Why The U.S. Chills Its Eggs And Most Of The World Doesn't by RAE ELLEN BICHELL September 11, 2014

Why The U.S. Chills Its Eggs And Most Of The World Doesn'tby RAE ELLEN BICHELLSeptember 11, 201412:31 PM ETTo refrigerate or not to refrigerate? It boils down to bacteria, 

aesthetics and how much energy you're willing to use.Robert S. Donovan; Flickr / Alex Barth; FlickrGo in search of eggs in most foreign countries and you might 

encounter a strange scene: eggs on a shelf or out in the open

 air, nowhere near a refrigerator.Shock and confusion may 

ensue. What are they doing there? And are they safe to eat?

We Americans, along with the Japanese, Australians and 

Scandinavians, tend to be squeamish about our chicken 

eggs, so we bathe them and then have to refrigerate them.

But we're oddballs. Most other countries don't mind letting 

unwashed eggs sit next to bread or onions.The difference 

boils down to two key things: how to go after bacteria that 

could contaminate them, and how much energy we're 

willing to use in the name of safe eggs.The 

SaltThink You Know How To Cook Eggs? 

Chances Are You're Doing It WrongTo 

understand when the rift happened, let's 

rewind. About a hundred years ago, many people 

around the world washed their eggs. But there are 

a lot of ways to do it wrong, so the method got a 

bad reputation in certain parts of the world. A batch 

of rotten eggs, which had been washed in Australia, 

left a bad impression on its British importers.By 

1970, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had 

perfected the art of the wash with the help of fancy 

machines, and it required all egg producers to do it. 

Meanwhile, many European countries were prohibiting 

washing, and Asian countries never got on board with 

it. The exception was Japan, which joined the 

egg-washers after a bad spate of salmonella in 

the 1990s.So what's the deal with washing and 

refrigeration? Soon after eggs pop out of the 

chicken, American producers put them straight 

to a machine that shampoos them with 

soap and hot water. The steamy shower leaves 

the shells squeaky clean. But it also compromises 

them, by washing away a barely visible sheen that 

naturally envelops each egg."The egg is a marvel 

in terms of protecting itself, and one of the protections 

is this coating, which prevents them from being 

porous," says food writer Michael Ruhlman, author 

of Egg: A Culinary Exploration of the World's Most 

Versatile Ingredient.

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The coating is like a little safety vest 

for the egg, keeping water and oxygen in and bad bacteria 

out. Washing can damage that layer and "increase the 

chances for bacterial invasion" into pores or hairline 

cracks in the shell, according to Yi Chen, a food scientist 

at Purdue University. So we spray eggs with oil to 

prevent bacteria from getting in, and refrigerate 

them to keep microorganisms at bay.

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Eat Imported Food, And It's PriceyWhy go to 

the trouble of washing eggs? A lot of it has to 

do with fear of salmonella."It just sort of seeped into 

our culture that chickens are dirty, or crawling with 

bacteria," says Ruhlman. (The Salt stumbled into this 

when our post started a #chickens*$!storm.)

Salmonella enteritidis can infect a chicken's 

ovaries, contaminating a yolk before the shell 

firms up around it. Cooking usually kills the bacteria 

before they can harm you; still, eggs contaminated 

with salmonella are responsible for about 142,000 

illnesses a year in the U.S.,according to the Food 

and Drug Administration.In some European countries, 

egg-laying hens are vaccinated against salmonella. In 

the U.S., vaccination is not required, but eggs must be 

washed and refrigerated from farm to store, and 

producers must follow a host of other safety measures.

"They're different approaches to basically achieve 

the same result," says Vincent Guyonnet, a poultry 

veterinarian and scientific adviser to the International 

Egg Commission. "We don't have massive [food 

safety] issues on either side of the Atlantic. Both 

methods seem to work."The important thing, he 

says, is to be consistent."Once you start refrigeration, 

you have to have it through the whole value chain, 

from farm to store. Because if you stop — if the 

eggs are cold and you put them in a warm 

environment — they're going to 

start sweating," says Guyonnet.

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No one wants sweaty eggs. They can 

get moldy. Another perk of consistent refrigeration 

is shelf life: It jumps from about 21 days to almost 

50 days.In a lot of countries, constant refrigeration

 just isn't possible because it's simply too costly.

"Some of the countries cannot afford cold storage 

during the whole supply chain," says Chen.And 

as for why the U.S. and Europe developed such 

different attitudes about washing, it's also hard 

to tease apart how much is about safety versus 

egg aesthetics."In North America, we like to have 

everything superclean. So they probably initiated 

the washing of the egg very early on," leading 

down the refrigeration path, says Guyonnet.But 

in a lot of places, "a dirty egg with poop on it is 

no big deal. You brush it off when you get home," 

says Guyonnet, who was raised in France and now 

lives in Canada.A 38-country survey by the International 

Egg Commission found that people feel strongly 

about how their eggs should look. The Irish, 

French, Czechs, Hungarians, Portuguese, 

Nigerians and Brits hanker for brown eggs. 

Canadians, Finns, Americans and Indians 

prefer white shells. Dutchmen and Argentines 

don't seem to care.