stories:
Nagging Question
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Do Eggs Need to Be Refrigerated?Some people store them on the counter |
First, the extra-safe rules from the people who cover all the bases: Raw eggs should be refrigerated at 40 degrees Fahrenheit or lower when you’re not using them, says Elisa Maloberti, a spokesperson for the American Egg Board. “[Eggs] should not be left at room temperature for more than two hours, including the time used to prepare and serve them. Allow no more than 30 minutes to one hour when it’s 85 degrees Fahrenheit or hotter [out].”
“The main safety concern with shell eggs is Salmonella enteritidis [SE] bacteria inside the egg,” says Hilary Shallo Thesmar, PhD, director of the Egg Safety Center in Washington DC. “Occasionally, hens become infected with SE and deposit the bacteria in the egg as it is being formed in the reproductive tract. Eggs look, taste, and smell completely normal.” The Egg Safety Center says that 1 egg in 20,000 may contain salmonella, which is a contamination rate of 0.005 percent. Storing eggs below 40 degrees Fahrenheit “keeps bacteria from growing to large enough numbers to cause illness,” says the American Egg Board’s Maloberti.
But if you’re buying local eggs at a farmers’ market, you may have more leeway. The organic egg farmers we spoke with said it depends on the egg. Alvin Schlangen, owner and manager of Schlangen Family Farm in Minnesota, says that he would not recommend leaving out “just any old egg” and that following the cold storage guideline is “vitally important if your egg quality is lacking.” But he suggests relying more on common sense than federal regulations: “Know your farmer and know how he manages his flock of hens. If your source hens are pastured and on chemical-free feed, you’ll have no concerns about leaving cartoned eggs out at room temperature for a few days. If you plan to keep them longer than that, I’d chill them.”
When I was a young sprout on a farm, we left our eggs on the counter. Of course, we always knew when the eggs were gathered. I would never do this with "stranger eggs."
In lots of places in Europe eggs are sold at the supermarket off a shelf and then stored on the shelf at home. I'm not saying this is the best...but certainly we could relax a bit, State Side.
In Europe, they don't use battery cages or extreme confinement techniques that let diseases run rampant in chicken populations. Maybe when we do that "State Side", we can also start leaving our eggs on the counter.
I think it's also important to ask yourself, is there any benefit to keeping your eggs on the counter?
Yes, if you are baking room temp eggs are an essential.
In the UK, we certainly still have battery cages, but supermarket eggs are never sold from the chiller. I have no idea why, since our health advice is just as draconian as yours as soon as the eggs get home.
Personally, I never keep them in the fridge - as iamafoodie says, you need room temp eggs for plenty of things (not just baking - if you boil eggs from room temperaure they are much less likely to crack), and ultimately I often don't have the space to chill them. That's just my choice though, I wouldn't necessarily advocate it.
In Europe, eggs do not need to be refrigerated like they do here. The reason being is that we pastuerize eggs here, which destroys the bacteria, but also destroys the eggs natural coating within the shell, allowing new bacteria to enter the egg. Keeping the egg refrigerated at this point is necessary.
@xpnsivwino: Not all eggs are pasteurized here (the US). It's more of a rarity. The USDA recommends refrigerating pasteurized eggs, though: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Factsheets/F...
EXCUSE ME!
I don't care how well you know your farmer. If he doesn't regularly test his flocks for Salmonella spp, I would not be eating those eggs without cooking them thoroughly (70C for 30 seconds). In fact smaller farms and producers usually don't so I'd be even less willing to eat those eggs at an uncooked or softly cooked state. The main thing to remember is if you leave your eggs out at room temperature no big deal, but if you don't cook those eggs thoroughly have a nice case of foodborne illness, maybe not now, but definately one day.
I have hens, and if you get eggs fresh from them, and dont wash em, you can keep them at room temp for at least a month or longer. They come with something called "bloom" which protects them from evaporating their water and going bad/spoiling. Once the bloom is washed off, they must be refrigerated.
