm...
But the British method leads to even lower level of salmonella by an order of magnitude.
Too bad I can't keep some hens...
And dropped even further after the revelations about her affair with former PM John Major.
mind bleach