Ensuring food safety in eggs

It is estimated that there are around 5 billion laying hens worldwide, the greatest number being in China with around 1 billion hens, while the European Union keeps around 290 million hens, making almost one laying hen per person in the world. The average number of eggs consumed per person is 215 eggs per year.

Current legislation in Europe does not allow any treatment on human consumption eggs except from ultraviolet sanitation. Most of the egg producers and packers do not include this technology because its low sanitation rate and high maintenance costs. The egg industry is now facing big challenges since the directive 1999/74 from the in which the hen welfare has been increased, leading to higher costs for the egg industry.

Objectives

The objective of this project is to develop a low cost, secure and fast UV system in combination with hot air to sterilise eggs. The proposed technology provides the following advantages:

• OVOSHINE system will not increase the temperature of the egg above 45ºC.
• The eggshell will be illuminated by high energetic UV photons that will eliminate the bacteria.
• No chemical products will be used, thus eliminating egg contamination.
• A continuous sterilisation system will be used, to be inserted in the production or packing line, facilitating the installation in existing modern production lines.
• The disinfection process is both fast and of low cost, amounting to a very small contribution to the total egg cost.
• The sanitation rate of the system will be 10,000 eggs per hour
• The sanitation cost per egg will be below 0.001 €

Market

EU-27 production of 6.89 million tonnes of in 2010 is led by France, Italy and Spain.There are three main egg markets, where each market has its own needs:

• Table eggs
• Egg products
• Hatching eggs

For table egg producer that will acquire the OVOSHINE system, the economic impact of using this new technology will be very low, in terms of costs. Furthermore, due to the use of this technology, consumers will be more willing to buy eggs and the eggs can be sold at higher prices, as premium eggs, since they have been sterilised.

The egg product industry can reach a reduction of sterilisation costs by using the OVOSHINE. This will imply a reduction of costs.

Finally, for the hatch egg producers the scenario will be also favourable if they used the OVOSHINE system and it is expected greater production with the application of the OVOSHINE technology.