VAST INDUSTRY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 85, 10 April 1943, Page 6

VAST INDUSTRY

DRIED EGGS IN U.S. GOVERNMENT'S GUIDING HAND (By THOMAS R. HENRY) WASHINGTON. This spring the United States will be producing close to 400,000,0001b of dried eggs a year. There will be 125 factories engaged in taking the water out of approximately four billion eggs. ' Thus, under Government auspices, a vast new industry is arising. Two years ago there were 12 small plants producing less than 200,0001b annually of whole dried eggs and about 10,000,0001b of dried yolks and egg whites. Meanwhile, due to constant scientific research and experiment, the quality and keeping qualities of the product have been essentially doubled. The Department of Agriculture is operating a large laboratory in Chicago where a sample of every lot manufactured Is subjected to chemical tests and where a corps of tasters is maintained. Some of each sample is mixed up and cooked as scrambled eggs, and these men and women whose trained tongues have provided them with an entirely new profession score it gastronomically. In co-operation with British experts a score sheet has been prepared which states the moisture and solid content, the number of bacteria, the taste, and so on, of each lot. A Moulle laboratory Also a mobile laboratory is being maintained which is continually on the road between the drying plants, located in all the egg-producing centres of the country, to locate the trouble when any sub-standard product is received. Now practically the entire output is shipped to Great Britain and the armed forces. Eggs are among the richest and most concentrated foods known to man. With the dried product shipping space is cut down approximately four-fifths, and there is no need for refrigerated ships. But the Department of Agriculture workers have been motivated not only by the desire to provide concentrated, food for the British, but by the vision of a major American industry after the war. Thus far the American people themselves have had little opportunity to sample their rapidly improving products. Use of dried eggs in this country in the past has been restricted largely to the baking and confectionery industries. Practically none have found their way to the family table. ' One of the latest developments, the Department of Agriculture specialists point out, is in grading. At first dried eggs were dried eggs. They were shipped in bulk. Now all lots which rate above a certain mark on the British-American score card are being put up in soz packages—each package representing a dozen eggs—for use as scrambled eggs for breakfast. All the remainder is packed in barrels for cooking. Low Temperatures Needed At first there were complaints that while the product remained fairly palatable for a month or two it deteriorated rapidly afterwards. The Department of Agriculture chemists, however, have found that when the dried product is kept for any appreciable time at a temperature of S5 degrees or more it rapidly loses its solubility—its ability to came back to liquid egg when mixed in water. At. temperatures below 50 degrees this 'deterioration is greatly retarded, and dried egg a year old tastes like the fresh product. An important criterion is the number of bacteria in any sample. A certain number is inevitable, but it has been found that when this is exceeded deterioration is much more rapid. When the bacteria count from any factory begins to j increase the mobile units of chem- j ists are dispatched there post haste to determine in what part of the process the contamination arises.— Auckland Star and N.A.N.A. I