Another question about eating your chicken eggs - raw eggs

[nuthatched]

Your eggs are safer than any store eggs, they're fine for raw applications. :] hollandaise is more or less cooked and the acid in mayo kills bacteria. After you make the mayo, cover it and leave it on the counter for an hour, acid works best at room temperature. All those food poisonings due to mayo, actually isn't from the mayo. Lettuce is #1 culprit and potatoes, when cooked and left in warm places for a few hours can go bad.

 

[Allsfairinloveandbugs]

Store bought eggs in the US are not pasteurized and not safe to eat raw. Backyard eggs are not safe to eat raw either, because they are still at risk of salmonella.

https://www.safeway.com/shop/product-details.138350287.3132.html

Some stores in the US.do sell pasteurized eggs. They are clearly labeled "pasteurized" and marked with a P. I agree with everything else you said. I sell eggs and eat eggs my hens have laid nearly every morning. Still, eating their eggs uncooked is a risk I have no desire to take, even though doing so probably poses little risk. Helps that I have no desire to eat raw eggs even if it IS perfectly safe!

 

[K0k0shka]

https://www.safeway.com/shop/product-details.138350287.3132.html

Some stores in the US.do sell pasteurized eggs. They are clearly labeled "pasteurized" and marked with a P. I agree with everything else you said. I sell eggs and eat eggs my hens have laid nearly every morning. Still, eating their eggs uncooked is a risk I have no desire to take, even though doing so probably poses little risk. Helps that I have no desire to eat raw eggs even if it IS perfectly safe!

You're right, if you look hard enough you can probably find just about anything as a specialty, in specialized/fancier stores. But the average person going out to their grocery store, shouldn't bank on their eggs being pasteurized at all. The consistency of snotty raw eggs grosses me out so I have no desire to eat them raw either, but I loooooove me some hollandaise sauce....

 

[Ridgerunner]

I mostly agree with @K0k0shka . Salmonella is in nature. I lives in animal poop. My chickens dust bathe where they have pooped. Mine walk through poop and lay down in it, then lay an egg in the nest. The salmonella can easily get on the eggs. I do not consider my eggs any safer from salmonella than store bought eggs. Try studying what salmonella is, where it lives, and how it spreads. That can be educational.

I eat apples and plums straight from the tree without washing them. a radish or carrot straight from the garden after rubbing dirt off of them with my hands. No fresh manure though, I would not do that if fresh manure had been spread. I like fried eggs easy over. Those are all risks. I should at least rinse the fruit and veggies off and cook the eggs more but I don't. Growing up on a farm it is something I've done all my life. It is a risk I choose to take, not a risk I am unaware of. I do wash my hands a lot, especially if I have handled chickens or my dog that loves to roll in poop.

There are different strains of salmonella. Some are a lot more potent than others. Some people are more resistant to it than others. If someone is immunocompromised they should be really careful.

My dogs love to roll in poop. There are warnings that you should wash your hands after petting your dog before you put them in your mouth or you could get salmonella. Two or three years back one of the hatcheries we use was spreading salmonella through the baby chicks they were selling. Once thy found that out they took care of it really quickly.

As widespread as salmonella is in nature you'd think we would get it a lot. We do. Usually it is so mild we don't notice it or it is just a mild discomfort. The cases where it is a danger are fairly rare but dangerous cases do happen.

 

[rosemarythyme]

This is mainly an issue in the US I think - don't most other countries vaccinate birds for salmonella?

I grew up eating raw eggs (common in parts of Asia) because my mom didn't realize that eggs in the US weren't pasteurized/birds weren't vaccinated for salmonella, so it wasn't "safe." She finally stopped serving us raw eggs but I guess I never fully got turned off to eggs being on the super runny side, so I still eat them that way if I'm poaching them at home.

(Conversely my hubby really only wants his eggs hard boiled/over hard, so I have to go against all my instincts and slam his eggs for him, because he says no one else overcooks them the way he likes them, bleh!)

 

[K0k0shka]

This is mainly an issue in the US I think - don't most other countries vaccinate birds for salmonella?

I grew up eating raw eggs (common in parts of Asia) because my mom didn't realize that eggs in the US weren't pasteurized/birds weren't vaccinated for salmonella, so it wasn't "safe." She finally stopped serving us raw eggs but I guess I never fully got turned off to eggs being on the super runny side, so I still eat them that way if I'm poaching them at home.

(Conversely my hubby really only wants his eggs hard boiled/over hard, so I have to go against all my instincts and slam his eggs for him, because he says no one else overcooks them the way he likes them, bleh!)

My mom ate raw eggs all the time when she was growing up in Europe, but not because anybody was pasteurizing/vaccinating (they still don't where she lives). She ate her family's chickens' eggs, and nobody had heard of salmonella back then. She says a popular treat among the kids was to poke a small hole in a raw egg's shell, put salt through it, then shake the egg for an egg "smoothie" because they didn't have candy or other treats back then. I grew up in Europe too and while I was too grossed out to try the egg "smoothie", I did lick the spoons/bowls or eat raw cookie dough when she was making sweets. We also didn't treat raw chicken meat like poison, and e.coli wasn't a thing. When I first came to the US a long time ago I was shocked to learn that people used different cutting boards for meats and non-meats, and washed everything so thoroughly, and it was such a big deal. Mass production changes everything, and contamination spreads to larger quantities even if the source is very small. It's just a different world. Also, people likely got sick and died from these things back in the day, too, it just wasn't necessarily linked to the proper cause. I miss licking the spoons, but as expensive as healthcare is in this country, I'm not risking anything.

 

[ManueB]

I'm following this thread from the start and I'll admit I'm very surprised by this question, living in France
Do you mean people in the US never eat chocolate mousse ?
It that's the case I'm truly sorry for you.

We've had a massive salmonella contamination and scandal that killed kids recently in France and a bunch of european and african countries. Guess where it came from ? Frozen Buitoni pizza, mass produced in France. So I will keep on skipping frozen pizza and keeping chocolate mousse made with my hens raw eggs ! ..though I understand it's a cultural thing and perception of health risk can vary depending on where you live.

 

[K0k0shka]

Do you mean people in the US never eat chocolate mousse ?

We eat everything, it's just that for certain things like mousse, mayonnaise, etc. it's safer to buy than to make your own if you don't have a way of pasteurizing/sterilizing raw ingredients. Mousses are very popular and safe to eat at restaurants.

 

[ManueB]

We eat everything, it's just that for certain things like mousse, mayonnaise, etc. it's safer to buy than to make your own if you don't have a way of pasteurizing/sterilizing raw ingredients. Mousses are very popular and safe to eat at restaurants.

I'm relieved to hear this because to me a life without chocolate mousse would miss something.
I just hope pasteurized eggs don't taste as bad as pasteurized cheese .

 

[K0k0shka]

I just hope pasteurized eggs don't taste as bad as pasteurized cheese .

They taste just fine, as does the cheese. Like I said earlier, I grew up in Europe, embedded in the local country practices and enjoying real, fresh food from our farm. But even there, even with people eating raw eggs, when it came to dairy, everybody knew that you boil the milk first before drinking it or making any cheese or yogurt with it. Even my old school grandma wouldn't even think of not boiling the milk first. So I have actually never had raw dairy of any kind, and can't weigh in on any taste comparisons. Grandma's yogurt and cheeses tasted amazing! I make them myself now with pasteurized store bought milk, and they taste just like I remember. What's lacking in the flavor in American grocery store dairy products can't be blamed on pasteurization. It's about technique, what's more practical on a large scale, and cultural preferences.