Raw Eggs: What's the Actual Risk and When Should You Worry?

One in 20,000 eggs in the US is internally contaminated with Salmonella Enteritidis. That sounds reassuring. Until you run the numbers.

The average American eats about 260 eggs per year. Over a lifetime, that’s roughly 20,000 eggs — meaning statistically, almost every American will encounter at least one internally contaminated egg at some point in their life. The question isn’t whether contaminated eggs enter your kitchen. It’s whether cooking them kills the bacteria before you eat them.

How Salmonella Gets Inside the Egg

Most people assume Salmonella contamination is a shell problem — bacteria on the outside that could get into the egg when you crack it. That’s a real risk. But the more insidious problem is internal contamination.

Salmonella Enteritidis can infect the reproductive tract of laying hens. Specifically, it colonizes the ovarian tissue. When an infected hen forms an egg, the bacteria can be deposited into the yolk or albumen (egg white) before the shell forms around it. The resulting egg is contaminated inside, behind an intact, properly cleaned shell.

No amount of washing, refrigerating, or selecting “clean” eggs prevents this type of contamination. It was present before the shell existed.

This is why the FDA’s Egg Safety Rule (2009) targets the hen-level problem, not just post-collection handling. Large egg producers are required to implement Salmonella Enteritidis prevention programs: environmental monitoring of poultry houses, flock testing, refrigeration during storage and transport. These measures have reduced contamination rates, but not to zero.

Putting the Risk in Context

A Schroeder et al. (2005) analysis estimated approximately 2.3 million Salmonella Enteritidis illnesses from shell eggs per year in the US around 2000. Improvements in flock management and post-collection refrigeration have reduced this since then, but egg-associated Salmonella still causes tens of thousands of illnesses annually.

For healthy adults eating a single raw egg in Caesar dressing or cookie dough, the per-exposure risk is low. One in 20,000 contamination rate, and not every exposure to contaminated food causes illness. Stomach acid kills many pathogens, and healthy immune systems handle low-dose exposures that never progress to full illness.

The risk isn’t zero. But for a healthy adult, it’s modest from a single exposure.

The math changes with frequency and group. Someone eating raw egg applications regularly is taking repeated small-risk exposures. And for high-risk groups — children under 5, adults over 65, pregnant women, immunocompromised individuals — the per-exposure risk of serious illness from any given exposure is meaningfully higher.

Where Raw Eggs Appear in Food

Raw or undercooked eggs show up in more dishes than most people realize.

• Cookie dough and cake batter (raw, tasted during baking)
• Classic Caesar dressing (raw egg emulsified with lemon juice and anchovies)
• Hollandaise sauce (raw yolks emulsified with butter)
• Homemade mayonnaise (raw egg yolk base)
• Eggnog (traditionally raw eggs, cream, and spirits)
• Tiramisu (sabayon made from whipped raw yolks)
• Japanese tamago gohan (raw egg mixed into hot rice)
• Steak tartare (raw meat with raw egg yolk)
• Sunny-side up and over-easy eggs (yolks remain liquid and undercooked)

Some of these have become mainstream enough that pasteurized eggs or pasteurization steps are built into restaurant versions. Commercial Caesar dressing uses pasteurized eggs. Commercial eggnog is pasteurized. Restaurant hollandaise often tempers eggs to 160°F. Home versions typically don’t.

Pasteurized Eggs: The Clean Solution

Pasteurized shell eggs exist and are widely available in many grocery stores, typically near regular eggs and labeled “pasteurized.” They look identical to regular eggs. They crack, cook, and function identically. The difference is that they’ve been processed with a warm water bath that raises the internal egg temperature high enough to kill Salmonella without cooking the egg.

For any raw egg application — cookie dough you’re going to eat, homemade Caesar, hollandaise, tiramisu — pasteurized shell eggs eliminate the Salmonella risk entirely. For high-risk groups, this is the clear recommendation.

Pasteurized liquid eggs (cartons of liquid whole egg, egg white, or egg product) are also pasteurized and safe for raw use, though they don’t work for applications where you need an intact yolk.

The cost difference is real — pasteurized shell eggs cost roughly 50-100% more than regular eggs. But for applications where you or someone you’re cooking for is in a high-risk group, the cost is the right tradeoff.

What Cooking Actually Does

Cooking fully denatures the proteins in egg whites and yolks. For Salmonella, the key temperature is 160°F — at this point, the bacteria are killed reliably throughout the egg. Runny yolks typically reach 140-150°F in a standard over-easy preparation, which doesn’t meet the 160°F threshold.

Firm yolks and cooked-through whites in a well-done fried egg or scrambled eggs do reach safe temperatures. The texture change you see is the same denaturation that kills the bacteria.

Dishes that temper eggs — adding hot liquid slowly to raw yolks to gently heat them — can reach safe temperatures if the process is done carefully and temperatures verified with a thermometer. Classic hollandaise rarely reaches 160°F through tempering alone. Safe internal temperatures covers the egg section of the USDA guidelines.

The Honest Risk Summary

For healthy adults: raw egg use in occasional applications is low-risk but not zero-risk. Know that the risk exists, and make an informed decision about frequency and context.

For high-risk groups (children under 5, elderly, pregnant women, immunocompromised): use pasteurized eggs in any recipe where eggs won’t reach 160°F. The risk of Salmonella infection, hospitalization, and serious complications is high enough that pasteurized eggs are worth the cost and effort every time.

The 1 in 20,000 number is real. Cooking reliably makes it irrelevant. For dishes that stay raw, pasteurized eggs do the same job.