IMC is a known Russian agent, a Malaysian national who openly writes for Putin propaganda outlet RT. Of course he wants to defund American information security.
Eggs in the US, Canada, Japan, Scandinavia, and a couple other countries are washed, which removes a layer that seals the egg. Eggs are a major vector for salmonella contamination; washing them materially reduces the incidence rates.
It is not egg specific. The countries that wash their eggs have atypically strong standards for bacterial contamination hygiene in food processing. Many food products from Europe are prohibited from import into the US due to insufficient safeguards against bacterial contamination during processing. There is an entire business where Scandinavian factories process food from distant parts of Europe to satisfy US food safety requirements for export.
As a general principle, the US does not create exemptions in food processing regulations on the basis that the existing process is "traditional" or has a long history. Many other countries do.
Europeans do not wash their eggs like the Americans, because they believe that this is a poor method for preventing Salmonella contamination, which has the serious drawback of increasing the chance that the eggs will not be safe for consumption when stored for a too long time.
In Europe, poultry vaccination against Salmonella is the preferred method. In most places Salmonella occurrences are exceedingly rare.
In general, Europeans believe that USA has atypically weak standards of food safety and that all the cases when certain kinds of European food are prohibited for import into USA on grounds of food safety are just cover-up stories, because the real reason is to avoid competition.
It is weird that USA has a phobia of vaccines even for poultry, because in this case there is no doubt that vaccines would have prevented the great financial losses caused by bird flu.
US eggs are generally vaccinated against salmonella and washed. The vaccination part isn't mandatory but it is cost effective so producers do it anyway. The effectiveness of the salmonella vaccines is middling at best and unpredictable -- eggs are still a major source of salmonella outbreaks in Europe. The benefit of washing eggs versus vaccines is that it produces a reliable result whereas the vaccine effectiveness has high variance. Also, this isn't a "European" thing, some parts of Europe also wash their eggs for the same reason. The US only started washing eggs in the 1970s, in a successful effort to reduce salmonella incidence.
Salmonella vaccines that work consistently and effectively in poultry are still an active area of research, it isn't a solved problem.
Regardless of what you believe, US food regulations regarding bacterial contamination are significantly stricter than Europe outside of Scandinavia. There are a number of well-known cases where European producers modified or upgraded their production processes to meet US sanitary requirements to enable exports. Scandinavian countries notably don't have to do this because their standards are similar to the US.
There may be other dimensions of food safety that are better in Europe but mitigating bacterial contamination is famously not one of them.
There's some evidence that livestock vaccination accelerates viral pathogen evolution, similar to antibiotics with bacteria. Even with vaccination, modern sanitation and isolation procedures would and should still be required.
Yes. Eggs in the US are washed thoroughly. Removes potential pathogens but also removes the protective coating on the egg. Eggs in Europe are not washed.
Yes. In the US eggs are washed with soap and hot water after being laid. Most of the rest of the world doesn't do that. We simply arrange things so eggs don't lie in poop, then deliver them to the customer unwashed.
Both methods work, but the washing process removes a protective layer from the eggs, causing them to require refrigeration and generally last not as long
US eggs last exactly the same amount of time, and they do not actually require refrigeration, it's basically a custom at this point that customers expect.
Once the egg has been refrigerated (which it will be in shipping and in the supermarket) breaking the cold chain is, at best, risky; you'll potentially get condensation which can lead to contamination.
This is so fascinating. I believe you, but I am one month from a newborn so I can't perform the experiment. It's like how for years on end I'd read explanations on Hacker News for why Japan's traffic lights were blue instead of green and I went there and they were identical to US lights. So I'm sceptical of these folk explanations that always go around. One day, years from now, I shall test it myself.
It's also not true. You can keep US eggs out of the fridge with zero problems, and they do not "transpire" in a month, that's simply not true. I keep my US eggs for months at a time, out of the fridge, with zero problems.
The whole washing thing causing problems, that multiple people have replied is a myth. They spray the eggs with mineral oil afterward which works just as well. There's nothing magical about the natural coating, it's just oil.
Wild birds are indeed the main way that avian influenza spreads, however `ars` is just grinding some axe of theirs. California does not have a free-range chicken regulation. Virtually all commercial chicken flocks in California are already housed indoors. The California "cage-free" regulation only enforces minimal standards against cruelty. It essentially codifies these industry guidelines: https://uepcertified.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/CF-UEP-G...
"Avian flu experts have called for caution in implementing cage-free requirements, noting that poultry exposed to the outdoors have a higher risk of contracting the virus."
"Incorporating lasers that deter wild bird populations into biosecurity protocols can help prevent the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) between commercial poultry farms."
> Why is it only American free-range egg farms are being affected, while Canada and Mexico’s are being spared?
Mexico immunizes their birds, which is highly labor intensive, which they can afford due to low wages and the US can't.
Canada is far north and the infected wild birds have not gone that far in large numbers (although the numbers are increasing).
Immunization isn't just about cost. Many countries have decided meat from vaccinated chickens are not safe to eat and the US exports a lot of chicken to those countries. We cannot vaccinate until the others will allow it.
Propagandists are now going to tell you to ignore what you're hearing and seeing. Just put the news away and relax! The same people spent the last four years telling you to be outraged about things that never happened. A man won the women's boxing at the olympics! Outrage!
Wow these guys aren't even pretending to be about any legitimate line of business at this point. They have gone all-in on just being as like Trump as they can and robbing everyone blind.
In China, March '25 egg futures haven't budged. They were 3200 CNY/1000kg (for 5000kg contracts) in August and 3200 last week. Why is bird flu hitting us harder?
Because we want it to hit us harder. We can call it extra precautions or maybe China cares less, put it under whatever label you want. It is incredibly low risk for the avian flu to be transferred through eggs to humans. Also the avian flu is impact on humans once you get it is generally very low risk as well.
There are always exceptions to both of these and people panic over the exceptions rather than accepting some amount of risk. We also seem to have given up on the idea of people making individual choices about risk profiles and instead default everyone into the category of "the government is here to save you". China, doesn't have this same outlook.
OK but 20 million of those died of the disease itself. What's your counterfactual for how many would have died without the culling? You seem to be implying that it would be fewer, but that's not obviously correct.
I don't understand your point anymore. Egg prices are up because we lost somewhere between 1/5 and 1/4 of our egg laying birds in the last year, and it takes a while to breed that many replacement birds. I have no idea what argument you are trying to make about the avian flu.
I'm trying to figure out why the excursion in our market prices is so much greater than that in China when, as you mention in another comment, this disease has hit other countries as well.
The disease itself has killed tens of millions of hens and farmers are slaughtering their flocks to stop it from spreading. I don't see your point about risk appetite under these circumstances.
H5N1 went raged through China last spring and it has since spread the the US. If you look at their futures market between June and December prices were crazy during that period.
Suppose twenty million hens die of a disease, and you order another eighty million slaughtered. That's going to lead to fewer eggs being laid, obviously, and a nonzero price increase. Now there are two questions, ① how many more eggs were laid than needed before this happened and ② if you want to look at the reason for the increase, how much of the increase is due to those 20 and how much is due to those other 80?
The gentle reader has ample scope to let the answers be influenced by political goals.
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