Which came first, the gecko or the egg?
Australia's ABC News Online reports that Dr Peter Beaumont, the Northern Territory president of the Australian Medical Association, says he may have accidentally discovered how the potentially deadly salmonella bacteria gets inside chicken eggs when he discovered a dead gecko between the inner shell and the membrane of a chicken egg he cracked open while cooking.
He believes the discovery is a world first and has handed the egg shell over to health authorities who will look for the presence of bacteria in the yolk and try to work out how the gecko got into the egg.
Dr Beaumont says he suspects the gecko entered the chicken before it entered the egg, stating,
"Eggs are made inside chooks up this tube from their bottom. Now obviously this tube is in contact with the whole outside world. It has to be that the gecko climbed up inside the chook and died up there while the egg was being formed before the shell was put on it."
He says the discovery could have wide reaching implications for the egg farming industry, as it may explain how the potentially deadly salmonella bacteria gets into eggs.
Look at the cell phone on that gecko (gordon, below).
He believes the discovery is a world first and has handed the egg shell over to health authorities who will look for the presence of bacteria in the yolk and try to work out how the gecko got into the egg.Dr Beaumont says he suspects the gecko entered the chicken before it entered the egg, stating,
"Eggs are made inside chooks up this tube from their bottom. Now obviously this tube is in contact with the whole outside world. It has to be that the gecko climbed up inside the chook and died up there while the egg was being formed before the shell was put on it."
He says the discovery could have wide reaching implications for the egg farming industry, as it may explain how the potentially deadly salmonella bacteria gets into eggs.
Look at the cell phone on that gecko (gordon, below).
Trackbacks (0)
Links to blogs that reference this article
Trackback URL
http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/admin/trackback/71509
http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/admin/trackback/71509
Post A Comment / Question
Use this form to add a comment to this entry.
Send To A Friend
Use this form to send this entry to a friend via email.
That is amazing, and.......gross.
(Gecko #2 even grosser)
Wonder how Salmonella gets into eggs in Canada (we don't have too many geckos).
Perhaps other things are crawling up into the chook ... ewww.
I would be very surprised if salmonella regularly get into eggs from geckos or other multi cellular organisms in this manner. But couldn’t bacteria get into eggs during egg formation in the same way the gecko did? The forming egg would be in contact, or at least close proximity to, bacteria during its formation.
If geckos or other small animals are doing this regularly would we not have seen these animals traped in eggs many times before?