eli5: How is raw egg dangerous to eat (in America at least) but runny egg yolk is perfectly fine?
In: Biology
Sometime decades ago, salmonella was able to penetrate into the egg itself, as opposed to just being a problem with chicken meat. It’s still fairly rare for it to be in the egg itself, on the order of a few per hundred thousand eggs, but it’s there. Undercooked eggs carry the risk that it’s still there in enough quantity to make you sick, regardless of how the egg is treated, washed, and so on, unless it’s pasteurized.
Runny egg yolk *isn’t* fine. While the risk is slightly lower as much of the egg is cooked, but according to the CDC the leading cause of salmonella in adults is eggs over easy.
And, currently, there is no fully effective vaccine for it. Even if the entire hen population in the US were vaccinated, it would only reduce it, not eliminate. Though it is a current field of study.
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