Why American Eggs Would Be Illegal In A British Supermarket, And Vice Versa

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/10/25/why-american-eggs-would-be-illegal-in-a-british-supermarket-and-vice-versa/

by memset • 13 years ago

382 287 13 years ago

forbes.com

Vlaix2• 13 years ago

1. Why would anyone ship eggs across the pond ?

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).

jcoder• 13 years ago

I don't think they come out of its butt.

[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 :-)

Nursie• 13 years ago

I'm no expert, but don't they just have one opening that does everything? So you could call it the butt...

claudius• 13 years ago

If eggs were previously stored ‘up to a year’ (p. 2, § 3), then I wouldn’t be surprised if they were also shipped halfway across the world if there was a sufficient difference in price…

user245• 13 years ago

> Why would anyone ship eggs across the pond

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.

DanBC4• 13 years ago

Cloaca - the opening for everything a chicken needs.

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.

DasIch• 13 years ago

> 1. Why would anyone ship eggs across the pond ?

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.

rsynnott3• 13 years ago

> in fact these differences make such an agreement rather unlikely

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.

PeterisP2• 13 years ago

Why not? Even milk is often shipped (powdered and then reconstituted) across oceans to gain a bit of price-reduction.

Vlaix2• 13 years ago

Well, eggs are easily produced everywhere. Shipping it across the world seams hardly cost-efficient and wouldn't do much for better and fresher eggs (especially considering the cost of air-shipping versus sea-shipping).

simonsarris• 13 years ago

This is generally one of the first things that people who decide to keep hens learn, and is reprinted in nearly every homesteader/farmer magazine ever.

(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!)

gadders9• 13 years ago

I can totally vouch for having your own hens. I have three, and I'm planning on getting another three this weekend.

- 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).

UnoriginalGuy2• 13 years ago

Keeping hens alive is a lot harder than most people would predict however.

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...

bediger40002• 13 years ago

> When you observe chickens up close, they're surprisingly attractive animals.

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.

up_and_up• 13 years ago

> I can totally vouch for having your own hens.

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.

ekianjo• 13 years ago

I have been growing up with hens next to home and I can confirm they are far from being stupid at all. On the contrary, they are sharp animals who recognize people (if a stranger walks in they would run way from them, but if a familiar face shows up they stay calm) and have distinct personalities. And when you catch them, they become extremely calm and can be touched just like a cat or a dog, and end up liking it in the end.

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...).

wybo• 13 years ago

I would be careful with feeding chicken to chickens.

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)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf-NRQvu1HY

RyanMcGreal• 13 years ago

My city council just had a huge argument about whether people living in the city should be allowed to keep a couple of hens. After a year of wrangling, council ended up voting down a proposal to do a small-scale trial in just two wards where a majority of people supported the initiative.

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.

tptacek9• 13 years ago

You can get unwashed eggs from farms in most parts of the US. Farm-fresh eggs are much better than supermarket eggs, regardless of whether they're washed.

netrus• 13 years ago

Better regarding what? Taste, nutrition, price?

tptacek9• 13 years ago

Taste.

memset• 13 years ago

I listened to an NPR Splendid Table segment [1] where they say that, in a blind taste test, nobody can really differentiate between the taste of farm-fresh eggs versus supermarket. Do you find the experience (colors, community, etc?) of fresh eggs better?

[1] http://www.splendidtable.org/episode/july-17-2010

edit: (Or do you feel that this segment is malarky!)

elptacek3• 13 years ago

Yes. Very much so. A couple of summers ago, we found a woman local to our vacation spot in MI who raises chickens very much the same way my mom raised ours. As corny as it sounds, the first bite nearly brought tears to my eyes, they were so good. Really did taste just like childhood to me. My guess is that "nobody" in the blind taste test had that experience.

gambiting3• 13 years ago

I find the free range eggs tasting marginally better than the cheapest Tesco/Asda/Morrisons Value eggs. They have a nicer colour of the yolks and a tiny bit more flavour. But if you ask me, it's definitely not worth a 4x increase in price.

tptacek9• 13 years ago

I doubt it's malarky.

