According to a Ministry of Agriculture report quoted in the daily Yisrael Hayom newspaper, an alarming 30% of the eggs in Israel are infected with salmonella.
This is based on an inspection carried out by the ministry between June 2017 and April 2018, which documented 10% of the chicken’s laying eggs are infected. These birds were destroyed as a result. An additional 4.4% of the chickens were determined to have an even more worrisome infection, a potentially life-threatening strain of salmonella.
For comparison’s sake, in Europe, the salmonella ranges from 1%-to-10% in eggs, significantly lower than in Israel. In 2016, the ministry reports 3,198 persons were diagnosed with salmonella.
These harsh realities have prompted a five-year plan, which is in place to improve hygienic conditions in coops, a plan that will cost NIS 340 million. This would bring the Israeli coops up the European standard, but the owners and the coops, who raise the chickens, refuse to accept the plan. They feel they should receive more money from the government and for now, they refuse to sign agreements to cooperate with the five-year plan.
In a most discomforting report, the Director-General of the Ministry of Health told Yisrael Hayom that knowing what he does, he doesn’t eat eggs in Israel.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
6 Responses
Blaming salmonella bacteria on the chicken coops is only part of the problem. The Government Ministry of Health has to institute proper measures of refrigeration of eggs from time of packing until sale in markets. The general public has to learn to refrigerate their eggs at home as well. This problem is ongoing for many years.
This is terrible!!!!!!
It’s particularly disconcerting because the price of eggs in Israel is significantly higher tuan in NJ. They pay a shekel per egg; that’s the equivalent of nearly $3 per dozen!
Egg quality assurance programs have been a best practices model here in the US for decades. When eggs are typically recalled due to salmonella it is typically found that the growers have not been applying EQAP standards.
NB Risk from salmonella is mainly in raw or soft-boiled eggs.
One can buy (or make) pasteurised egg for use in ice-cream/mayonnaise etc
Yes a great percentage of the eggs contain Salmonella. Proper food preparation that includes cooking all egg products, no raw egg muse or raw egg mayonnaise, washing with soap and water all utensils coming into contact with uncooked eggs (cups used to check for blood spots, silverware, etc) will vastly lower the chances of Salmonella from eggs. To report 3000 cases Salmonellosis in Israel without mentioning sources other than eggs is uninformed journalism. That the director of the Min of Health declares he does not eat eggs in Israel shows he is a jerk because properly prepared eggs are safe and his words can ruin a vital industry employing many farmers especially on the northern border