First off, I could care less whether you leave your eggs out and I am not personally worried about Salmonella. But as a scientist the statement by the organic farmer makes no sense whatsoever; "If your source hens are pastured and on chemical-free feed, you’ll have no concerns...". This has nothing to do with bacteria (Salmonella enteritidis) being present in the egg. As Bryn points out the flock would need to be regularly tested for Salmonella.
well, my grandmother had chickens, and she never put the eggs in the fridge, and she lived to be 97. When i went to both Europe and Mexico they did not have eggs in the cooler, they were on the shelf, and i did not die eating them.
There are a few questions that come to mind. Is the Salmonella that comes in eggs so specific that we can develop an immunity, or does it mutate into other potential gate-crashers?
Does chemical-free feed better protect the chicken's immune system and make it more likely to be free of disease mr/ms scientist? Did you think of THAT...hmmm? And how can anything have nothing to do with anything anyhow? Not much divergent thinking going on there.
I'd also like to know what the average age of an egg is by the time we get it in our fridge.
iamafoodie - That depends completely on what you are baking. Some recipes call for eggs to be as cold as possible. If you do need them at room temperature, a couple minutes in a bath of room temperature water gets them there (or less than half an hour just sitting out, or about five minutes on the stove top while the oven preheats). Plenty of recipes and techniques call for food to be brought to room temperature as part of getting mise en place (meat should almost always be at room temperature before you cook it, but would you eschew refrigerating meat). That doesn't mean those ingredients have to spend the hours or days beforehand at room temperature.
That's funny, I just threw out a hardboiled egg today that was sitting in a bag for a few days, unrefrigerated.
Does anyone know if dogs have better constitutions than humans for processing food that might have salmonella? I'm asking sincerely and proactively, so don't accuse me of dog abuse! :)
Yes, gourmand, there have been a few comments in different threads on this. dogs, and most other scavengers, have a much shorter digestive tract than humans, and as a result are much less susceptible to food borne illness.
Eggs keep perfectly well for at least thirty days. A hen wiil lay two dozen eggs before she begins to incubate them. The first laid eggs develope as well as the last. If this was not so there would be no chickens.
kitINstLOUIS - Salmonella that comes from eggs is the typical Salmonella. In regards to mutations. All living organisms mutate (change in the DNA sequence).
Many studies have been conducted on organic vs non organic food. Meta-studies (studies that look at and summarize previous research) have found no nutritional improvement for organically grown food. Additionally, no health benefit (or detriment) has been demonstrated from eating an organic diet (for humans or farm animals). The organically farmed chickens would not have a better immune system.
With this said the studies I mentioned compared organic and conventionally grown food. Organic food is not chemical-free; lots of insecticides, pesticides and fungicides are used in organic farming. These chemicals can be toxic and carcinogenic (like those used in conventional farming) as long as they are naturally occurring. compounds (not synthetically made).
Sorry Walleyworld, but I think you're just making stuff up. There are numerous studies that show benefits to organic farming methods. Try Google.
Josh, we all know that all the information on the internet is 100% accurate. Try actually reviewing scientific publications in which appropriate controls are used.
Our grandmothers and Europe raise chickens differently that US commercial growers.
Commercial hen laying practices have changed over the years in the US. And there is a greater chance of salmonella poisoning because of the current practices.
Many commercial farmers in the US practice forced-molting. Which is banned in many other countries, and which isn't typically practiced by small farmers here in the US. It's basically the practice of withholding ALL food for 5 to 14 days. The purpose is to manipulate the hen's hormones, and kick-start the egg-laying cycle again.
But with this manipulation, comes a weakened immune systems. And also a greater danger of salmonella outbreaks.
There is a correlation between forced-molting and salmonella poison. Forced-molted causes sever stress (and sometimes death). The chickens immune system is compromised & is more susceptible to diseases, such as salmonella. Having chicken in cramped, feces infested cages only encourages more stress, and more infection.
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/VM/...
http://www.all-creatures.org/articles...
http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=121...
http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail...
And that, in a nutshell, is why grocery stores in the US now refrigerate eggs, and why there is more of a concern of salmonella outbreaks.
Our grandmothers and most of Europe raise chickens differently that the large US commercial growers.
