Chiang Mai: Salmonella Strain Might Reinfect Kids

[Hugh Jarse]

Cooking them thoroughly will kill the bacteria? I more or less burn my eggs when I cook them. Never had any problems.

And they must taste foul!

[barefoot1988]

can anyone summarize it in layman terms?

i get my eggs from either tanin market or tops. freshly fried sunny side up or hard boiled eggs are my daily breakfast, any advise? should i stop?

[thai4me]

Can this strain be eradicated by boiling?

[theanimaster]

I think you have missed the main point by miles. Eggs are usually treated/sprayed with iodine once they are laid. This is to prevent any bacterial growth on the shell which soon migrates through the porous exterior into the inner mass where it rapidly reproduces. The form of Salmonella here is drug resistant so one assumes that it is resistant to the iodine as well, which means that it is getting through into the eggs. Refrigeration does not kill Salmonella it just slows its growth rate. The transportation methods in Thailand are surely not the cause, it is the preventative strategy at the producer that isn't working. Let's hope they forgot to spray 300 of the 10,000 eggs eh? otherwise there could well be a much bigger problem lurking...

About the most common misconception of samomellosis, is people thinking that the bacteria was on the outside of the egg.

In fact, though this was true a century ago, this form of food poisoning is actually extremely rare.

Today, 99%+ of commercial eggs that are contaminated with salmonella are contaminated "within" (=inside) the egg.

The bacteria does not migrate from the outside to the inside, it is introduced at conception and during the formation of the egg--it is not a fecal transfer--it is simply a bacteria commensal (normal) and harmless to the chicken. Some chickens have commensal salmonella, but ones that do will produce eggs, some of which have salmonella within the eggs. Egg laying chickens should not have commensal salmonella.

Salmonella is a commensal bacteria common to birds. The bacteria can exist and does not make the bird ill. But a chicken that has salmonella can produce eggs with salmonella inside the egg. Eating an undercooked egg with such bacteria then infects the human eating it.

To give you an idea of how seriously ANY salmonella found in chickens can be taken by breeders I'll use Hubbard Farms of Walpole, NH, USA as an example. Hubbard is one of the world's leading breeder of specific egg-layer chicks, and they ship world-wide.

Every day, one piece of straw from every hen's nest is taken. Each piece of straw is used to innoculate a petri dish with proper media. If one single colony of salmonella emerges, even just one single colony, from one single chicken in a house that holds many thousands of hens--every single chicken in that house is destroyed. The house is then cleaned, fumigated, and new, salmonella free chickens are started. This is how seriously Hubbard takes ANY salmonella in their chickens. Though birds often are commensalized with salmonella, it is essential that the chickens who produce eggs for human consumption have NO salmonella.

I hope that this was traced back to the producer, and that the commensalized chickens have been destroyed--if not, then this will occur again.

If you doubt that most salmonellosis is caused from within eggs, not on the outside, seach "salmonella inside eggs."

I wish I could press the "like" button on this more. VERY informative post. That explains everything -- Thais just love money too much to bother.

[cowslip]

...don't know how many times I had the sh**s here in Thailand from eggs......it's the storage / transport and handling that is wrong spoiling the eggs......

ever seen an 'egg pick-up truck' on the motorway driving around in the blazing sun with eggs on the back??????

recipe for disaster !!!

you might want to explain how you think it is "wrong".

Are you being a smart ass or are you just plain stupid.

Now read the other posts by those who DO know.

As for your claim to "getting the shits" from eggs - I'd love to hear your theory on that too.

[thaimat]

You can expect to see much more of this type of thing based on drug resistant and methicillin resistant varieties of bacteria and viruses that are being created and incubated in the factory farms throughout the developing worlds & the USA (EU & Aust have banned it), as they are still using the nasty old habits taught by the greedy western farming corps of old by feeding antibiotics to their animals sub-therapeutically in their feeds. Still today more than 70% of all production of antibiotics (by volume) is created for animal feeds. The drug resistant bacteria are grown and incubated in the intensively farmed animals and surely then find their way to you & children.

Margaret Chan (head of the WHO) made the statement a few months back, that "The age of safe medicine is ending" based primarily on the above-mentioned facts. See here for one report on that: http://www.independe...ng-7574579.html

This is not a Thailand or Asian problem, this is a human vs 'What the flock do we do now' problem; and it is a problem of our own making.

According to the US FDA, dangerous bacteria like Salmonella and E.Coli can stay alive in properly composted animal wastes outside the animal for up to two years. So when big chicken farms, for example, are not kept close to antiseptically clean, contamination on the outside of eggs is so likely, a separate issue from Salmonella inside the egg. I don't see very much proper composting here, animal wastes are spread fairly fresh over vegetable growing areas, which means that the likelihood of consuming a vegetable or herb that has these dangerous bacteria on them is fairly high.

Edited July 18, 2012 by thaimat