Forum: cooking.stackexchange.com
Tags: <food-safety><eggs>
Title: Is it safe to eat raw eggs?
Question: I have a friend that is training for a marathon and he  drinks  6 raw eggs before running (Yes, like Rocky) - is this safe?

Answers:
sents: text: Food safety experts and government organizations target their recommendations to what's safest for everyone, and would recommend against this.
text: However, "safe" is a subjective term.
text: It's all about managing risk levels.
text: The odds of a given egg containing salmonella or other food-borne illness are pretty low.
text: A healthy adult with a normal immune system can probably fend off any nasties, or at least recover from illness.
text: The source of the eggs has an effect on the risk levels as well, I believe.
text: Organic free-range eggs are probably less risky than supermarket brands.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/770/mjobrien
score: 20
sents: text: Bearing in mind the salmonella statistics given above.
text: , yes it is safe to eat raw eggs so long as you are not very young, very old, or immunocompromised in some way--e.g. HIV, chemotherapy, leukemia, etc.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/None/
score: 14
sents: text: I'd say it's as safe as eating any other food generally consumed rare or raw (beef, fish, oysters).
text: It's certainly edible.
text: I use raw egg whites in many things, but I buy them in bulk, ultra-pasteurized.
text: I also prefer my eggs very runny.
text: Yes there's an increased probability of food-borne illnesses but so does a rare steak or a medium hamburger.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/60/hobodave
score: 4
sents: text: If you're worried, you can dip the eggs into boiling water for, say, 10 seconds to sterilise the outside of the shell.
text: As Robert Cartaino points out above, though, there might still be bacteria inside.
text: FWIW
text: I've made mayonnaise many times without any ill effects.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/227/Aant
score: 4
sents: text: It is relativly safe as long as you pay attention to some points: Eggs should be as fresh as possible, so a possible salmonella contamination has no time to spread.
text: Also organic or free range eggs should be preferred.
text: In some egg-producing farms using battery cages up to 30% of the chickens are contaminated with salmonella and so the eggs.
text: Although other people here mention the improbability to get salmonella from eggs
text: it is still possible.
text: I myself got them from scrambled eggs hat
text: I had not cooked properly
text: (I think the eggs were about a week old, stored in the fridge and free range).
text: I had the worst diarrhea in my life, fever up to 41°C/106°F and was in hospital for a week (read: not fun).
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/736/Diskoking
score: 3
sents: text: In the UK it is safe from a salmonella standpoint (assuming the eggs are lion branded).
text: The lion branch mark (applied to each individual egg) means that the chickens they come from are salmonella free
text: (I assume they have been fed the antibiotic or anti viral or whatever it is) I agree with the others that other things will have a bearing - age of egg in particular
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/2010/NBenatar
score: 2
sents: text: There are pasteurized raw eggs that are safe to eat.
text: One brand is http://www.safeeggs.com/ Or egg beaters
text: I think
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/17449/rosethornne
score: 0

Summary of the answers:
The risk from raw eggs is low as long as they are fresh and safe from salmonella (lion branded in the UK), and they are not served to very young, old or immunocompromised persons.
A pasteurised egg is safe to eat raw for everyone except the very young and elderly.