The short answer is because the EU banned them.
The long answer is because they have a drastically increased chance of making you severely ill.
In Europe, eggs are not refrigerated, and when you buy them you can see that they are slightly shiny.
In the US, eggs are refrigerated, and they are matt (and always seem to be perfectly white, though that’s a separate thing).
The reason US eggs are refrigerated and matt is because they go through a chemical and mechanical cleaning process before they hit the shelves. European eggs will sometime have a feather or piece of straw stuck to them, but Americans think that’s gross so American supermarkets insist the eggs are cleaned.
As if to prove my point, I got these this week from the supermarket.
The problem is that the shiny surface I mentioned is a natural varnish which stops bacteria from penetrating the egg shell. Remember that eggs sit in the warm underneath their mother for weeks- they’d need to evolve a method of ensuring the egg can’t be infected. The varnish is that method.
Leave the varnish on and an egg can remain fresh for around a month without being refrigerated. But when you wash the eggs, you scrub the varnish off. Now bacteria can penetrate the shell, so now the eggs have to be refrigerated, otherwise they go bad.
The journey from the US to the EU is long, with plenty of opportunities to break the refrigeration chain, and the second that chain is broken the consumer is in danger. Just because the egg is refrigerated when you buy it doesn’t mean it’s been refrigerated every second all the way from the producer.
In the EU, it’s illegal to scrub eggs in a manner that removes the cuticle (the varnish). It’s also a legal requirement in many EU countries, and standard practice in even more, that chickens be vaccinated against salmonella, which is not required or widely done in the US.
So the EU banned them. Quite sensibly, in my opinion. I’d rather have straw on my eggs than food poisoning.
Thanks for reading...