Commercial hen laying practices have changed over the years in the US. And there is a greater chance of salmonella poisoning because of these current practices: 1) forced-molting & 2) caged animals.
Forced-molting is banned in many other countries, and which isn't typically practiced by small farmers here in the US. It's basically the practice of withholding ALL food for 5 to 14 days. The purpose is to manipulate the hen's hormones, and kick-start the egg-laying cycle again.
But with this manipulation, comes a weakened immune systems. And also a greater danger of salmonella outbreaks.
There is a correlation between forced-molting and salmonella poison. Forced-molted causes sever stress (and sometimes death). The chickens immune system is compromised & is more susceptible to diseases, such as salmonella. Having chicken in cramped, feces infested cages only encourages more stress, and more infection.
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/VM/...
http://www.all-creatures.org/articles...
http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=121...
http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail...
And that, in a nutshell, is why grocery stores in the US now refrigerate eggs, and why there is more of a concern of salmonella outbreaks.
Here's some great egg facts from the USDA :
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Factsheets/F...
Here in New Zealand our eggs have been verified to be free of internal Salmonella contamination (although it is present on the surface of shells). I wonder if this is the same in the UK and Europe?
Walleyworld - What you are saying is incredibly misleading. To start with, scientifically conducted studies are absolutely never as simple and vague as, "Is organic food healthier than conventional food?" Meta-analysis may often be that general, which is why any serious and well regarded academic reads the original studies, not just compiled summaries. There is, however, some truth the claim that an organic label does not guarantee a product which is healthier in all regards. A lot of this has to do with Congress (mostly the 108th and 109th Congress) giving in to the factory farm lobby and dismantling organic standards. You say that organic farming is not chemical free. Since, technically, everything is a chemical, you are correct. The new relaxed standards also do allow for the use of some synthetic chemicals; the older standards did not. An organic fertilizer used to have to meet the standard conception of organic, which is unaltered from the naturally occurring state, and derived from living organisms. Now, the standard has relaxed to allow for many chemicals which meet only the pure scientific definition of organic, which is to say that the component molecules contain carbon. However, even with these relaxed standards, every study I've ever read (and I have read a great many) on the matter has concluded that there is a major, undeniable health benefit to eating foods which have not been treated with additive hormones or antibiotics. It might take some effort and research, but it is still possible to source food ingredients which meet a purer standard for organic, rather than just the bullshit federal standard. These foods will not contain synthetic or altered chemicals, which has also been repeatedly found to have an array of health benefits. It has also been repeatedly demonstrated that high quality feed for livestock produces a higher quality, and healthier, food product. The simplest and most relevant example is eggs, which have a very different lipid structure when they come from birds consuming a more natural feed. Another very obvious benefit, which studies have confirmed, but is so painfully obvious we shoudn't have needed studies to confirm this, is that free range livestock produce healthier food products. Leaner animals that get regular exercise yield healthier meat and dairy than fat lazy animals that barely get to move around? Who'd have thought!
It's just downright absurd to claim that research doesn't demonstrate a clear health benefit to organic products, whether using a more meaningful definition of organic, or the incredibly relaxed definition the agribusiness lobby forced down our throats. And that's without even addressing the environmental and ethical concerns (ethical concerns being perfectly relevant to health as any knowledgeable researcher understands the strong relationship between ethics and mental health).
And, to be clear, my information comes not from a web search, but from the vast array of scientific research materials made available to me through Yale University's libraries (the second largest collection of scientific research in the world, with active subscriptions to every major science and medical journal).
Denying the benefits of more natural farming techniques is a lot like denying the human role in climate change. A scarce few, widely discredited scientists will disagree with you. The rest will either laugh at you, shift uncomfortably, argue angrily, or change the subject.
My husband and I spent 4 years sailing the Pacific. Our boat did not have a refrigerator, so eggs were left at room temp, which was usually in the 80 F range.
Other cruisers had many different methods for keeping unrefrigerated eggs, like coating them with Vaseline or wrapping each egg lovingly in tin foil. We just turned our eggs every day or so, and were fine. After a couple weeks, the yolks sometimes didn't hold their form as well, but we only experienced "bad" eggs a couple of times.
danieljdwyer, right on! thank you for that post.
