In the US, there’s a concern for salmonella or other bacteria and viruses. Factory egg farming is a horror show in regards to overcrowding and hygiene. Sick birds are crammed in with healthy laying birds, and washing the eggs is one of the safest ways to prevent contamination.
It does increase the permeability of the shell, decreasing shelf life and requiring refrigeration.
If your eggs looked like this in the USA, there’s a small but non-zero chance that you’ll shit yourself to death. Probably not, but it’s scary enough.
We could improve factory farming regulations so it’s not a like a Cronenberg movie, but then eggs would be more expensive. And even if we did, and stopped washing our eggs, Americans would still want them to look clean and would still keep them in the fridge because we’ve been conditioned to expect to die on the toilet covered in wet feces if we see bird poop on the eggs.
Fwiw, the eggs wouldn’t have to be more expensive, the eggs cost what the market will pay.
The only change is that the people profiting from your poor food conditions will profit slightly less.
This is a common lie they tell everyone.
Just looked it up. Six shite-covered-but-perfectly-safe eggs
€1.55
Chickens are vaccinated against salmonella (and a bunch of other things) when they are chicks in Europe. It means you don’t need to worry about shitting yourself to death, the chickens are slightly happier by not being sick, and your eggs stay fresher for longer.
It would probably add $0.005 per egg, so US producers will claim it’s communism if a regulation is brought in to vaccinate chicken, but it would be worth doing.
Refrigerating the eggs end to end costs money too, possibly more. I don’t think it’s about ongoing cost but rather upfront cost to switching.
You mean you put 5G tracking devices in your chickens?
Really, though, getting poultry farmers to spend a penny per dozen eggs is like trying to squeeze water from a rock.
They probably think they grow out of the ground rather than come from an animal.
Hmm, this has me curious, I am in Australia at the moment, and the eggs here are unwashed and are kept outside of the fridge. However, they look as if they have been washed. Is there a special kind of rinse eggs go through here that doesn’t remove the protective layer? Or are they doing something insane to the poor chooks to get eggs this clean? I rarely see any feathers, bits of muck, etc.
This probably goes without saying to anyone who has chickens but a message to rest DO NOT WASH your eggs. It’s the stupidest thing you can do. When you wash them you remove protective layer and they can’t last long outside of refrigerator. Even in the fridge chances of getting Salmonella grows very fast.
If you must wash them, do it right before using them.
Yes, this is okay.
Why would this scare Americans? We can get farm fresh unwashed eggs here too.
It’s a joke, ya numpty
You know, like your healthcare system
You sound jaded. Who hurt you?
Maggie Thatcher. Next question
U mad bro?
It’s a bad one, you Dumpty.
Fuck me I’m trying here
like we have a choice bro we are all corporate slaves with no backbones trying to not be homeless and die on the street while some shithead iNfLuEnCeRs records our last moments for a few likes.
Granted. Sometime you gotta just take the L. The Americans could mean many places. And a vast majority of us are familiar with farms and brown eggs. Maybe say it would scare the Karens?
Most of us don’t and many of us are skeeved out by this. I recognize that it’s stupid and these eggs are fine, but it still makes me feel gaggy looking at them.
I grew up raising chickens among other animals. Poop and feathers on eggs was the norm. This ‘50s processed white bread, white sugar, clean eggs, etc. that was the sign of “progress” I guess IMO has done more harm than good in some ways.
There’s plenty of things to make fun of the US for, but this isn’t one of them.
Yeah I know it’s tongue in cheek, but the mocking should really go the other way, haha. Look at our washed American eggs that scare the Europeans who are used to two orders of magnitude higher incidences of salmonella:
“Overall, egg contamination from industrial systems has been reported to be 0.005% in the United States, 0.37% in Europe, and between 0.5% and 5.6% in China”
Plenty of Americans have chickens in their backyard. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I know hardy har har such banter, but for real we also have unwashed eggs, and plenty of Americans have chicken’s, I currently have 80 in my backyard and am overflowing with eggs on my countertops.
Your jokes will hit harder if they come from a place of reality and not only information gained from reddit and social media posts.
What, a shitpost didn’t take every singe person who exists in America into consideration??!?!?!?? No way, that’s awful, I can’t believe OP would try and hurt you like that, wild they posted a public meme that didn’t apply to you personally
Also I believe you by your use of “chicken’s”. I grew up rural and many did not know how to pluralize things.
There are Americans who own chickens and Americans who’ve never touched one. It’s a big country. This post applies mostly to city folk.
This post applies mostly to city folk.
