While we're busy getting sick from contaminated eggs, chickens in the UK are being vaccinated against salmonella to prevent the infection in the first place.
Eggs from vaccinated chickens bear a red lion stamp (pictured), and command a higher price. Almost a decade ago, the British government announced that the vaccination program had reduced food poisoning cases by a whopping 50%.
Why isn't this being done in the United States? I have yet to see a single article about the US egg recall mention that a poultry vaccination exists. The vaccination was approved for use in the United States by the USDA in 1998.
Considering most egg-laying chickens live only 18 months before slaughter, that's enough time for eight generations of hens to have been vaccinated. Salmonella could have been virtually wiped out in our national egg supply by now. So why hasn't it been? I did some research, but could find no answer to this question.
The vaccine is legally available in the US, but apparently no one carries it or uses it. I checked several catalogs geared towards both backyard and commercial egg production, and couldn't find a company selling doses of the vaccine.
The truth is that we in America have the worst food safety record in the developed world. Our rate of food-borne illness are tremendously higher than any other industrialized nation. It's a shame, even worse than our broken health care system. And the worst part is that somehow, the perpetrators of the illnesses have convinced us that it's all our fault.
In a "blame the victim" move, we are instructed to always cook eggs thoroughly, to rinse raw chicken before preparing it, to wash our vegetables in a decontamination soak before eating them. Cook your beef! Wash your hands! Don't touch! No rare meats!
It isn't our fault when we get sick. It's their fault. The massive corporations which run our contaminated food supply. Like the ones responsible for this outbreak. You couple a wretched record of food safety with an impressive nation-wide distribution and sales system, and you've got yourself a big problem.
I have a friend who is all about Freedom and Liberty and Lack of Government Interference. He believes with his entire heart that the invisible hand of the marketplace can solve all our problems. Well I tell you what, the invisible hand is what got us into this mess.
The "invisible hand" theory is that people will not buy eggs from a company that ships bad eggs. But how do you know which company shipped your eggs in the first place? This batch of contaminated eggs was sold under dozens of different labels.
Lack of transparency will always prevent the invisible hand from functioning as it should. In this case it was government agencies to the rescue, blowing the whistle on salmonella cases across the country and enforcing a recall of the bacteria-laden eggs.
Photo credit of UK egg bearing the salmonella vaccine stamp: Flickr/carmen_seaby