What is pasteurized liquid egg and how is it made?

Liquid egg and pasteurized eggs are the derivatives of chicken eggs, usually used for the production of foods such as cakes, donuts, pasta, mayonnaise and pates. Liquid eggs, whites and yolks are pasteurized in order to ensure a long expiration period and ensure food safety. Slow thermal processing eliminates dangerous bacteria such as Salmonella which are harmful for human digestive system and can be very dangerous for human health. CDC estimates that Salmonella causes as many as 1.35 million infections in the United States every year, food being the cause of most of these illnesses. Symptoms include, but are not limited to diarrhea, fever, and stomach cramps.

For the sake of removing all harmful elements and ensuring food safety, the liquid egg is first pasteurized before being used in further processing. In order to achieve this, the eggs are first cracked with the help of special egg breaking equipment, after which the obtained liquid egg is filtered from contaminants like tiny eggshell particles etc. The resulting, perfectly clean liquid egg is then heated up to the minimal temperature required to kill all the health threatening pathogens with the use of egg pasteurizer. After the minimal required temperature is achieved, the liquid is then quickly cooled down in order to prevent protein denaturation. The resulting pasteurized liquid egg is then pathogen-free and safe for human consumption.

Some voices raise the opinion that pasteurization strips food of nutrients and therefore the resulting product is not as good as that made out of raw ingredients. Numerous studies show, however, that it is in fact not true that pasteurization causes the loss of nutritious value of the final product. Because of the low temperature in which the eggs are pasteurized, neither vitamins nor other nutrients are affected. There are other arguments that cause fresh whole eggs to be superior to their pasteurized version, however we will discuss this in another article.