Your Farmers’ Market Eggs Are More Likely To Make You Sick

Maybe you buy eggs from the local farmer at your neighborhood market because you like the idea of eggs from truly free-range chickens. Or maybe you're an urban farmer and keep a backyard coop of your own to be able to brag about having the freshest omelettes in the neighborhood. Whatever the reason you choose to get your eggs from some place other than the grocery store, know that eggs from small producers aren't going to spare you from some of the bird-borne diseases people associate with factory farming.

A new study from Penn State University found that eggs from small flocks are actually more likely to give you a case of Salmonella enteritidis than mass-produced eggs. While flocks of egg-laying chickens bigger than 3,000 birds must follow the FDA's Egg Safety Final Rule and take extensive precautions to prevent salmonella, smaller flocks are under no such mandate.

When Penn State researchers purchased eggs from 240 farmers' markets and roadside stands across Pennsylvania over the course of six months last year, they found that eggs from five sellers contained salmonella. That might not seem like a lot, but it's a greater risk than picking up a dozen from the store.

"We're not saying large flocks are better and small flocks are bad," Eva Wallner-Pendleton, a senior research associate at Penn State and co-author of the study, told MUNCHIES. "We just wanted people to understand just because you buy eggs from your neighbor and the chickens are out in the pasture, you can't assume they are free of this bacteria."

Even in the idyllic countryside, there are rodents, and rodents can carry salmonella. Other times, people buy their birds from a hatchery where salmonella was already present. As consumers increasingly prefer to buy food locally and restaurants work directly with small farmers to source their ingredients, more people may come into contact with eggs containing salmonella.

Regardless of how salmonella makes its way into a flock, the tools are there for small flock owners to handle salmonella—frequent cleanings and vaccines and, if needed, pasteurization. (In a separate but similar incident, the Centers for Disease Control reported an outbreak of salmonella amongst backyard chicken coop owners who treat their poultry like pets, allowing their chickens into their homes, petting them, and failing to adequately wash up after handling their birds or objects in their living environment.)

"The hope of this article was to give people with small flocks the tools to produce as safe a product as possible," Wallner-Pendleton said. She says that to ultimately avoid getting sick, wash your hands well and cook your eggs thoroughly. In the end, the risk is still fairly small.

"We don't want to be the food police," Wallner-Pendleton said. "If you really want to get sick, just go to your doctor's office when everybody's got the flu."