Pennsylvania leads the way in egg safety

As Rocky, Sylvester Stallone downed raw eggs as he trained for boxing matches. In Cabaret, Liza Minnelli mixed them with Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce in the classically unappetizing hangover cure, the Prairie Oyster.

Offscreen, too, raw and undercooked eggs remain common. Orders for "sunny-side up" and "over easy" haven't vanished despite more than 20 years of warnings about exposure to salmonella. Nor have children eager to taste the cookie dough, raw eggs included or not.

It's not clear yet how the recent recalls of more than half a billion eggs from two Iowa producers might influence Americans' habits. Eggs from the two farms are believed to be linked to an estimated 1,250 illnesses, and may have caused tens of thousands more.

But the story of what has happened since the 1980s to what the American Egg Board likes to call "the incredible edible egg" is also a story of turf disputes and inaction in Washington that were countered in parts of the country by frustrated state officials and farmers.

In Pennsylvania, a coalition of egg producers, state agriculture officials and academic researchers created a risk-reduction system two decades ago that is just now being replicated nationally by the Food and Drug Administration, according to food-safety experts such as Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The egg's role as a food-safety threat is actually of fairly recent vintage. Before the 1980s, the egg's reputation was indeed pretty incredible: Inside an intact shell - nature's own prepackaging - an egg was believed to be aseptic: free from disease-causing bacteria or viruses. Some people didn't even think eggs needed refrigeration.

But microbial evolution takes place at a rapid pace, and recognition of foodborne risks has evolved as well.

By the 1980s, it was clear that an organism known as Salmonella enteritidis had a foothold in U.S. poultry flocks in a way that infected some birds' ovaries and reproductive tracts. As a result, some unbroken eggs were found to be contaminated with salmonella.

Paul Patterson, a professor of poultry science at Pennsylvania State University, said reports of Salmonella enteritidis to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention increased sixfold from 1970 to 1988. As the numbers rose, he said, Pennsylvania egg producers became increasingly concerned by salmonella outbreaks and deaths.

Patterson, who works with producers as an extension specialist, helped them establish the Pennsylvania Egg Quality Assurance Program. Today, its logo appears on egg cartons from producers who meet its standards.

The program began as a pilot project in 1990, with assistance from the state and federal Agriculture Departments and from researchers at Penn State and from the University of Pennsylvania's veterinary school, Patterson said.

"The producers took it very seriously," Patterson said Monday. "They were farmers, and they were producing eggs for the good of people - they didn't want to sell eggs that would hurt people. So they got very aggressive about reducing salmonella on their farms."

The program has three basic elements.

First, it requires that producers obtain birds only from flocks certified as salmonella-free.

Second, it requires producers to meet standards of "biosecurity" - a fancy way of saying that their barns are protected from intrusion by the mice or other rodents that have been identified as sources of Salmonella enteritidis.

The last key requirement is known as environmental testing: The flocks and henhouses are both tested repeatedly. If the swabs are negative, the flocks are clear until the next round of testing.

DeWaal said such testing, which is also a central element of a federal rule that went into effect last month, is crucial to egg safety.

"If environmental testing comes back positive, you have to test the eggs every two weeks," she said. "If they find any positive results, eggs from that flock, for the life of the flock, must be pasteurized" or kept out of the human food supply.

Patterson said that once the program moved beyond its pilot phase, it quickly showed its effectiveness.

He said that in 1992, 38 percent of Pennsylvania flocks tested positive for Salmonella enteritidis. Today, about 8 percent test positive.

Environmental controls have been even more successful. In 1992, 26 percent of samples from Pennsylvania henhouses tested positive. Today, that's down to 1 percent.

Patterson said environmental controls turned out to be crucial, especially since chickens are silent carriers of the organism - they don't get sick from it.

"You'd put a fresh, clean flock of pullets in a contaminated henhouse, and all of a sudden they'd turn out positive," he said. "It takes terrific vigilance to stay on top of this - it's risk-reduction program, not risk elimination."

Patterson said the risk of exposure from a single egg was statistically very small - even from eggs laid by hens in flocks where salmonella was present.

Patterson said that in 1992, just 0.026 percent of eggs from those flocks, or 2.6 eggs in 10,000, tested positive for salmonella. Today, that incidence is down more than 50 percent, to 1.2 eggs per 10,000.

Egg producers appear happy with the program.

"It's a model program that everybody looks up to," said Paul Sauder, owner of R.W. Sauder, of Lititz, Pa., which produces eggs sold under more than a hundred different brand names.

Sauder said his company currently manages 85 flocks, and just one has tested positive for salmonella. "We have zero positive eggs," he said.

Patterson said the Iowa egg recall was unlikely to affect people in the Philadelphia region, since most of the eggs were destined for the Midwest or West. Still, food-safety experts say the outbreak is more evidence that every animal-related food carries risk, and should be treated with special caution by those who are most vulnerable: young children, the elderly, and those who are immuno-compromised.

Because only a fraction of cases ever gets reported, officials say the 1,250 cases linked to the Iowa eggs may translate to a total 30 times as high, or 37,500 foodborne illnesses.

"This outbreak really provides a clear warning that eggs remain a high-risk food," DeWaal said. "Consumer behavior has to change to reflect the increased risk."

To reduce the risk of Salmonella enteritidis:

Keep eggs refrigerated at or below 45° F.

Discard cracked or dirty eggs.

Wash hands, cooking utensils, and food preparation surfaces with soap and water after contact with raw eggs.

Cook eggs until both the white and the yolk are firm, and eat promptly after cooking.

Do not keep eggs warm or at room temperature for more than two hours.

Refrigerate unused or leftover egg-containing foods promptly.

Avoid eating raw eggs.

Restaurants should use pasteurized eggs in any recipe (such as Hollandaise sauce or Caesar salad dressing) that calls for raw eggs.

SOURCE: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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