Confessions of an Author

How Long Can I Keep Eggs For? (And do they need to be kept in a fridge?) When hens lay eggs, they do not come with the neat red ‘use-by’ date stamped on them, so it can be difficult to know how long to keep them before they should be thrown away. I have done a little research. There are four types of eggs – fresh ones, stale ones, bad ones, poisonous ones. You can eat the first two, and will be ill and possibly die if you eat the fourth choice. You would never eat the third choice – bad eggs – because they stink, so we can ignore those. We’ll start with the poisonous ones. Poisons, or ‘pathogens’ in eggs are different bacteria. The worst of these seems to be salmonella, a rod shaped bacilli which causes salmonellosis (which can put you in hospital). Salmonella lives in the gut of animals, and seems to affect a lot of chickens (possibly because they have been farmed so badly). Salmonella affects other animals too, it is only chickens who get bad press. You should be careful aro...