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).

wiredfool4• 13 years ago

You can tell with poached eggs. The texture is very different, the fresh eggs hold together, and the older ones tend to waft around and not be nearly as good.

jules5• 13 years ago

The taste of supermarket eggs and the eggs of my parents' hens is easily distinguished if you eat the eggs the same day or within a couple of days that they were laid. Older eggs have a stronger flavour. The structure is also different. The egg whites of boiled fresh eggs are more firm and crumbly while the egg whites of boiled old eggs are more jelly. When uncooked, old eggs are more liquid and fall apart, while fresh eggs hold together (if you fry a fresh egg in a pan it is generally smaller but thicker, and if you poach a fresh egg it stays together egg instead of becoming a spaghetti). The white of cooked fresh eggs is a little more opaque, and the yellow is generally a little lighter than of supermarket eggs. Fresh eggs are much harder to peel than old eggs because the white sticks to the shell much more.

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).

pixl975• 13 years ago

I'm sure most the taste is determined by the feed, which is mostly a common ground up mixture. 'Yard eggs', where the chicken doesn't not eat a diet of %100 feed can have a different taste and yolk color.

araneae• 13 years ago

My neighbor has 5 hens- he gave us eggs when we first moved in. I ate them, but honestly I could not get over the visible smears of poo on them. So for me, they tasted icky, but I'm sure it was entirely psychological.

antidaily• 13 years ago

I buy eggs from my farmers market and they do taste better. The yolk color is more vibrant as well. I eat a lot of eggs so I buy from the supermarket often; they're fine but not the same.

fnordfnordfnord6• 13 years ago

I keep hens, and usually can't tell the difference in flavor between store-bought and home-produced. Occasionally the store-bought ones have a stronger sulphur odor, but even that is rare. Others claim they can tell the difference. YMMV

wiredfool4• 13 years ago

And actual free range eggs from chickens who have been out to eat the grass and bugs are even better than 'free range' chickens who only get feed, not fresh bits.

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.

ars10• 13 years ago

The yolk color is from beta carotene. You can do it with a fed chicken as well by fortifying the diet.

jimwhitson3• 13 years ago

This has been my experience as well. Truly free-ranging hens give the best eggs, often almost up to the quality of ducks' eggs. Interestingly I find very little perceptible difference between the eggs of different breeds (once cooked at least), but roasted cocks of different breeds taste vastly different.

darxius2• 13 years ago

Very informative article. I was expecting the author to finish off on an "Americans are weird and people shouldn't have to worry about refrigerating their eggs" but, instead, he showed why its valid for us to be doing so.

Kinda cool, learned something about eggs today.

ars10• 13 years ago

Nah, you really don't need to refrigerate eggs. They'll last for months without refrigeration.

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.)

darxius2• 13 years ago

I don't know much about the subject, but does cooking a salmonella infected egg neutralize the bacteria?

newishuser• 13 years ago

This is one of those obvious to some, and eye opening to others things. I had always wondered why other countries keep their eggs unrefrigerated and we Americans have always been very thoroughly warned about the dangers of room temperature eggs.

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.

Spiritus• 13 years ago

>Head to an American supermarket on the other hand and eggs are always held in refrigerated units, like milk and cheese and other dairy products.

This applies to Sweden as well. Every supermarket I know of sells the eggs refrigerated (by the dairy products).

dagw3• 13 years ago

Some do, some don't. The two smaller stores I normally shop at don't, the huge supermarket a bit down the road does.

alphaoverlord2• 13 years ago

I feel like this story is a great example of how its easy to come up with ad hoc justifications. After you decide to do something, it's quite easy to find evidence for your perpsective and justify standard practice.

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.

Goronmon• 13 years ago

It's also interesting in that even taking such a 'mundane' topic such as the sale of eggs, there can be widely diverging opinions and practices around how they are handled.

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.

