Things that creep me out about Australia

[pentapus]

1. Australian Grocery stores don't refrigerate their eggs.

It's like-- wow, that is a bunch of shelves next to the flour that are full of eggs! Clearly, this must be a credible practice because there they are, but --- all American ex-pats in a 200km radius have just contracted psychosomatic salmonella, is all I'm saying.

Uh, no, I have not been in Australia for -- 1, 2? -- 4 months now. But I bought eggs, just now! Chilled eggs.

Comments

[ratcreature]

Stores in Germany don't chill their eggs either. Why would they? Fresh eggs don't need refrigeration. But I've been told that once you start cooling them (say put them in your own fridge), you should not keep them at room temperature again, so it makes sense for supermarkets not to start a cooling chain for eggs if it problematic to interrupt it, because then they'd need cooling throughout which costs effort and energy. Here the eggs come with two dates. One use-by date, and one date a couple of days earlier saying when you ought to start refrigeration which I don't think has much to do with bacteria as simply delaying the egg going bad. But they are sold long before that. People still don't die in scores of salmonella. (which is actually more surprising considering that bakeries sell sandwiches with raw minced pig meat, and these are kept in unrefrigerated displays more often than not from what I've seen)