Nothing to 'yoke' about: NJ reconsiders ban on undercooked eggs

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan 27, 1992 by Peter Romeo

TRENTON, N.J. -- State officials are scrambling to rescind New Jersey's controversial "runny eggs" regulation after the offbeat ordinance briefly captured the attention of the media.

The state's health department has already advised local authorities to stop enforcing the restriction while it is being reconsidered.

Intended to halt the spread of salmonella, the regulation prohibits restaurants from serving eggs that have not been heated in their entirety to 140 degrees, a temperature that kills the salmonella pathogen. Because the yolks of sunny side up or soft-boiled eggs are not always heated to that threshold, a restaurant could be fined as much as $100 for offering those preparations.

"If it's a runny egg, it may not comply with the state of New Jersey's health regulations," said Larry Fidel, executive director of the New Jersey Restaurant Association.

The state's new egg-handling regulations also forbid the use of raw, unpasteurized eggs in ready-to-eat foods, including Caesar salads and Hollandaise sauce. However, pasteurized eggs can be substituted.

Another provision outlaws the pooling of large quantities of raw eggs in a vat prior to cooking.

The egg-handling code took effect on Jan. 1. But few restaurateurs and patrons seemed aware of the runny-egg rule until it was covered in an Associated Press story several weeks later. The tonque-in-cheek report was picked up by newspapers and television stations all over the nation.

Many of the reports blurred the statute's scope.

"The stories said that restaurants had to cook eggs until they're hard so that you couldn't serve eggs sunny-side up," said Cathy McCharen, spokeswoman for the Egg Nutrition Center, an egg-industry group in Washington. "What the regulation says is, the internal temperature of an egg has to reach 140 degrees, which doesn't mean that the egg is hard. At that temperature the yolk still runs, but it's starting to harden."

Nevertheless, the media were filled with accounts of New Jerseyites protesting the government's abridgement of their breakfast rights.

Within days several prominent New Jersey politicians called for the rule's repeal. Gov. Jim Florio even blasted the measure in his State of the State address.

"After seeing all the publicity about the regulation, the governor decided that this was a silly law and told us to insert something about it in his address," explained a spokesman for the Democratic governor. "He called it 'unenforceable, overly intrusive and silly' and directed the state health commissioner to review it.

"The health commissioner is currently reviewing it with an eye toward repealing it and reinstating it as more of a health advisory than a health regulation."

The health department responded to Florio by advising local regulators to ignore the runny-egg rule. The governor celebrated by inviting reporters to join him at a local diner for a breakfast of sunnyside-up eggs.

While the issue was still drawing air time on the nightly news, other politicians stepped forward to voice their protests.

"Let us rise up against the hardboiled bureaucrats and lift this yoke of oppression," John A. Lynch quipped immediately after he was sworn in as Democratic minority leader of the state senate.

But restaurateurs were not amused by the regulation.

"It's a good thing that they're repealing it, because it's a stupid law," barked John Alaimo, an International House of Pancakes franchisee in Fairfield, N.J. "It's had no effect on us because we're not paying any attention to it. We're continuing to give customers what they want, so they're just going to have to take me out of here in chains."

"We're abiding by it," said Elaine Richman, a spokeswoman for the Denny's chain. "When a customer orders eggs sunny-side up, it's a matter of explaining that it's not our rule; it's the mandate of the state of New Jersey."

"This thing had been in the works for a couple of years," said Fidel of the NJRA. "The state health department looked at ways to lessen the threat of salmonella. It decided to adopt the Federal Drug Administration's recommendations for handling eggs."

The FDA has classified eggs as a "potentially hazardous" foodstuff because an improperly handled egg can nurture the salmonella pathogen, which can cause a severe illness and even death. The agency has advised food handlers to kill or at least inhibit the bacteria by storing eggs in temperatures below 45 degrees and heating them to at least 140 degrees.

"According to what we were told, the health department never intended to go from restaurant to restaurant, poking a thermometer in every eggs yolk," said the NJRA's Fidel. "Their real concern was pooled eggs."

He explained that some restaurants prepare for a rush of customers by cracking dozens of eggs ahead of time and storing them uncooked in a large vat. When an order for scrambled eggs is placed, the cook ladles a portion of the egg mixture onto the griddle.

In that setup, a single egg containing the salmonella bacteria can contaminate the whole batch, putting larger numbers of patrons at risk of contracting the disease.