6 ms·

From the article: > Why go to the trouble of washing eggs? A lot of it has to do with fear of salmonella. > [...] > eggs contaminated with salmonella are res

From the article: > Why go to the trouble of washing eggs? A lot of it has to do with fear of salmonella. > [...] > eggs contaminated with salmonella are responsible for about 142,000 illnesses a year in the U.S., according to the Food and Drug Administration

TheRealPomax 7y ago
So let me get this straight: back in 2014, despite egg washing being a practice for decades, there were STILL 142,000 people getting ill from them each year? Sounds like 2014 had some solid data on the fact that it was a pointless practice.
- Benjamin_Dobell 7y ago
  Surely you'd need to know how many people get Salmonella poisoning from non-washed eggs (either historically or elsewhere in the world) to draw this conclusion.
  - onion2k 7y ago
    Here in the UK we don't wash our eggs as part of the production process. We have a "British Lion" safety mark on British-produced eggs as part of our food standards. Recently they were declared safe to eat raw even if you're pregnant as there were no cases of salmonella linked to them in 2016.
  - zaarn 7y ago
    Germany had 12'000 cases of salmonella in 2016, 14'000 in 2017. USA has 300 Megacitizens, Germany 80. Germany vaccinates the chickens and does not wash or refrigerate eggs in the supermarket. So, atleast in germany, you're 3 times less likely to get infected by salmonella, relative to the population. I would however note that there is no reliable statistic on how many of those are due to eggs and how many are from other sources, considering meat and other products can carry it as well.
  - lagadu 7y ago
    You can just look towards most of Europe for that data, only a few countries wash their eggs here.
  - TheRealPomax 7y ago
    Surely the rest of the world not washing their eggs means that you have those statistics freely available from any number of modern record-keeping nations, like France, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and so on and so forth?
- cameldrv 7y ago
  What's even more amazing is that we address Salmonella by washing eggs rather than vaccinating hens. In many European countries, all laying hens are vaccinated, and you can make and eat raw eggs in all kinds of great things like chocolate mousse without worrying about Salmonella.
  - cm2012 7y ago
    EU has a higher salmonella rate than the USA.
    - AlisdairO 7y ago
      Uk, which does this properly, has a vastly lower rate.
    - cameldrv 7y ago
      In the U.K., from roughly 1995 to 2008, the number of vaccinated chickens went from 0% to 85%, and the rate of Salmonella went down by about 87.5%. https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/01/poultry-vaccinations-credited-for-uks-big-drop-in-salmonella/ https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/01/poultry-vaccinations-...
      - The_suffocated 7y ago
        The interviewee in the news report you've mentioned was probably cherry-picking. She said that "the number of laboratory-confirmed cases of illness dropped from more than 18,000 in 1993 to just 459 in 2010", but that 459 figure is most likely an outlier. According to Annual Epidemiological Report for 2016: Salmonellosis (https://ecdc.europa.eu/sites/portal/files/documents/AER_for_2016-salmonellosis.pdf https://ecdc.europa.eu/sites/portal/files/documents/AER_for_...), there were 8K to 10K confirmed Salmonella cases per year in the UK from 2012 to 2016. On the other hand, according to Galiş et al. (2013), "Control of Salmonella Contamination of Shell Eggs—Preharvest and Postharvest Methods: A Review" (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1541-4337.12007 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1541-4337.1...), vaccination of chickens against Salmonella is _banned_ in Ireland. Yet, the country has the second lowest incidence rate of Salmonellosis (5.6-7.1 cases per 10K population over the five-year period 2012-2016, second only to Portugal) among all countries in the EU. In contrast, the incidence rates in the UK over the same period were significantly higher (12-15 cases per 10K). Why are the Irish figures so low? Perhaps the Irish eat fewer eggs than the others. Perhaps most Salmonella infections are due not to eggs, but to other contaminated foods or poor kitchen hygiene. While vaccination of chickens against Salmonella is effective against egg-based Salmonella infection alone, without a detailed breakdown of numbers, we cannot tell what's its impact on the overall incidence rate.
- ars 7y ago
  It's not the washing that does anything, it's the fridge - it keeps the salmonella from growing. Other countries immunize their chickens. In the US only about half the chickens are immunized.
  - rincebrain 7y ago
    This is genuinely incredible to me - with all the problems the US (among others) has with using broad-spectrum treatments to improve animal growth, we can't be bothered to vaccinate them?
    - kwhitefoot 7y ago
      Costs money!
    - londons_explore 7y ago
      Is the vaccine patented? If not, someone ought to be able to make a big spinning needle-wheel to vaccinate chicks at a rate of 10 per second from a big bucket of vaccine. If there's a patent, you can bet it'll be billed at a couple of dollars per dose, which is totally infeasable when 1 cent per chick can be the profit margin.
      - ars 7y ago
        The vaccine costs $0.01 per chicken. And no, that's not a typo. Labor is a bit more, but not much - it's done in bulk by spraying it. Buy some here: https://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail.html?pgguid=FBE23AC3-EB68-48DB-AB25-D274A6130A81 https://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail.html?pgguid=FBE23AC3-EB6... $41.40 for 5,000 doses.
        londons_explore 7y ago
        Actually still sounds quite expensive... Like that's more than the cost of the drinking water or electricity for lighting for the whole life of the chicken...

