Eggs, egg products

Commodity Science

What is analyzed in general?

Terms and conditions
Chicken eggs are sold to consumers primarily as raw eggs or boiled eggs. For the food industry, they are being used as chicken eggs, powdered eggs, and liquid eggs. These eggs are required ingredients for pasta or baked goods.

Raw eggs

 

Raw eggs are offered mostly sorted by quality and weight class. This is based on EU regulations governing the marketing of raw chicken eggs.

Class, weight class

 

For raw chicken eggs, there are two grades: A and B. The class A (or "fresh") eggs have the following quality characteristics:


The bowl is clean, undamaged and has a normal shape.


The air chamber in the egg is immobile, the air chamber height does not exceed 6 mm (for "extra" not more than 4 mm).


Within the first few hours after laying the egg, the air chamber forms. Due to storage time and storage conditions (air temperature, humidity), some egg contents evaporate and the air chamber increases. Therefore, the fresh air chamber becomes higher.


The egg white is transparent and clear.


Both fertilized and unfertilized eggs in the egg yolk is present on the so-called germinal disc is also there. From the embryo, a fertilized egg develops during incubation of chicken embryo.


There are no foreign imports and deposits.


A foreign odor is not detectable.


Chicken eggs, which do not have the quality characteristics of class A shall be classified in Class B. Class B chicken eggs can be used for non food industry, but cannot be delivered to the consumers or to restaurants.

Grade A eggs are sorted by weight as follows:

 

Size                             Weight Class

XL (very large)           73 g and more

L (large)                      G to 63 g in 73

M (medium)                G to 53 g less than 63

S (small)                      under 53 g


The direct marketer  are exempted from the requirement of sorting eggs according to quality and weight. The chicken eggs from the production site, a local public market, are delivered directly to the consumers.

Producer code

 

On raw chicken a stamp is being utilized to identify a producer code. From the producer code, the source of the individual can be easily traced. The producer code are as follows:
The first number indicates the farming of chickens:

Paragraph        Farming

0                      Organic production

1                      Free range

2                      Floor management

3                      Cages

A two-letter combination indicates the country of origin. For example, the combination is "DE" for Germany, "NL" for the Netherlands or "ES" for Spain.