Do I have to refrigerate my eggs while hiking?

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lfm0234

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I'm going one a multi day hike. I want to take along some eggs and cook them up along the way. I won't be able to refrigerate them and plan to keep them in my pack. Will I get sick from the salmonella? (I know outside the USA many people do not refrigerate their eggs)
 
My thought is that if you cook the eggs thoroughly such as scrambled eggs instead of easy-over; then it will kill any bacteria that begin to grow on the eggs.

Also, one trick that I've heard of for taking eggs camping is to crack all of them and put them in a Nalgene bottle before you leave home. This way, there are no eggs to break in your pack; and when you go to make eggs you simply pour them from your Nalgene into the pan.
 
The reason we have to refrigerate eggs nowadays is that they are washed for sanitary reasons during their processing. When a chicken lays an egg, there is something like a mucous coating that helps the hen pass the egg out. If you leave that mucous coating on, and let it dry, the egg is sealed shut and protected and doesn't need to be refrigerated. BUT in industrialized nations, we wash the eggs during processing and packaging to remove things like sand, dirt, feces, feathers, etc (which are mostly present due to the overcrowding of laying hens, hens in better conditions sit on cleaner eggs). So... I don't know what you'd do about hiking with eggs, I guess I wouldn't do it personally. Being out in the middle of nowhere is NOT the place you'd want to get sick from something preventable. For protein, I guess I'd bring peanut butter, jerky and soy protein bars. HTH.
 
I worked at Safeway in high school. During Easter we would display more eggs than would fit in the cooler. We would just sit them on the ground in front of the cooler. Some of the eggs sat there for nearly a week. Seemed strange to me, but no one ever got sick. If you cook them properly, you will be safe.
 
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