Why Does The U.S. Refrigerate Eggs When Much Of The World ...

It was my mom who first suggested to me that an ideal grocery shopping list organizes its contents by position in the store — grouping, for instance, the produce together, the refrigerated items together and the shelf-stable items together — in order to maximize efficiency.

Unfortunately, this method for seamless grocery runs is not, in fact, foolproof when you’re globetrotting. (Sorry, Mom!) An adventurous spirit has led me to locales across Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and something I often do in a new country is browse the local grocery stores to marvel at exotic-to-me foods (and chuckle about what’s the same). These foreign grocery store strolls have also shown me global differences in how — and where — some foods are kept in stores. Eggs, in particular, were a surprise to me.

The Great Refrigeration Debate

In the U.S., Japan, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Scandinavia, eggs are in the dairy case next to other refrigerator staples, like milk and soft cheeses. But at a French grocer or a British supermarket? Write those sunny-side-up kitchen staples in next to the canned beans, s’il vous plaît.

It turns out that, here in America, eggs are refrigerated because the U.S. Department of Agriculture requires eggs sold for consumption to be washed, processed and then refrigerated before they come anywhere near a store’s shelves. On the other hand, most European and Asian countries have reached the opposite conclusion, requiring that table eggs not be wet-washed, and also not refrigerated.

If this seems counterintuitive and confusing to you, you’re not the only one.

Both regulations were arrived at as effective ways to solve the same problem: reducing exposure to salmonella, a bacteria that causes unpleasant, though non-life-threatening, illness. Yet those of us accustomed to refrigerating our eggs might find it hard to believe that eggs stored at room temperature are safe to consume. Food poisoning is no fun, after all.

Eggs can be infected by salmonella in one of two ways: First, bacteria can be passed from an infected hen to her eggs as they develop inside her. Second, it can grow on the outside of the shell after an egg is laid if it comes in contact with a hen’s feces.

While the problem of infected chickens was tough to tackle before things like vaccines became safe and widely accepted, the problem of keeping bacteria off of eggshells was addressed, here in the U.S. at least, by washing.