I think instead of making wild allegations, Wally World should list his references. It's impossible to argue with a rumor.
One huge advantage of organic farming is that organic pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers break down much much faster so don't leech toxins into the water table.
Organic farming practices actually BUILD the quality of soil instead of tearing it down with high sodium fertilizer's which disturb the soil structure and inhibit the activity of beneficial insects (like earthworms, which aerate and fertilize the soil just be living their squiggly little lives.
The crops themselves are actually structurally different on organic farms. If you have ever worked an organic garden, you'd see those odd white fungal threads that attach to root systems and create a beneficial liaison between soil nutrients and plant roots. Do you think it's purely by accident that organic gardens have stronger, healthier plants and taste so much better than chemically enhanced food?
I think instead of making wild allegations, Wally World should list his references. It's impossible to argue with a rumor.
One huge advantage of organic farming is that organic pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers break down much much faster so don't leech toxins into the water table.
Organic farming practices actually BUILD the quality of soil instead of tearing it down with high sodium fertilizer's which disturb the soil structure and inhibit the activity of beneficial insects (like earthworms, which aerate and fertilize the soil just be living their squiggly little lives.
The crops themselves are actually structurally different on organic farms. If you have ever worked an organic garden, you'd see those odd white fungal threads that attach to root systems and create a beneficial liaison between soil nutrients and plant roots. Do you think it's purely by accident that organic gardens have stronger, healthier plants and taste so much better than chemically enhanced food?
Comparing small organic farms to large commercial operations to make a point is specious at best. What I'd like to see is a study using a small family farm that uses old fashioned methods but employees some fertilizers etc and then compare that to a small organic farm to see the differences. I'm not taking either side on any issue, I just know that as many variables as possible need to be controlled to make any comparison.
I agree with you if you are looking for quantitative empirical evidence in which to establish a cost-benefit situation or make a cost-based value judgment, etc. Here is a baseline standard you may find more reasonable: If the soil is healthy enough to support earthworms, the benefits to the product are manifold, and the risk is self-limited.
That said, I couldn't tell you whether a commercial organic farm DOES support earthworms given current standards. I do know that properly ripened manure will encourage their growth, and that's the harshest fertilizer I've used in my small garden (1/3 acre).
To be clear I should have stated that studies using appropriate controls (same cultivar/genetic makeup grown at the same location with the only difference being whether the plants are grown organically or conventionally; very few of these studies have been conducted) have found no clear nutritional improvement for organically grown food. The cultivar grown has a great impact on the nutritional and flavor quality. Additionally, the soil and environmental conditions also impact the nutritional composition. Studies not taking this into consideration are severely misleading. Also here are a couple of the many references; Newsome R in Food Technology 1990 and Magkos et al in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 2006 as well as a quote:
“There is currently no evidence to support or refute claims that organic food is safer and thus, healthier, than conventional food, or vice versa. Assertions of such kind are inappropriate and not justified, and remain groundless not only due to ethical considerations but also because of limited scientific data.”
Additionally, the USDA, which certifies organic, specifically states that its organic label is a marketing tool and refers to how the food is produced not its nutrition or quality.
Both organic and conventionally grown foods use pesticides. The main distinction being that for organically grown produce the pesticide must occur naturally and cannot be synthesized. This is not related to the chemistry definition of organic, contains carbon, as organic farming pesticides include inorganic compounds (sulfur based for example). Here are a few examples of natural pesticides allowed in organic farming:
Natural pyrethrins that are produced by Chrysanthemum– EPA classifies pyrethrum as a likely human carcinogenic as it was shown to cause tumors in rats.
Rotenone – disrupts enzymes needed for respiration in cells and disrupts muscle coordination, causes Parkinson’s like symptoms in rats, causes death in fish (just a few of the health concerns).
A few references: MacKenzie 1993, Betarbet et al 2000, Bashan et al 1993, Dorman 1991)
I agree fully that there are environmental reasons for following organic farming practices.
