Contaminated Eggs

[Anchor Lead]

The government initiated a sweeping inspection of the nation’s farms since the contaminated egg scandal broke out but the effort was found to have had some significant issues. Therefore additional inspections were carried out and more egg farms have been deemed unfit. We look at how the tainted eggs may have been distributed.

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An egg's distribution shelf life is 45 days. Some 42 million eggs are believed to have been shipped out of 49 farms where harmful pesticides have been found over the past 45 days. The Food and Drug Safety Ministry has collected and is discarding 4.5 million of them while wholesalers have returned some 2.4 million eggs back to the production farms. Local authorities are also taking tainted eggs off of store shelves. But it's still a challenge to top a retrieval rate of 20% of the total circulation volume of eggs. This means that at least 33 million eggs have already been sold. These eggs are also confirmed to have been supplied to 9 food manufacturing firms. Three of them have already used 350-thousand eggs in making processed foods, most of which have been sold. Some 260-thousand smoked eggs and 28-thousand boiled eggs have also been sold online and at supermarkets. Eggs have also gone into bread that was supplied to buffet restaurants in Busan and Ulsan. The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety however said the problematic eggs were not supplied to school cafeterias.