[macNchz]

> People in the US also think they need to refrigerate eggs.

Eggs in the US are washed (by law) before sale, which removes their natural protective coating, therefore requiring they be refrigerated. In other places eggs are sold unwashed and can be left out.

[lettergram]

Take a step back and think about what you just said...

"Washing them, removes the protective coating, requiring refrigeration"

Right, so why do they require refrigeration, if they are sanitized?

Further, if they're not sanitized, you can leave them out? What exactly is that protective coating and how does it somehow make the eggs less safe to sanitize them?

https://tellus.ars.usda.gov/stories/articles/how-we-store-ou...

US eggs are fine to leave out, they just lose some moisture. That's also true of the ones which are unwashed btw, but washed eggs degrade faster. Both unwashed and washed are better refrigerated.

[RoyalHenOil]

This study was focused on the US egg export market, so they were looking at moisture loss, which affects how "fresh" an egg looks and tastes, but they did not look at the rate that eggs go bad. Egg exporters don't sell rotten eggs -- that's the consumer's problem -- so that fell outside the scope of the study.

The theory is that sanitizing process makes the shell more permeable, which makes it easier for random bacteria in the environment to infect the egg; thus it risks going rotten faster. Refrigeration slows down the growth of these microbes, thus counteracting the increase in permability.

[macNchz]

As I understand it, washing reduces the presence of salmonella on the outside of the egg (which is less of a concern in Europe where vaccination against it is more common). It’s a tradeoff though, as it makes the egg more permeable and therefore susceptible to other spoilage microbes, since the eggs don’t stay in a sterile environment after being washed.