Egg salmonella scare has little impact in Valley
Go ahead, eat that egg. Just make sure it’s cooked first.
So says Morgan Farnell, extension program leader for poultry and assistant professor of poultry science at Texas A&M University.
“Even if an egg does have salmonella, the chances of it making you sick are pretty slim if you’re cooking it,” he says. “If you’re eating it raw, I think that’s a mistake.”
It’s probably also a good idea to check your eggs’ bona fides against the recall list posted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration at www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/.
On Aug. 13 Wright County Egg company issued a voluntary recall on eggs from its facility in Galt, Iowa. Half a billion eggs have been recalled and 1,500 people reported sickened nationwide by Salmonella enteritidis from the contaminated eggs.
Christine Mann, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said Wright County eggs did make it into Texas.
“The companies that are involved in the egg recall are very large producers of eggs, so we know there are eggs in Texas from the recall,” she said. “It is a nationwide recall.”
Mann said DSHS has recorded 175 reports of Salmonella enteritidis from 41 of Texas’ 254 counties since mid-May — a fourfold increase compared to normal.
“That pretty much mirrors the nation, the increase of illnesses we’ve seen in other states,” she said. “It’s probably reasonable to assume that some of these illnesses are associated
with the egg recall, but we don’t have a definitive link.”
Cameron and Hidalgo counties accounted for exactly two of the Salmonella enteritidis cases recorded in the state. H-E-B, the state’s largest grocery chain, says none of its egg brands were affected by the recall. No Texas egg producer — and Texas is the nation’s sixth largest producer of eggs — has been implicated in the salmonella outbreak, according to DSHS. Mann guesses that “the worst is behind us at this point.”
It takes time to make such a link: First an ill patient goes to the doctor, the doctor tests for salmonella and, if found, samples of the bacteria are sent to DSHS. There it’s “mapped” to discover the strain. If it turns out to be Salmonella enteritidis, epidemiologists take to the field to interview those who got sick and try to trace the source of the bad egg — restaurant, grocery store, whatever.
“I don’t anticipate us getting results anytime soon,” Mann said.
Farnell thinks the news media “has done a lot to kind of overstate the danger” of the eggs, whose recall comes on the heels of salmonella-related recalls of spinach, tomatoes and peanut butter in recent years.
“You see a lot of stuff in the news, and the public is under impression that (agricultural production) is running amok,” Farnell said. “That is just simply not true. There are so many regulations in place right now in the poultry industry it would make your head spin.”
FDA investigators at Wright County and other egg producers involved in the recall have turned up violations of many of those regulations, pointing to lax enforcement. The public, meanwhile, shouldn’t assume their food is sterile, Farnell said.
“If you’ve ever cleaned a deer or a hog or anything like that, you know it’s kind of a messy business,” he said. “Food products from animals should always be properly cooked. I think that’s the message we should be sending.”
