Soft-Boiled Truth

http://birdflubook.com/a.php?id=24&t=p
Runny yolks may present a health hazard
What about eggs? “Be careful with eggs,” the World Health Organization
warns.432 “Eggs from infected poultry could also be contaminated with
the [H5N1] virus and therefore care should be taken in handling shell
eggs or raw egg products.”433 This includes first washing eggs with
soapy water and then afterwards washing our hands and all surfaces and
utensils thoroughly with soap and water.434 Given that pigs fed eggs
from an infected flock fell ill, researchers maintain that the
“survival time of the viruses…on surfaces such as eggs is sufficient
to allow wide dissemination.”435 According to the European Centre for
Disease Prevention and Control, the biggest risk from eggs is that the
shells may harbor traces of excrement containing the virus.436

The comic strip One Big Happy by Rick Detorie once explained the
layers of infection. A father and daughter are in the grocery store.
“That’s a cow’s tongue?!” the girl exclaims, face contorted in
disgust. “EEEEww…I would never eat anything that was in a cow’s
mouth!” “Me neither,” replies the father, not looking up from his
shopping list. “Let’s see, where are the eggs?” The daughter stops,
eyes wide in realization: “Wait a minute!” Eggs do, after all, come
out of a chickenÂ’s rear (vagina and rectum combine into the cloaca).

Like Salmonella, bird flu viruses can infect the chickensÂ’ ovaries, so
the virus can come prepackaged within the egg as well.437 During the
1983 Pennsylvania outbreak, the virus was found festering within both
the egg white and the yolk, making proper cooking essential.438 To
reduce the risk of contracting bird flu from eggs, the Mayo Clinic
warns about mayo: “Avoid eating raw or undercooked eggs or any
products containing them, including mayonnaise, hollandaise sauce and
homemade ice cream.”439 Other potential sources of raw or undercooked
eggs include mousse, Caesar salad, homemade eggnog, lemon meringue
pie, tiramisu, raw cookie dough, and eggs that are soft boiled,
lightly poached, or cooked sunny side up or “over easy” with a runny
yolk. The latest CDC440 and WHO441 recommendations are adamant on this
point—whether it’s to avoid bird flu or Salmonella, egg yolks should
not be runny or liquid. Researchers concluded in the Journal of the
American Medical Association that “no duration of frying ‘sunnyside’
(not turned) eggs was sufficient to kill all the Salmonella.”442

But havenÂ’t people been cooking eggs that way for a hundred years?
Diseases like bird flu and Salmonella were practically unknown a few
decades ago. Our grandparents could drink eggnog with wild abandon
while their grandkids could eat raw cookie dough without fear of
joining the more than a thousand Americans who die every year from
Salmonella poisoning. There was a time when medium-rare hamburgers,
raw milk, and steak tartare were less dangerous, a time when Rocky
Balboa could more safely drink his raw-egg smoothies. Blaming
customers for mishandling or improper cooking is only possible when
all this is forgotten.

USDA microbiologist Nelson Cox says, “Raw meats are not idiot-proof.
They can be mishandled and when they are, itÂ’s like handling a hand
grenade. If you pull the pin, somebody’s going to get hurt.” While
some may question the wisdom of selling hand grenades in the
supermarket, Cox disagrees: “I think the consumer has the most
responsibility but refuses to accept it.”443 “There has been a subtle
turning of this on to the consumer,” says Steve Bjerklie, former
editor of Meat and Poultry magazine, “and it’s morally
reprehensible.”444 Patricia Griffin, director of Epidemiological
Research at the Centers for Disease Control responded famously to this
kind of blame-the-victim attitude. “Is it reasonable,” she asked,
‘“that if a consumer undercooks a hamburger…their three-year-old
dies?”445

Pre-processed foods, however, are undeniably industryÂ’s
responsibility. Eggs used in processed food products are pasteurized
first to ensure safety. Because the use of eggs is so widespread in
the processed food industry (about one-third of the eggs Americans
consume are eaten in products),446 USDA researchers recently studied
standard industry pasteurization protocols to make certain that no
bird flu virus was left alive. Although they found that pasteurization
did kill the virus in liquid eggs (used in products like Egg
Beaters®), the standard method used to pasteurize dried egg
products—which are ubiquitously found in the processed food and baking
industries—was not effective in eliminating the deadliest bird flu
viruses. The USDA researchers showed that while the industry standard
“low temperature pasteurization protocol”—a week at 130°F—killed the
low-grade bird flu viruses naturally adapted to wintering in ice-cold
Canadian lakes, the high-grade bird flu viruses like H5N1 adapted to
land-based domestic poultry survived more than two weeks at that
temperature. The length of time required to kill the virus, about 15
days, was considered inconsistent with “commercial application.”447

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