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Bob Terwilliger[_1_] Bob Terwilliger[_1_] is offline
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Default Left the eggs in the car

J. Clarke wrote:

>> Well, chickens are obviously not affected by salmonella the way people
>> are.

>
> So you're saying that something that is harmless to a chicken embryo is
> dangerous to an adult human? Try again.
>
> (a) Most eggs do not contain salmonella. There is one rare strain that
> can infect an intact egg, but only if the parent chicken's ovaries are
> infected. It is estimated that one in 20,000 eggs are so affected.
>
> (b) Egg white contains several mechanisms that inhibit bacterial growth--a
> reasonably fresh egg, even if infected, is resistant to bacterial growth.
>
> (c) In any case, cooking an egg will kill all salmonella present in the
> egg.
>
> (d) Unlike botulism, which does not affect intact eggs, salmonella leaves
> no residual toxins--salmonella only makes you sick if you get a pretty
> good dose of the live bacteria.
>
> (e) If you're really that worried about it, put all your eggs in a 145
> degree water bath, stick a thermometer into one of them and when it's read
> over 140 for three minutes you've got pasteurized eggs.
>
> Of course if you have AIDS or some other immune system deficiency you need
> to be more careful--in that case you probably shouldn't be buying any eggs
> that aren't factory-pasteurized to begin with.


None of those points actually challenged what I wrote. I didn't say anything
about the health of a chicken embryo. I didn't say anything about methods of
killing the salmonella bacterium. I didn't say anything about the prevalence
of salmonella in the chicken population.

The CHICKEN WHICH LAID THE SALMONELLA-INFECTED EGG was obviously infected
with salmonella. Chickens (along with turtles, iguanas, and doubtless
numerous other species) routinely carry around salmonella with no apparent
ill effects. That's what I wrote, and what you failed to address. Try again.

Bob