egg safety
The British Lion mark shows that eggs have been produced to the highest standards of food safety.
If you use British Lion eggs and follow the normal, simple hygiene rules you would with any fresh food, this will help you maintain the highest food safety standards.
At the time of the salmonella and eggs scare in 1988, the Department of Health recommended that recipes for uncooked dishes involved the use of raw eggs should be avoided, and that lightly cooked eggs should not be served to vulnerable groups – ie infants, pregnant women, elderly and debilitated people.
This advice, however, pre-dates the introduction of the British Lion food safety scheme in 1998. Since then salmonella has been virtually eliminated from British Lion eggs.
Eliminating salmonella from British eggs
Since its introduction in 1998, the Lion mark has been extremely successful in effectively eliminating salmonella in British eggs. In 2001 a Government committee (the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food) produced a report highlighting the effectiveness of poultry vaccination in reducing human salmonella cases by more than half.
Reports from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) (view the report here) and the Health Protection Agency (HPA) published in 2004 praised the British egg industry for the huge decline in salmonella associated with eggs.
However, an FSA survey of imported eggs on sale in the UK, published in 2006, found egg shell and/or contents contamination in one in 30 boxes of six eggs sampled. HPA tests on imported eggs in 2004 found nearly 7% tested positive for salmonella. In the same HPA investigation, salmonella was not recovered from any British Lion eggs.
The status of UK egg production as among the safest in the world was confirmed in a report published by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in 2007.
The EFSA report analysed the results of an EU-wide survey which sampled and tested the environment on egg layer flock holdings. Several countries reported levels of salmonella of public health significance on their flock holdings of more than 50%, while the UK figure was only 8%. 2009 figures have shown that, in the UK, salmonella of public health significance on laying flocks has since fallen to 0.35%.
In addition, British Lion Quality egg producers vaccinate their hens against salmonella and, in the analysis of the UK results within the EU survey, vaccination was also shown to reduce the prevalence of salmonella on holdings.
For technical information on salmonella click here.
Egg handling guidelines
- Eggs should be kept at a constant temperature below 20ºC to prevent deterioration in yolk membrane permeability and minimise growth of any micro-organisms that may be present.
- Eggs should be stored separately from other foods, preferably in the egg box. Eggs should be brought to room temperature before cooking.
- At room temperature homogenised egg provides an ideal medium for the growth of micro-organisms and it is therefore essential to avoid any risk of cross-contamination.
- Cooked egg dishes should be eaten as soon as possible after cooking and, if not for immediate use, should be stored in the refrigerator.
- Hands should always be washed before and after handling shell eggs. Cracked or dirty eggs should not be used.
For more information on egg handling click here.