Don’t worry; I will not post anymore on the subject. You can believe that organic food is healthier if you want. Ample evidence supports the placebo effect so if you believe organic food is healthier then maybe it will be.
I've read that difference between US and European processing is to do with washing off the bloom rather than pasteurising, which makes the shell more permeable. My British parents keep their eggs out of the fridge; I'd be tempted to do the same, except that my American wife would never eat them.
when i lived in spain they left their eggs out on the shelves at the grocery stores and i was shocked! but i read up on it and really it doesn't matter. it's the quality of the egg that matters. i buy farm fresh organic eggs, they're delicious, they sit on my counter all week long and i sometimes eat them raw in smoothies. never a problem with salmonella. of course i smell the eggs to make sure there's no funkiness before tossing them in my protein shake.
when i lived in spain they left their eggs out on the shelves at the grocery stores and i was shocked! but i read up on it and really it doesn't matter. it's the quality of the egg that matters. i buy farm fresh organic eggs, they're delicious, they sit on my counter all week long and i sometimes eat them raw in smoothies. never a problem with salmonella. of course i smell the eggs to make sure there's no funkiness before tossing them in my protein shake.
Well this is funny as I never paid it too much mind how eggs were kept overseas and then to hear some of my fellow yanks can get in a bind over non refrigerated eggs is laughable (I heard when I was a boy living Iran that some fellow expats would sterilze the eggs when they got home with them, goodness!). I'm a chef by trade and have lived, worked and traveled all over the world, but I never paid much mind to the storage of eggs at the market. Generally Americans refrigerate everthing and freeze the rest, but from what I can see in most folks enormous shopping carts here (since they shop once for the whole week if they can) most of what we eat is bottle, boxed or canned :( Alot of our over refrigeration can be blammed on our hotter summers (as compared to Europe) but as I recall most markets in Australia didn't refrigerate eggs either and they live in a much hotter climate than the USA. Generally living here in Key West, Fl we refrigerate most things as it is always quite warm and ants are a problem (not for eggs but bread etc.) I also find that refrigerating eggs keeps them tighter longer which is a problem I found in S.E.Asia where the eggs sit in markets for days or weeks at 80F, and unless you want them scrambled your hard pressed to do much else with them. It makes Key Lime pie recipes a little difficult! I have to say the fear of samionilla is a valid one as it is a horrible thing to get but considering that 1 out of 20,000 is infected on average you have more chance of being struck by lightening than getting sick from a bad egg! And of course a truly rotten egg is hard to miss when you crack it open ;-) Now to Europe, well refrigeration is at a minimal there especially in the north or in the highlands of the south. In Holland I worked in a very busy restaurant and virtually none of the produce was refrigerated, it was just kept outside on wooden racks, this worked quite well....except for a few weeks in the summer and a few weeks in the winter, but think of what they saved in electricity! HA! Meanwhile I found the eggs were not refrigerated, but quite often had chicken sh!t on them.....soooo if I was going to make mayonaise from scratch (something the Dutch are CRAZY about) it was a good idea to wash them well first =-0 Thing is going back to my first comments about yanks and weekly shopping habits, most folk around this globe go to market almost daily and as 1/3 of the global population lives on less than $2 a day I don't think they're keeping those eggs around long, nor do i think they have a refrigerator, nor electricity for that matter! ;-p
Being from Montreal, raising my own hens, having my own eggs. green included(they are so beautiful!), I do not refrigerate them at all! There is no need to, unless there are washed, then they might be placed in the fridge as the pores of the usually airtight shell will have expanded and just might( as in, if I had salmonella floating around) bacteria might seep into the egg. Eggs are so beautiful in a bowl on the counter, it is a shame to hide them.
Though any eggs from the supermarket need to be refrigerated as they have been washed and ahndled and gone to all types of places.
That is my opinion and I am sticking to it!
Anyone want naturally green eggs for Easter mmm?
I live in the Caribbean and the eggs are kept out on the grocer's shelf at every store. It's obviously a hot climate. I never heard of anyone getting ill from eggs on our island. Personally I won't eat them.
