§ Mrs. GormanTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what research his Department has commissioned into whether grade A hens' eggs derived from laying flocks naturally infected with salmonella enteritidis PT4, when broken out under hygienic conditions within 24 hours of being laid and frozen down immediately after being broken out, may cause the product so derived to be so heavily contaminated as to cause a liquid egg pasteurisation process to fail.
§ Mr. MacleanIt is very unusual for hens' eggs to be processed within 24 hours of being laid as most egg-processing plants take their raw materials from a wide78W area. The time taken to deliver eggs to a processing plant would enable any salmonella present to multiply and as I explained to my hon. Friend on 5 February only a moderate heat treatment can be applied to liquid egg during the pasteurisation process otherwise its functional properties are destroyed. For this reason, processing plants cannot accept raw product which is likely to be heavily contaminated with salmonella enteritidis PT4 and no specific research has therefore been commissioned in this area.