Keeping Safe Eggs Safe
By Janet Hackert, Regional Nutrition and Health Education Specialist

Eggs are an easy-to-prepare high-protein food. Whether they are colored for Easter eggs or used for a light evening meal after a big Sunday dinner, keeping them safe is essential.

Manufacturers are not required to put an expiration or sell-by date on egg cartons but a smart consumer can still know if eggs are safe to use or not. Instead of an expiration date, egg cartons must show when the eggs were packed. So, for example, the carton may have “P 1692 070 SELL BY Apr 8” on it. The last 3 digits of the first number indicate the pack date, using the Julian calendar. In the Julian dating system, the number represents the consecutive days of the year. January 1st would be written as 001, and December 31st would be 365 (or 366 in a leap year). So this carton was packed on day number 070, or March 11th. The American Egg Board says that fresh shell eggs can be stored in their cartons in the refrigerator for 4 to 5 weeks beyond the pack date without significant quality loss. So these eggs would be good until April 8th or even as long as April 15th.

Manufacturers often do put a sell-by or expiration date to indicate when grocers should pull the product from the shelf if not yet sold. To carry a USDA grademark, this date must be no more than 30 days after the packing date. This means that eggs should be used within a week of the date on the carton. In this example, the date is April 8. That is 4 weeks after the packing date; so again, these should be used by April 15th at the latest.

Knowing that eggs are safe is the first step. Keeping them safe is the second.

• Be sure to keep eggs refrigerated to prolong their safe use.
  If real eggs are to be used for Easter festivities, color them and keep refrigerated; even hard-cooked eggs should not be out of the refrigerator for more than a total of two hours.
   
• If there is going to be an egg hunt, use plastic eggs that won’t spoil out of the fridge.
   
• Don’t eat uncooked or undercooked eggs, whether a runny fried egg or raw cookie dough. Salmonella continues to be a danger that can be avoided by cooking eggs thoroughly.
   

For more information, contact Janet Hackert at 660-425-6434 or go to http://www.aeb.org/

Last Updated 03/30/2007