TheRealPomax 7y ago

So let me get this straight: back in 2014, despite egg washing being a practice for decades, there were STILL 142,000 people getting ill from them each year? Sounds like 2014 had some solid data on the fact that it was a pointless practice.

Benjamin_Dobell 7y ago
Surely you'd need to know how many people get Salmonella poisoning from non-washed eggs (either historically or elsewhere in the world) to draw this conclusion.
- onion2k 7y ago
  Here in the UK we don't wash our eggs as part of the production process. We have a "British Lion" safety mark on British-produced eggs as part of our food standards. Recently they were declared safe to eat raw even if you're pregnant as there were no cases of salmonella linked to them in 2016.
- zaarn 7y ago
  Germany had 12'000 cases of salmonella in 2016, 14'000 in 2017. USA has 300 Megacitizens, Germany 80. Germany vaccinates the chickens and does not wash or refrigerate eggs in the supermarket. So, atleast in germany, you're 3 times less likely to get infected by salmonella, relative to the population. I would however note that there is no reliable statistic on how many of those are due to eggs and how many are from other sources, considering meat and other products can carry it as well.
- lagadu 7y ago
  You can just look towards most of Europe for that data, only a few countries wash their eggs here.
- TheRealPomax 7y ago
  Surely the rest of the world not washing their eggs means that you have those statistics freely available from any number of modern record-keeping nations, like France, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and so on and so forth?
cameldrv 7y ago
What's even more amazing is that we address Salmonella by washing eggs rather than vaccinating hens. In many European countries, all laying hens are vaccinated, and you can make and eat raw eggs in all kinds of great things like chocolate mousse without worrying about Salmonella.
- cm2012 7y ago
  EU has a higher salmonella rate than the USA.
  - AlisdairO 7y ago
    Uk, which does this properly, has a vastly lower rate.
  - cameldrv 7y ago
    In the U.K., from roughly 1995 to 2008, the number of vaccinated chickens went from 0% to 85%, and the rate of Salmonella went down by about 87.5%. https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/01/poultry-vaccinations-credited-for-uks-big-drop-in-salmonella/ https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/01/poultry-vaccinations-...
    - The_suffocated 7y ago
      The interviewee in the news report you've mentioned was probably cherry-picking. She said that "the number of laboratory-confirmed cases of illness dropped from more than 18,000 in 1993 to just 459 in 2010", but that 459 figure is most likely an outlier. According to Annual Epidemiological Report for 2016: Salmonellosis (https://ecdc.europa.eu/sites/portal/files/documents/AER_for_2016-salmonellosis.pdf https://ecdc.europa.eu/sites/portal/files/documents/AER_for_...), there were 8K to 10K confirmed Salmonella cases per year in the UK from 2012 to 2016. On the other hand, according to Galiş et al. (2013), "Control of Salmonella Contamination of Shell Eggs—Preharvest and Postharvest Methods: A Review" (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1541-4337.12007 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1541-4337.1...), vaccination of chickens against Salmonella is _banned_ in Ireland. Yet, the country has the second lowest incidence rate of Salmonellosis (5.6-7.1 cases per 10K population over the five-year period 2012-2016, second only to Portugal) among all countries in the EU. In contrast, the incidence rates in the UK over the same period were significantly higher (12-15 cases per 10K). Why are the Irish figures so low? Perhaps the Irish eat fewer eggs than the others. Perhaps most Salmonella infections are due not to eggs, but to other contaminated foods or poor kitchen hygiene. While vaccination of chickens against Salmonella is effective against egg-based Salmonella infection alone, without a detailed breakdown of numbers, we cannot tell what's its impact on the overall incidence rate.
ars 7y ago
It's not the washing that does anything, it's the fridge - it keeps the salmonella from growing. Other countries immunize their chickens. In the US only about half the chickens are immunized.
- rincebrain 7y ago
  This is genuinely incredible to me - with all the problems the US (among others) has with using broad-spectrum treatments to improve animal growth, we can't be bothered to vaccinate them?
  - kwhitefoot 7y ago
    Costs money!
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    Is the vaccine patented? If not, someone ought to be able to make a big spinning needle-wheel to vaccinate chicks at a rate of 10 per second from a big bucket of vaccine. If there's a patent, you can bet it'll be billed at a couple of dollars per dose, which is totally infeasable when 1 cent per chick can be the profit margin.
    - ars 7y ago
      The vaccine costs $0.01 per chicken. And no, that's not a typo. Labor is a bit more, but not much - it's done in bulk by spraying it. Buy some here: https://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail.html?pgguid=FBE23AC3-EB68-48DB-AB25-D274A6130A81 https://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail.html?pgguid=FBE23AC3-EB6... $41.40 for 5,000 doses.
      - londons_explore 7y ago
        Actually still sounds quite expensive... Like that's more than the cost of the drinking water or electricity for lighting for the whole life of the chicken...