How can eggs not be filthy?

[Dinosuarus]

Anyone who has great fear of "dirty food" needs never to eat anywhere but at home, grow your own vegetables, raise and slaughter your own meats. There really is no way to know where the next recall problems will be. Who would imagine tainted lettuce, spinach, melons? There are also warnings now not to rinse any meat before cooking, because the bacterial count on kitchen surfaces increases.

But overwhelmingly, the largest risk to all of us is hand shaking. You really don't know where those hands have been. I'll bet many are as nasty as chicken feet. But if you like hot dogs, and I do, bet we eat those too?

Excellent points. ^

 

[Beekissed]

"Filthy" is a relative term. It's actually a natural state of affairs for most creatures. Until recently in human history virtually every bite of food we ate had soil and tons of bacteria on it. Most bacteria are harmless or even beneficial. Those that are harmful are kept in check by competition with the others. Cleaning up the situation with constant sanitizing and antibiotics throws the whole thing out of whack.
I constantly have my hands in the soil, handle chicken poop, eat unwashed carrots and other veggies right from the garden, only occasionally wash my hands, and never get a flu shot. I never get sick. I figure it's the same for my chickens.
Also, as I understand it, eggs do not share any of the same pathway as feces. It's like an interior duct pushes outward and deposits the egg. At least that's what Harvey Ussery tells me in one of his books. I'm not 100% clear on it.

Well said. Exactly right....by a germophobe's standards, the world is a filthy place and no place is safe...no surface, no being, no foods, no water.

Salmonella is in all our bowels, so every time you handle a door knob in public, it's likely you are~by transference~ touching someone's butt and all its myriad germs of e.coli, salmonella, etc. I'd much rather lick one of my chickens than ponder how many germs we are exposed to on a daily basis out in the public.

In comparison, chicken dirt is clean dirt and, unless you are regularly giving your flock broad spectrum antibiotics, the germs they possess are about as harmless as a dew drop. You have already been exposed a thousand times over to the strains of e.coli and salmonella in a simple backyard chicken's bowels by the time you eat that egg~raw or cooked~by just existing in this world and having any interaction with the life therein.

Commercial eggs? Wouldn't intentionally set out to eat them cooked or raw, scrubbed and disinfected or not. They are lethal bombs of super germs just waiting to kill someone who thinks, because the eggs are white and in a cooler at the store, approved by the USDA, that they are clean. They are about as clean as a germophobe's hands, stripped of any beneficial bacteria by frequent washing in antibiotic soaps and slathering in hand sanitizer, but exposed and vulnerable to every germ that comes down the pike because of it.

Worrying about a backyard chicken egg is the proverbial swallowing a mule, but gagging on a gnat.

ETA: And the best way to store eggs is not in the refrigerator at all. The best way is right on your counter top in a basket~unwashed and at room temps. Placing them in the fridge merely increases their susceptibility to germ absorption into the egg, as does washing them.

 

[appps]

I still don't understand how restaurants can serve sunny side up/over easy eggs 24/7 seemingly without a care.

Okay so I'm going to ask a dumb question, what is sunny side up and over easy that makes them somehow different? I always thought it just meant the yolk was on the top. Are they runny or something too?

Don't know the answer to your questions but I grew up drinking an egg flip every morning for breakfast before school (raw egg and milk in blender) and I never got sick and we eat runny eggs all the time. Perhaps by being exposed to it it in small amount it allows our bodies to build up a natural immunity. I mean go back 100 years and everyone ate un refrigerated meat without constantly being food poisoned but if we ate what they did now you would probably end up in hospital.

My don't understand is how you have to refrigerate ham yet they don't have to refrigerate ham and cheese rolls. Sometimes I think it's probably best to not over think these things lest I become a vegan

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

Okay so I'm going to ask a dumb question, what is sunny side up and over easy that makes them somehow different? I always thought it just meant the yolk was on the top. Are they runny or something too?

Sunny side up is a fried egg that is cooked on one side only so that the top (yolk side) is never in direct contact with the pan so it is not "cooked" - the white is allowed to set from the bottom, but the yolk will be entirely uncooked - the amount of "set" on the white will vary.
Over easy is a friend egg that is flipped/cooked from both sides, but not cooked so long that the yolk sets and so it is still runny inside.

 

[aart]

Quote: Or you can do what I call 'non-over easy' by throwing a bit of cold water in the pan and covering it...steam cooks the top a bit without risk of yolk breakage upon flipping

 

[matt44644]

Money is the dirtiest thing in the world.

 

[aart]

Money is the dirtiest thing in the world.

Yes and restaurant menus.

 

[TheBeardie]

Well if you think about it dogs and cats are usually very filthy and most people love them, rolling in dead things, rolling and eating poop, anything stinky they will eat or roll in it. A chicken will eat some things, poo if they like it (goat poo is round so they like that) but usually won't eat it. They take care of certain bugs, they know witch one are bad for them, but dogs will most likely eat anything they find. The chickens use dirt to get bugs off of them. Chickens, if properly cared for are actually cleaner than dogs. Dogs roll in stinky things on purpose but chickens just want the dirt to clean themselves. I like the way my chickens smell they have This natural smell, dogs are pretty smelly after two days, and they just got a bath. I pet my chickens knowing that she is cleaner than my dog that just rolled there own poop. I love dogs but chickens do there own bathing and are generally clean. Dogs can be if bathed every other week. :cd chickens are good pets when taken care of, are very good at cuddling and helping breakfast happen.

 

[LanceTN]

Something that appears to have been left out, I only scanned some replies so forgive me if I missed it, is that there is more to the cleaning commercial eggs go through.

The cleaning of the eggs doesn't just make them pretty or expose them to future contamination but the cleaning process actually pushes any contaminants on the shell inside.

This is why it is dangerous for non commercial producers to wash eggs.

The commercial producers get away with it because after they wash the eggs they sanitize it with chemicals, and make sure everything is dead.

Here are the epa guidelines on shell egg sanitizing

http://www.epa.gov/oppad001/gdnceggs.htm

So when you eat a store bought washed egg you are probably not going to eat salmonella, but you are definitely going to eat chemicals that should otherwise not be in the egg.

Don't wash your eggs.

 

[Smilin Teri]

I just wanted to say-MY CHICKENS ARE NOT NASTY OR DIRTY-Have NEVER laid a dirty egg yet--Keep the coop and run clean and they WILL NOT be DIRTY--It is up to you how they LIVE