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Comment by Kenji | Hacker News Reader

I love how, once again, the states are clueless, forcing companies to wash the eggs on one continent, and forcing them not to on the other continent. Another useless law, hampering the production of vital goods.

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That's not at all what I got from the article. I read it as saying basically that reasonable people can disagree about whether eggs should be washed and refrigerated, and there are good reasons for either position.

I would agree, I'm still puzzled tho, because vaccine works but is not used for economic reasons. So we Europeans, mostly don't vaccinate and don't refrigerate (let's forget the health care and say it's the cheapest), but in the US you're paying for an entire cold shipping infrastructure anyways, which doesn't strike me as "cheap".

> So we Europeans, mostly don't vaccinate

Likely varies across Europe. In the UK, 85% of eggs produced meet the Lion Mark standards, which includes mandatory Salmonella vaccination. Certainly appears effective:

> [T]he Food Standards Agency [...] in 2004 [...] tested more than 28,000 UK-produced eggs and no Salmonella was found inside any of them.

http://www.lioneggfarms.co.uk/information/british-lion-quali...

You need a cold chain anyways for all sorts of other foods, both here and in Europe. Meanwhile, washing eggs does reduce salmonella (salmonella in American eggs is practically nonexistent), and refrigerated eggs do keep longer.

The cold shipping infrastructure largely already exists, in this case its just one more SKU added to it.

What do you base that observation on? The article doesn't address whether washing + refrigeration is safer than leaving the membrane in-tact and not refrigerating. In fact, it hints at the exact opposite, saying Japan adopted the US method after a major salmonella outbreak. Who's right, or more importantly, does this even matter?

I did not read the article as I got fed up with playing the "chase the close box in this overlay" game. However, most egg vendors in Japan neither wash, nor refrigerate eggs. The main exception I can think of are the eggs at the convenience store. In my town, they even have vending machines for eggs that the local farmer fills up every 2 or 3 days. They are unrefrigerated and the eggs sit happily there are 35 degrees C in the summer.

I feels crappy not to have an absolute answer.

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