[a farmer is talking in front of an angry crowd, pitchforks and all] I use the worst pesticides on my crops, raise animals in cramped conditions, take their babies away for slaughter, and have little respect for the environment
[the same farmer is talking in front of a now happy crowd, hearts and all] I’m a small local independent farmer though
I live in California in the United States, and I’ve never heard of washing hands after touching regular supermarket eggs.
After a little googling, why this is so: California state law requires state-registered egg producers, i.e. any commercial size operation, whether they’re in-state, or out-of-state, to perform treatment, such as pasteurization and vaccination of laying hens against Salmonella.
“Repacked eggs” i.e. eggs in a typical supermarket egg container must be “clean” which has a specific legal definition which pretty much means washed and, under USDA rules, sanitized.
In Europe, things are obviously different, and may be different in each country/province/city.
This state law only applies to commercial egg producers. Obviously if I were to handle eggs from backyard chickens, I would have to wash and sanitize the eggs and my hands.
TIL!
In EU (Spain) you don’t touch eggs in the supermarket, they are in the carton box and you pick the 6 or 10 pack, usually.
You just take 2-3, wash them with a bit of water, fry them, then wash you hands when you finish cooking as you should anyway.
That easy.
Same thing here in Denmark though we refrigerate our eggs for no apparent reason.