Everything grows and then decays. Refrigeration slows the process of decay, so if you refrigerate eggs they will age more slowly. The higher the grade of egg, the newer it is. AA have an air cell of 1/8 inch or less. Less air cell = "younger eggs" than A and so on. Celmott3rd this also is what you noticed with the eggs "loosening up" the albumen and cell membranes break down over time giving you more spread of the white and the yolk. This is why older eggs are recommended for hard cooking; more air space and less memberane means easier to peel eggs. There are other features such as shell surface, and shape and visual things too that bear on grading. Feeling OCD, check out the grading specs at:
http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfi...
Now Salmonella E. is a bacteria which grows all over the place. The temperatures and environment it likes to grow best at is a warmish room temperature with lots of organic food. Yes, I know Ph matters too but I'm not going there now. It can get on or in the egg a number of ways that can have virtually no reference to how the chicken or the egg are raised or produced. Closely bread coop raised birds and eggs will spread it directly through contact but, free range birds will pick it up from each others' poop and the ground. The cleaner the conditions the better so to some extent the safest eggs will be those you raise yourself where you know how clean the cages are, etc. How practical is that for most of us? Salmonella can be passsed through the production of the egg in the chicken's body, during the laying or at any time after it's laid in the cleaning and processing.
So, If your egg has salmonella in or on it and you leave it at room temperature it will age faster and you have given any bacteria on or in it a nice place to do their reproductive thing. Bacteria grow logrithmically so the longer they grow, the bigger the baterial load. When you get a huge load of bacteria and ingest it in the form of an raw/undercooked egg, or you manage to cross contaminate the egg before cooking with something that isn't going to be cooked you take in a big load of bacteria AND you get a LOT more likely to get sick. Say for example you get buggy egg on your hands from the scramble you stir up, put it on to cook and then start slicing melon or grapefruit without washing your hands or worksurface. If you are healthy you may probably won't get sick, but you might, and I'd start to worry if you were pregnant, feeding the melon to a small child, elderly person or immune compromised person. The eggs themselves should be fine as long as you cooked them well. Not to cinders but throughly.
Richelle is absolutely right about washing the eggs. Not only that the temprature of the egg and the water you use to wash it with matter. There have been incidents where small farm egg producers were inadvertently bringing salmonella from the outside of the egg to the inside through a temperature induced vacuum when washing eggs. Once inside the egg, the bacteria had a LOT more food to grow with and longer time for the growth and the bacterial load became much higher. A lot of people were sick.
Pastureized eggs and processed egg products are recommended for folks with immunity problems, the elderly and ill because as long as YOU don't contaminate or temp abuse them during the cooking process, they should be free from dangerous bacteria. Also, the odds of getting an any egg with salmonella loads high enough to causes sickness are pretty rare as long as you don't do things that make it more likely to happen. You are much more likely to have bacteria on your hands from other stuff and contaminate the eggs, not the other way 'round.
Most of the major food borne disease outbreaks from eggs came when commerical eggs (grade b) were used pooled in large batches (big vats of eggs to be cooked scrambled) and the scrambled (but not cooked eggs) were temp abused, sitting on the warming tray of the stove ready to be cooked. Most of the folks who got sick ate eggs cooked during the morning rush when their eggs were only mostly cooked and not all the way cooked.
As for can you develop a resistance? Um, no. Salmonella e. is a baterium and you just get sick over and over and over again every time you take in more than your immunne system can handle. Viruses are what you can get an immunity to. Think flu and flu shots. The cold is a virus but one that mutate so quickly and easily that we just keep sharing our modifications with each other.
Be sensible and you should be just fine. If they are fresh eggs, and you plan to use them quickly you could easily leave them in a cool room temperature place. But, if you have room in the fridge, why wouldn't you give yourself more wiggle room and put them there? It's perfectly safe to leave them out overnight if you need room temp eggs in the am as long as it's not 86 degrees farenheit in the room or just plan to bring them out enough before you want then for cooking or baking.
Sorry for the dissertation but it's an issue near and dear to my heart. Be safe and eat well.