Cutter wrote on Dec 1, 2021, 17:46:
Did you know Germans keep their eggs on shelves in supermarkets? I admit that really weirded me out. How do they stay fresh? They're strange people In some ways. Their pedantry for rules following is quite bizarre. It happens in all manner of things. The most common example would be jaywalking.

They're standing on corners waiting for the amplemenschen to change color and there isn't a car in sight. So I go, as we do at home, and always get a bunch of dirty looks.

"In the United States, it’s more than a food safety recommendation that eggs be refrigerated – it’s the law. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) determined that the best way to fight Salmonella contamination is by sanitizing the eggs before they reach the consumer. The washing process removes contaminants, but it also removes the natural coating of the egg, leaving the shell porous." source

The obvious answer is countries outside of the U.S. don't sanitize and wash their eggs, thereby never disturbing the natural coating of the egg. This begs the question, are organic eggs in the U.S. subject to the same sanitization and washing process, and if not, why are they not on non-refrigerated store shelves.

The answer to that might relate to behavior; specifically how American's see eggs. For example, a French cheesemaker struggled to sell their product to Americans. So they went to a marketing guru named Dr. Clotaire Rapaille, and he told them they were not marketing their product correctly, and he explains why. "In France, the cheese is alive," says Dr. Rapaille. "You never put the cheese in the refrigerator because you don't put your cat in the refrigerator. It's the same -- it's alive. If I know that in America, the cheese is dead -- and I've been studying cheeses in almost 50 states in America; I can tell you, the cheese is dead everywhere -- then I have to put that upfront. I have to say, 'this cheese is safe, is pasteurized, is wrapped up in plastic.' I know the plastic is a body bag. You can put it in the fridge. I know the fridge is the morgue -- that's where you put the dead bodies, eh? And so once you know that, this is the way you market cheese in America." (source beginning at 35:02)