More than 5,000 broken eggs for use seized in Madurai

Madurai: Officials from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) seized more than 5,000 broken and rotten eggs from a leading wholesale trader, two big bakeries and two small eateries in the city during surprise searches conducted on Thursday and Friday.

Officials led by the FSSAI designated officer for Madurai, M Somasundaram, were shocked as they accidentally stumbled on a huge volume of rotten eggs while checking the quality of sweets prepared for Deepavali. “Initially, we found not less than 80 trays (2,400 eggs at 30 in a tray) in a large bakery unit at Kochadai,” he told TOI. The officials then checked another large bakery unit where around 460 eggs were found. Inquiries revealed that they got eggs with broken shells for as cheap as a rupee apiece while a good egg was priced at Rs 4.50 to Rs 5. “According to international standards, eggs with good shell have a shelf life of three weeks,” Somasundaram said.

The official said that when the temperature was normal without fluctuations, eggs with a good shell could stay unaffected for up to five weeks. “But eggs with a broken shell have a mere two-hour life. After two hours they become rotten, even resulting in black spots forming on the shell (pseudomonas) in the worst case,” he said. These eggs were being used for baking cakes and other confectionaries in bakeries, kothu parottas, scrambled eggs, bullseye, omelette and kalakki among many other delicacies priced at Rs 15 apiece. Consuming it could cause immediate renal infection among children, gastroenteritis problems, typhoid and related complications, stomach pain or cramps, nausea, vomiting and dysentery.

FSSAI officials said that eggs here were brought from Namakkal where they could have been broken at the farm during collection or loading during transport or while handling it here. But these cheap broken eggs had good demand among bakeries and hotels that are least bothered about the health of their consumers.

Based on information gathered from the bakeries where the eggs were first found, the officials raided a leading egg trader’s warehouse at Puttuthoppu. Stating that they reached there only by the fag end of Thursday, officials said that there were more than 2,000 eggs there at that time. 

Officials said that the trader, who was a leader in egg trade in Madurai, had a separate cold storage facility for broken eggs. The trader, Murugan, supplied to 15 bakeries and hotels in Madurai. These bakeries and hotels stored these broken eggs for many days and used them based on requirement.

“We sealed the godown. On Friday we seized more than 300 eggs from two small hotels at the Arapalayam bus stand. We have warned the bakeries and hotels using broken eggs and will be regularly checking them and initiating stringent action if they continued doing it. Inquiries are on to nab the entire network,” said the designated officer.