Egg expertise

Posted by Andrew Wadge on November 27th 2006 in Food fraud

Eggs have been big news recently. Defra investigated alleged mislabelling, and we did a survey of salmonella in non-UK eggs. It's no change to the Agency's advice about cooking and storage.

The survey team here worked hard to get a representative sample of non-UK eggs, because we don't know the retail sites selling them. Importers and market experts said they are mainly sold in London and the North West. We took samples from both areas. HM Revenue & Customs indicated the proportion from each country, so we adjusted our findings to get an overall estimate. This was more 'order of magnitude' than 'decimal point correct'. Spain's the worry area, with over 10% of eggs contaminated with salmonella. The overall estimate is nearer 3%, ten times higher than for UK eggs. Plenty to work on here, despite the difficulty of being sure about the exact figures. Any comments? Post them on this blog.

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Thin chicken eggshells

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on 09/01/2007 - 14:11

Many years ago thin chicken eggshells were an early indication of problems in the food chain which were eventually traced to the insecticide, DDT, and eventually led to its banning.
I have just consumed a batch of noticeably thin shelled eggs.
Being rather long in the tooth I remember the DDT scare well.
I wonder whether this latest experience may be an early indication of some other trouble over the horizon.