CONSUMERS could be eating unhealthy eggs without realising, the Cyprus Consumers Association warned yesterday.
The General Manager of the Association, Dinos Ioannou, confirmed he had received “reliable insider information” that incubated eggs were being illegally sold at very cheap prices to a number of industries in the market.
“We know that these eggs are not suitable for human consumption because of the procedure they go through,” he said.
These eggs are never supposed to reach the market and are incubated to hatch into chicks, not to be served up as tomorrow’s omelette, he said.
“Before being put into the incubators, the eggs are disinfected with chemicals and washed. But this procedure allows disinfectants to enter into the eggs’ yolk, because the shells are porous. Once in the incubators, they are exposed to high temperatures for 21 days until they hatch. Sometimes, however, eggs are removed after only seven or 10 days and subjected to a screening test by shining a light at them. By doing this, they can see whether or not a chick has started forming.”
Those that were forming a chick were replaced into the incubators, and the ones that were not suitable for hatching might end up being sold to confectionaries, bakeries, and hotels, he warned.
“We cannot guarantee that they are not sold to hypermarkets as well. However, there is a law that states all farms must be licensed to produce eggs, and each one has to be marked in terms of size (small, medium, large),” Ioannou said. But, he added, who could certify that in a pack of a dozen eggs, two incubated ones weren’t added?
But the highest risk was of eggs arriving on consumers’ plates via unsuspecting means such as manufactured cakes and biscuits, he said.
The heating process means these eggs are no longer fresh, and that their make-up has been altered, which can in no means be healthy, Ioannou explained.
And Nicosia Gastroenterologist Dr. Christodoulos Kythreotis confirmed that if incubated eggs were spoiled and someone ate them, he or she could suffer from gastroenteritis, acute diarrhoea and vomiting, or even salmonella.
“Eggs should be kept in the fridge and not in warm conditions,” he said.
But the government’s Head of Health Services, Sophoclis Anthousis, told the Cyprus Mail there was no way anyone could come close to eating such an egg, because of the pungent, acrid odour it released when broken.
“In my experience, these eggs smell, and although the reports of their presence on the market are totally unfounded, if they were to be bought by a confectioner, there is no way it would be used because of its foul smell, which would ruin the cake,” he said.
However, Kythreotis disagreed, saying the bad odour was not always detectable: if you break an egg over the frying pan, the smell might be disguised.
And the Consumers’ Association is baffled at how the problem might even have arisen.
“I don’t know how this could have escaped the authorities’ attention,” Ioannou said.
“We have made this announcement to raise interest in the matter so that the relevant authorities involved in producing and selling eggs can take certain steps to see that this procedure is stopped.”
He said measures should be taken to protect consumers who have no control over what ended up in their shopping baskets.
“The authorities should take strict measures and penalise people heavily, and someone should exercise stricter controls over the production of eggs,” Ioannou said.
But the Health Ministry’s Anthousis said there was no cause for alarm, and that to the best of his knowledge the whole affair was unsubstantiated.
“No-one has ever even eaten an incubated egg,” he said, insisting that the Agriculture Minsitry was already looking into the matter, and that the Health Ministry would intervene if the case were proved.
The Director of the Agriculture Department, Antonis Constantinou, added yesterday there was no proof to support the allegations, and that the charges had been made informally.
“If we do find responsible parties, they are instantly penalised,” he said.
All complaints and suspicions were investigated, insisted Constantinou. But in this case, they did not find any tangible proof, he said.
He said that if someone had a complaint it should go the Ministry first, so that officials could investigate the matter before the farm responsible had a chance to cover its trail.
“After all this media attention, a lawbreaking egg farmer is hardly going to continue breaking the law, is he?” He added that unless someone came forward with documented evidence, the Ministry could not do anything, since hearsay did not stand up in court.
Kyriacos Charalambous at the Agriculture Ministry added that first time offenders for such crimes faced a £2,000 fine and second offenders faced four to six months in prison.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