Retric3• 13 years ago

I guess it's a question of where you draw the line on important. If the FDA required hen vaccination around 100,000 few people would get a fairly serious sometimes lethal disease at the additional cost of around 4 cents an egg. If the FDA did nothing I suspect far more than 100,000 people would get seriously ill.

mauvehaus5• 13 years ago

On the contrary, I think it's interesting that two different standard practices evolved in different directions, and that with a scientific look at them, we can understand why they're both effective for different reasons.

munificent• 13 years ago

> 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.

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.

mturmon• 13 years ago

Smart comment. It's like each country is an ecosystem, which has evolved procedures that work. Still, each could be informed by the other. Presumably at the annual "International Conference on Egg Hygiene and Fowl Maintenance".

alphaoverlord2• 13 years ago

> 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.

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.

tantalor• 13 years ago

In other words, each country is approaching a distinct local optimum.

newnewnew• 13 years ago

Absolutely. You can always come up with some post hoc justification for a regulation, no matter how ill-conceived.

elptacek3• 13 years ago

Coincidentally, I was just telling our kids last night how much store-bought eggs and raw chicken skeeves me out. I don't know where these things have been, who has touched them or what they've been fed. We never washed eggs with water (I grew up on a farm), just knocked any big bits off with a soft brush, like the kind you'd use for mushrooms.

Too bad I can't keep some hens...

user245• 13 years ago

> Since the late 1990’s British farmers have been vaccinating hens against salmonella [...] Amazingly, this measure has virtually wiped out the health threat in Britain.

"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... )

falcolas3• 13 years ago

When addressing a public who largely still links vaccines and autism, they would indeed find it amazing.

To the remaining, thinking public, you're right. It's not amazing at all.

sliverstorm5• 13 years ago

Hah, that's probably the next stop on the crazy train.

"My child ate chicken that was vaccinated, and it gave my child autism!"

On second thought, don't want to give them any ideas...

UnoriginalGuy2• 13 years ago

I would argue that the public doesn't "largely" believe that. The majority of parents get their kids vaccinated.

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).

user245• 13 years ago

> When addressing a public who largely still links vaccines and autism, they would indeed find it amazing.

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.

danielweber• 13 years ago

Can they now stop vaccinating against salmonella, or are there other reservoirs of the disease?

sliverstorm5• 13 years ago

It is easy enough for disease to hop continents, and the rest of the world has plenty of salmonella to share with the UK.

freiheit2• 13 years ago

Salmonella is common with all sorts of reptiles and birds. I'm assuming that it's virtually impossible to isolate chickens from those, so they'd have to keep vaccinating indefinitely.

fnordfnordfnord6• 13 years ago

Salmonella exposure is still possible from other avian sources (dove, pigeon, etc).

Luc• 13 years ago

> It's completely expected, not amazing at all.

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.

sliverstorm5• 13 years ago

That's hardly amazing; I've known since I was a child that the main source of salmonella was eggs and possibly raw chicken. In fact, I'd have been hard-pressed to name another place you could get it.

205guy2• 13 years ago

Many replies thought the "amazing" adjective was about the fact that vaccines work at all. Methinks you are a bit knee-jerk against people you even suspect of opposing vaccines.

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.

user245• 13 years ago

> 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.

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.

madaxe• 13 years ago

Would you just look at all of our autistic chickens.

Dove• 13 years ago

I think you can use the word "amazing" as a synonym for "dramatic" rather than for "unexpected". For example, I have heard people describe sunsets as amazing.

MichaelGG• 13 years ago

It seems like there should be solid data backing up the EU or US regulations. Is it not possible to accurately calculate how much/often contamination gets inside the egg? Do health records not provide sufficient evidence to determine if cross-pollution by end-users is causing sickness?

rsynnott3• 13 years ago

Hard to do the experiment, as you need two countries with otherwise identical production practices, where one washes and the other doesn't. For instance, the US and the UK would be a bad example, because egg producers in the UK generally vaccinate for salmonella, while those in the US don't; regulations on things like cage sizes also differ substantially.

