Egg safety

There are food safety risks when handling and using eggs in your business.

Eggs may contain pathogenic bacteria including salmonella, which can cause an infection.

It can make people sick for up to a week with symptoms such as diarrhoea, abdominal pain, fever, nausea, vomiting and headaches.

It’s important that eggs are thoroughly cooked to ensure any present bacteria is killed.

Receiving and storing raw eggs

When receiving eggs:

• Only accept eggs that are clean as dirty eggs may have chicken faeces on them, which could contain salmonella bacteria.
• Only accept eggs that don’t have visible cracks on them. Cracks may allow salmonella bacteria to enter the egg. It may not be possible to see micro cracks in eggshells.
• Ensure that eggs are stamped and come in clean packaging with a batch supply number, the supplier’s name, and address, and are date marked.
• Food businesses are encouraged to only use commercially supplied eggs as they may have additional processing controls including the use of specialised equipment to remove faeces from the shell; they may also be ‘candled’ to check for cracks.

When storing whole raw eggs:

• Regularly check date markings and discard any eggs that are beyond their best-before dates.
• Store whole eggs in the refrigerator or cool room under temperature control (5°C or less).
• Store eggs separately from ready-to-eat food.

Processing eggs

It’s important that raw egg does not contaminate any ready-to-eat products.

Poor food handling can result in cross-contamination of food. Examples of this include when ready to eat food encounters contaminated kitchen utensils such as knives or cutting boards, or when bacteria is transferred on the hands of a food handler.

Contaminated cleaning cloths and tea towels can also cause cross-contamination.

For example, when a cloth is used to wipe up raw egg and is then used on surfaces where ready to eat food is prepared.

To meet food safety requirements and to avoid cross contamination, your business should do the following:

Equipment and utensils

• All equipment and utensils should be well maintained and able to be easily cleaned and sanitised.
• Mechanical equipment, such as blenders and food processors, must be able to be easily taken apart for cleaning and sanitising. Because if they cannot be taken apart, equipment like stick blenders may not be appropriate for processing eggs as they cannot be cleaned and sanitised effectively.
• Your business may need to use separate equipment for processing eggs and raw egg products.
• Ensure that utensils, equipment, benches and food contact surfaces are cleaned and sanitised before and after handling raw eggs.

Personal hygiene

• To avoid cross-contamination, always wash and dry hands before and after handling raw eggs and raw egg products.
• Take all practical measures to avoid touching ready to eat food if you are handling raw eggs.

Handling eggs

• When breaking or separating eggs, minimise contact between the shell and contents of the egg. This helps to prevent the spread of any bacteria from the outside of the shell into the egg.
• Do not wash eggs. Egg shells become porous when wet, making it easier for bacteria to enter the egg.
• Use a clean and sanitised egg separator. Do not separate eggs with your bare hands or by using the shell.

Cooking eggs

• Eggs should be cooked until the yolk and white is firm. A runny yolk (such as poached eggs or eggs “sunny-side up”) may indicate that the egg has not been cooked sufficiently to kill salmonella.
• Scrambled eggs should be cooked in small batches until they are firm throughout.
• Boiled eggs, depending on their initial size and temperature, may require a minimum boiling period of 7 to 10 minutes to ensure that the yolk becomes firm.

Raw egg products

Foods that contain lightly cooked or raw eggs, known as raw egg products, have the potential to cause illness.

The following foods often contain raw or lightly cooked eggs:

• Sauces and dressings: mayonnaise, aioli, béarnaise and hollandaise sauces.
• Desserts: mousse, non-commercially produced ice-creams and gelato, deep fried ice-cream, unbaked cheesecakes, custard.
• Drinks: milkshakes with raw egg, some health food shakes, eggnog.

Risk factors for salmonella from raw egg products include:

• Combining raw eggs together, or combining raw egg products from different batches.
• Failure to clean and sanitise equipment and food contact surfaces.
• Lack of proper temperature control (storage above 5°C).
• Keeping raw egg products beyond their recommended storage life (maximum 24 hours) at refrigerated temperature.
• Entire batches of food can be contaminated by one egg. If a product like mayonnaise is contaminated, it is likely to affect many customers as the contaminated sauce or condiment can be used on many products throughout your business.

It’s strongly recommended that your business does not prepare or sell raw egg products. ACT food businesses have been prosecuted for selling unsafe food containing raw egg products.

Your legal responsibility

Food businesses must be aware that any food that contains raw eggs may be contaminated with bacteria and can pose a significant food safety risk.

If your business decides to prepare and sell raw egg products, you are choosing to accept the food safety risk and if the raw egg products cause food-borne illness, you may be prosecuted or pursued under civil proceedings.

We strongly encourage you to use safer, commercially available versions of raw egg food products as they have been heat treated or produced using pasteurised egg. We recommend you contact suppliers or manufacturers to ascertain whether a product contains raw eggs.

If your business continues to prepare your own egg products you should use commercially pasteurised eggs. Pasteurisation kills bacteria such as salmonella without changing the properties of the egg.

Food handling controls

If your food business decides to prepare raw egg containing foods that do not undergo a pathogen control step, the foods must be prepared in line with safe food handling practices to slow the growth of bacteria and minimise the risk of food-borne illness.

You should use ingredients such as lemon juice or vinegar to acidify raw egg dressings to a pH value below 4.2 to slow bacterial growth. You should check the pH with a pH meter or pH strips. Acidification does not make the food safe but may slow the growth of bacteria.

Storage and display

Raw egg products must be safely stored and displayed to prevent cross-contamination and slow the growth of bacteria. Some practical steps to achieve this include:

• Raw eggs products should be prepared, stored and displayed in the same container to prevent extra handling and cross-contamination to other food products or equipment and utensils.
• Use labels to ensure only fresh batches are used (labels should say ‘raw egg product’ and be dated).
• Do not top up or mix large batches of raw products.
• Store raw egg products in the refrigerator or cool room under temperature control (5°C or less).
• Ensure raw egg products are consumed within 24 hours of preparation, or discarded.

If any raw egg product is out of temperature control (above 5°C), then storage times and temperatures must be documented to demonstrate compliance with the 2-hour/4-hour rule.

This means that raw egg products that have been out of temperature control for less than 2 hours can be re-refrigerated for later use. This process is not recommended as best practice. Businesses are strongly advised to keep raw egg products in a refrigerator or cool room under temperature control (5°C or less).