The ones subsidizing the rest of the country. You think Cletus has health insurance while he cosplays as a farmer think his 600 dollar a month land tax is paying for his 4 kids in school? 9 out of 50 states pay federal taxes and those states all happen to have the biggest cities.
But hey I get it. My parents were cosplay farmers as well. Here I am working like a schmuck for a living.
My man, if people want to own a couple chickens it’s not that serious.
The rural welfare states are really a separate issue from that.
I do find it funny that conservative states are so anti-welfare when their existence depends on it though.
I don’t get upset about people having a hobby, I encourage it. Just you know because you have fun doing something doesn’t mean the rest of us have to subsidize your hobby. I enjoy baking that doesn’t mean I get to quit my job and do it full time and depend on the government to pay me for it.
Knew a lot of families like mine growing up. Want to get a real job? No? Ok go back to failing at potatoes, and spend all your free time hunting while drunk.
I think that’s a fair point. However in this case, as an American I personally know people here who are like this.
A friend of mine will go to the store and buy more eggs because he refuses to eat the fresh eggs I keep on my counter.
Edit: He also keeps an ice chest in his trunk to keep them in during the 20 minute drive from the store…
Well, if you’re buying them at a store in the US and storing at room temperature, your friend has a point. In Europe, they don’t wash the eggs at the processing plant. This leaves a film of sorts on the egg that prevents bacteria from entering the egg. In the US, we wash the eggs in processing to get bacteria off the eggs. Both methods are done to prevent E-coli, but the caveat is the washed eggs need refrigeration because there is no film on the eggs.
Also-- if the eggs are unwashed and then refrigerated they are now not shelf stable, the condensation that will occur going from fridge to room temp will disturb the cuticle enough to make them unsafe.
I will add to this… obviously, if you have chickens, farm fresh eggs can be stored at room temperature in the US.
It doesn’t scare us, we want this. I’d love to see you win vs the chicken industry. They would stomp your ass to the ground like they do to all the chickens!
We don’t eat the donkey eggs
I still don’t get why you wouldn’t still put those eggs on the refrigerator. They will stay fresher longer!
Fresh eggs at room temp will stay good for 2 - 4 weeks at room temperature, 3-6 months refrigerated. If you need to refrigerate fresh eggs, you have too many chickens
Eggs don’t instantly degrade from good to bad overnight. They slowly degrade with weakening membranes and what not. As I said, they stay freshER.
I get unwashed eggs from a farm whenever I can. I still put my eggs in the fridge. And the yolks stay nice and unbroken when making eggs over easy, as I like them.
I know right, why are we so uptight? Who wouldn’t want their eggs covered in crusty vaginal residue and dirty feathers? THAT’S WHAT REALLY SEALS IN THE FLAVOR!!! 🤢🤢🤢🤮
Are you eating the shell?
Never! I always crack eggs PERFECTLY so that it splits cleanly in half with no shards and the egg inside never touches the outside of the shell… 😰
He’s eating the shells, guys
Most of us in Europe don’t eat the shells, actually.
Then again, who wouldn’t want their eggs washed off with god knows what kind of chemicals that remove the natural protective membrane from the shells, so now you have to store the eggs in the fridge rather than just the shelf?
You have to lick your fingers after handling them like it’s cheeto dust.
Can confirm. We (in US) have chickens and whenever we gift eggs to people they’re astounded that they don’t need to be refrigerated but also sometimes horrified that they aren’t washed.
Granted, I keep the eggs that get poopy for myself so they don’t get tossed out by an overly cautious person. I just rinse them immediately before use if they’re very dirty. Occasionally one of the hens will have an “accident” and lay an egg in the dirt outside or on the coop floor. Otherwise they look generally like the pic above.
I’ve yet to have a rotten egg and at times we’ve gotten behind by over a month… Still good, sitting on the counter for a month.
Fun info, I’m currently eating through some “water glassed” eggs that I stored in May of 2023. Still good.
I have looked up “water glassed eggs” and while it does look interesting as a scientific experiment, I’m reasonably certain that you’re a psychopath
Left there so long it’s growing into a chicken
Eggs are shelf stable? How long do they last on the counter?
In the old ages there were a number of ways of preserving eggs for long periods of time. Lard was one of them, where they would put many eggs in a pot and fill it with lard. There was also a way with mixing lime with water and keeping eggs in that. They could have been kept edible for years, although I don’t wish to hazard the guess on how the produce tasted. Townsends has a great video on the subject.
Two hundred and fifty years, give or take