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.

mauvehaus5• 13 years ago

"guidance set out by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers recommends supermarkets maintain a temperature of between 66.2F to 69.8F in the winter and between 69.8F and 73.4F in the summer. Room temperature is generally considered to be between 68F to 77F."

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.

MrMember• 13 years ago

Reminds me of body temperature. In the US we're taught that the standard body temperature for a human is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know about anyone else, but when I was young I thought this was very specific and must mean that a temperature variation of a few tenths of a degree is worth noting. Turns out 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit is just a direct conversion from 37 degrees Celsius.

gpvos2• 13 years ago

As a non-American, the sentences are basically unreadable when they don't give the Celsius conversions (actually, in this case, the original values). The only thing I know is that 100F is roughly 37C. I have to get out a conversion tool. Doesn't Forbes have an international audience?

adamauckland2• 13 years ago

There's plenty of countries who use the imperial system... Liberia and Myanmar!

DanBC4• 13 years ago

This is a fascinating look at different systems.

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.

pavel_lishin• 13 years ago

I assume that the colors are limited to a fairly basic range of yellows, right?

Or can I get blue yolks?

ars10• 13 years ago

You can get green.

Blue would be hard since blue + yellow = green.

DanBC4• 13 years ago

Ha, yes.

(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...)

gadders9• 13 years ago

No, but with the right breed you can get blue shells.

mongol• 13 years ago

I don't think the article is accurate. In Sweden, part of the EU, washed eggs are common. I google and find for example this (Swedish): "from 2004 EU labeling rules were changed so it must state if eggs are washed".

More, in Swedish on http://producenter.svenskalantagg.se/tvaettade-/vi-tvaettar-...

vilhelm_s• 13 years ago

Yes. I did some Googling, and here is what I found:

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.

arrrg• 13 years ago

There are always going to be exceptions in the EU. That’s just how it is. It would have been nice if the article were a bit more accurate, but the basic story is very true.

kawsper• 13 years ago

And in Denmark the eggs are also refrigerated.

timc3• 13 years ago

Hate Swedish supermarket eggs. Open the packet and it just is a disappointment. (Grew up on farm with plenty of fresh brown beautiful eggs).

nnq• 13 years ago

I hate dirty eggs, even when there's just a tiny point of dirt on one in a box! I wish the EU would make egg-washing mandatory, even for purely "aesthetic" reasons :)

user245• 13 years ago

Oh get over it, it comes from a hen's bum.

epmatsw• 13 years ago

And therefore shouldn't be washed? Seems like you made a pretty good argument for washing them to me...

tspiteri2• 13 years ago

If the eggs are for baking, they're safe. If they're not going to be cooked that long, I usually wash the eggs exactly before use. That way I remove any dirt before opening the shell, and at a point where removing the egg's cuticle is not an issue any more.

mr_bag• 13 years ago

If it really bothers you, you can just rinse them yourself at home?

fnordfnordfnord6• 13 years ago

Couldn't you just wash the eggs before use?

spiritplumber• 13 years ago

This is why laws that cannot prove that they're consistent with physics and formal logic are useless and should not be considered when transacting business.

dagw3• 13 years ago

Which part of which law here isn't consistent with which parts of physics and formal logic?

gcb0• 13 years ago

Both sound good in theory. And they arebeing applied for decades. Just get the delta of salmonella cases from before and after each solution was implemented and you will be able to measure which is better in practice.

greghinch2• 13 years ago

Basics that I've seen when it comes to regulations of these kinds in US vs UK/EU:

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.

rmc3• 13 years ago

There is lots of EU law and regulations to do with making things easier for companies. Consistent naming and measurements (the metric system) as well as standardisation and certification (so that if you can sell in one member state, you can sell in all the others). Making a "single market" (as opposed to 30 different markets) is one goal of the EU.

greghinch2• 13 years ago

Didn't mean to make it sound like the EU was anti-business, just meant that given the need for a choice, the EU/UK regulations tend to favor the needs of consumers/citizens over those of a corporation.

