If you recently bought organic brown eggs from a Costco, Safeway, or Pack 'n' Save in California or Nevada, you should check to make sure they're not part of yet another salmonella recall. [MSNBC] (Photo: Bonzo McGrue)
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Comments:
@jfielder23: Some people use pasteurized eggs. But I don't think they can be organic if they are pasteurized(If I am wrong, please let me know).
Stuff like this reminds me of the scene in "28 days" when they go into the supermarket, and the organic fruit is rotten, but the irradiated fruit is still edible.
@yagisencho: I ate two jars of the recalled peanut butter from two years ago. I think as long as you have a pretty healthy immune system/no GI problems, you won't feel a thing.
@Oranges w/ Cheese: My thought also.... I checked the article to see if there was some new salmonella superbug they were worried about (maybe the salmonella equivalent of E. coli O157:H7?) but no news. Maybe it's a flesh-eating salmonella. That would be REALLY nasty. Diarrhea + necrosis.... eww.
@oneandone: Actually, now that I'm thinking about it for a momement, the severe kind of salmonella is typhoid. Can eggs be contaminated with typhoid? CDC seems to say no ([www.cdc.gov]) but maybe there's something the egg farmers know that they're trying to control.
@Oranges w/ Cheese: "Don't Eggs always have salmonella in them?"
Nope.
Only if the fowl is infected with salmonella, or if the egg isn't pasteurized
(which most 'organic' ones aren't). [news.bbc.co.uk]
@Single-n-Bitter_GitEmSteveDave: You may not have felt a thing because your peanut butter wasn't contaminated, though. Even if it was in a recalled lot--and depending on how you're counting two years, it might not have been--that doesn't mean it had salmonella in it. The effects are minimized if you're young and healthy, but if you get a big enough payload, you'll certainly still feel a thing.
@Oranges w/ Cheese: Thank GOD they don't. Lightly salted eggs over easy fried in butter = all is right in the world.
@ JohnDeere (my reply button isn't working either... :-(
Brown paint on the eggs reminds me of a friend of mine. We were travelling, driving through the country and pass some chicken coops with all the lights in the coops on. My friend (who is pretty naive, I admit) says, "I wonder why the lights are all on in the chicken coop." to which I quip, "If they turn the lights off at night, the chickens lay brown eggs."
My friend looks at me, and says, "REALLY? I didn't know that!" I cracked up (no pun intended).
@jfielder23: Depends what you mean by "common." In this study they estimated salmonella in the egg at the rate of one per 30,000. So, you could eat two raw eggs a day for the next 20 years, and you'd have only a 50-50 chance of getting an unlucky egg in that group.
@failurate: Wow, maybe it is Pack n' Save... Pick n' Save has no stores listed on their website in the area mentioned.
@Applekid: Or in bacon fat. Then we got to doing the fortune cookie "in bed" game, but substituted "in bacon fat". Laughs all around. Paula Dean would proud.
@failurate: had that backwords... and you are right. Organic does imply free range or at least cage free.
@Joewithay: you're comparing apples to oranges- salmonella is a subspecies of bacteria, and chicken is a subspecies of animal.
(although i believe your assumption is still correct)
@failurate: I don't think organic implies free range or cage free. I think it implies that they eat "organic" feed. Even "free range" or "cage free" is misleading - the terms simply refer to the chickens having *access* to the outside (which can be a 1'x1' patch of fenced in land) - it doesn't mean the chickens are raised on pasture. For that, you need to find "pastured" eggs. And as long as the chickens are healthy and the eggs are stored properly, the chance of salmonella is tiny.
@I_am_Awesome: I have a few laying hens, and some lay brown eggs, some lay blue eggs. My neighbors only want the brown ones because they think they're healthier. I tried explaining how the pigment goes on right before the egg is laid and has no affect on the nutritional value, but they wouldn't believe me. Whatever, as long as they buy my eggs!
@Grabraham: Brown eggs are from brown-egg-laying chickens (Rhode Island reds, barred rocks, etc.), and those chickens can live anywhere in the country, while their brown eggs are trucked to your local market. Rhode Island reds are egg-laying machines, so the brown eggs you buy in the store are probably from RIRs.
Backyard chicken eggs are the best. My chickens' eggs are brown (barred rocks) and blue (Ameraucanas), and are definitely local (my chicken house) and fresh (usually laid a few minutes before breakfast!). And a great source of afternoon amusement!
















Um, they are raw chicken eggs... I thought salmonella was fairly common in them. Either that or my mother always told me that to try and keep my hands out of the cookie dough.