Sometimes local people might , ahem, bypass rules made for big producers to keep the masses safe.
Making friends with the vendors at your local farmers market can lead to getting really good, really fresh food, the kind that BigAg doesn’t want us eating.
It doesn’t damage the surface. It removes the outer coating that keeps the eggs sealed and contamination free. But it also takes off all the shit that carries contaminants like salmonella. You guys inoculate your chickens against salmonella so mass market eggs don’t need to be washed to mitigate the increased risk of large outbreaks that comes with selling 10 million eggs a month.
But it doesn’t really do anything to the egg itself. Quality and shelf life are the same. The egg is just permeable to bacteria. At room temp that bacteria can breed to levels where it can cause spoilage or make you sick. So the eggs go in the fridge to keep that bacteria from doing so. Your trading a very big chance that there’s a shit ton of salmonella on the exterior of the egg, for the much lower chance that some might contaminate the interior (and it is a crazy low chance).
I’m pretty sure they’re exempt. I mean that’s a guess. But no farm stand near here sells washed eggs. Not one. And it isn’t as if regulators are absent here. Shits getting inspected, and I hear all the time about how so and so was fined for pulling carrots out of the dirt. Then laying them on the dirt instead of a sanitized stainless steal table. Despite the fact that the carrots were still covered in that same dirt.
The egg washing is about reducing risk from mass production. More eggs means more chances of contaminated eggs and more people buying from a contaminated batch means any outbreaks are potentially larger. Smaller operations just don’t have those same risks. And they’re a little more capable of doing things like inoculating their flock and what have that they aren’t required to do but are a good idea.
But yeah a lot of the local eggs out here are definitely people selling eggs from their backyard chickens on the down low too. Black market eggs are best eggs.
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It is cheating, but it works well 
The outer coating is the surface.
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