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.

kemiller• 13 years ago

I feel like there's a lesson for software here. You can have more than one effective system. Each will have its own properties, upsides and downsides, but you can't cherry-pick specific practices within the system and transport them into the other system, or even evaluate them in isolation. What is best practice in one system may be actively harmful in another.

mozboz• 13 years ago

To summarise the numbers: the American laws result in 0.045% of the population being affect by salmonella related disease, whereas the British laws result in 0.00093%, that's 50 times more illness in the US per capita.

bencoder• 13 years ago

You can't really judge how often chicken poo on unwashed eggs has caused illness though, that would probably not result in salmonella, I think.

Mvandenbergh• 13 years ago

It looks like that's purely because of the salmonella vaccination which is not required by American or British law but which British supermarkets require of their suppliers. Maybe that's easier to do because the UK supermarket space is more concentrated than it is in the US?

rmc3• 13 years ago

As a European who watches American TV & films, the one thing that strikes me about American eggs is the colour. They're white! This just looks wrong! Eggs here are a peach/pink colour. White eggs look like fake eggs.

felideon• 13 years ago

For some reason, I tend to buy brown eggs.

Aqwis• 13 years ago

Be careful with the "as a European". Eggs are sparkling white in many European countries.

rdouble2• 13 years ago

It's simply because of different breeds of hens.

ars10• 13 years ago

> Eggs here are a peach/pink colour.

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.

justincormack4• 13 years ago

When I was a kid in the UK brown and white eggs were equally common. Now white is much more common but in the past few years you can buy brown and blue and so on in specialist places again.

drucken• 13 years ago

Your second sentence is a bit strange in my experience, unless you're referring to yourself now living in the US. I have never seen a white egg in a UK supermarket, stall market or cornershop. They are always brown/pink.

anigbrowl2• 13 years ago

Americans like white eggs. You can tell which type a hen will produce from the color of its ears. As a european I too find this weird. It's the same thing with bread, they practically bleach it over here.

tptacek9• 13 years ago

America is getting over the white bread thing.

svachalek• 13 years ago

It's not just practically, it is bleached. But as tptacek says, at least on the coasts we're moving away from white bread.

teamonkey• 13 years ago

The thing that gets me is the volume of eggs you can buy here. In the UK, a typical egg carton contains 6 eggs but you can buy them in packs of 12. Over here I struggle to get eggs in quantities small enough that I can finish them all before they spoil.

The other thing is a general lack of free-range or even what we would call "barn eggs" in the UK.

aneth4• 13 years ago

You can generally split a dozen carton and buy 6. Most supermarkets allow this. Your struggles are over.

ndespres• 13 years ago

I'm a new (small) farmer, and I've just begun selling eggs from my small (70 hens) to neighbors, and they're often surprised when they see that the eggs are not refrigerated. I do have conversations a lot about this, and folks are often surprised to learn that the eggs in their grocery store cooler are often 2-3 weeks old already and that the refrigerator is a requirement to keep them edible for so long. Mine will be edible for just as long, and they taste fresher too!

mydpy• 13 years ago

Why is this on Hacker News?

anigbrowl2• 13 years ago

Because it's a practical example of A/B testing on a large scale.

tirant2• 13 years ago

Look at the number of comments. It seems a lot of people are interested here.

scrumper• 13 years ago

Enjoyed this, very interesting. The salmonella scandal in the '90s was absolutely huge in Britain. The health minister at the time, Edwina Currie, was forced to resign over it. The tabloids subsequently dubbed her 'Eggwina' and she's never really lived it down.

alexkus• 13 years ago

> she's never really lived it down

And dropped even further after the revelations about her affair with former PM John Major.

mind bleach

hiharryhere• 13 years ago

So in short both methods = lower disease.

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...

dagw3• 13 years ago

So in short both methods = lower disease.

But the British method leads to even lower level of salmonella by an order of magnitude.

fnordfnordfnord6• 13 years ago

And with lower effort/expense too, it seems.

Why American Eggs Would Be Illegal In A British Supermarket, And Vice Versa

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