Quote:
Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch
The Wikipedia article on eggs (too lazy to link) suggests that an FDA study in 2002 shows that only 1 in 30,000 eggs is contaminated with salmonella, and that it only reaches the interior of the egg if the seal of the shell is compromised by handling or the laying hen's health issues. And even if you ate 30,000 eggs in your lifetime, what are the chances that the 40-50 of those that were in caesar salad dressing included the one bad egg?* When you consider that only the eggs that are aethetically perfect even make it to supermarket shelves, the rest being sold to food manufacturers who presumably pasteurize as part of their own production, the risk of contracting salmonella from a supermarket egg cracked in your own kitchen is vanishingly small -- far less than the bacterial load you likely give yourself when you handle the butcher paper around your raw chicken and then scratch your nose, even if that only happens rarely.
My take is that pathogenic bacteria are all around us, but raw eggs are a tiny part of the problem. If you get a bad egg in your lifetime, odds are pretty good it will be one of the thousands of cooked ones rather than one of the tens of raw ones.
*Confidential to Adder: I understand that one would not need to consume 30,000 eggs before one was exposed to a 1:30,000 risk. This is just for rhetorical exposition.
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Yeah, but when you consider things like chocolate mousse, homemade mayo, and that cup of raw eggs I like to drink before running in the morning, the risks go up, and are probably comparable to using the door handle in public restrooms.
