PREPARATION" OF FROZEN AND DRIED EGGS. 29 



conditions observed in e house during two consecutive years. 



Season of 1911. 



This firm erected a building a few years ago especially to put up evaporated eggs. 

 Refrigeration was installed, but the business soon outgrew the supply. However, the 

 eggs were put into the chill room as soon as received , and usually they were candled 24 

 hours later. 



THE BREAKING ROOM. 



The room in which the eggs were broken was about 75 feet long, 27 feet wide, and 

 11 feet high, and was on the second floor. It opened at one end into a room where 

 the finished product was being put into packages and at the other into a small room 

 where the liquid egg was held in a creamery tank, cooled by a brine-chilled stirring 

 machine until it was needed to replenish the supply going to the drying belts. The 

 temperature in the drying room was often 110° P. or more. Wood partitions sepa- 

 rated the drying from the breaking room; hence it was impossible to keep the latter 

 cool. 



The outer wall of the breaking room was brick; the partition walls were of wood. 

 A row of windows, high up, were always wide open for light and air. The ceiling was 

 high, and with open beams. The floors had calked seams, such as are used in meat- 

 packing houses. The breaking room is pictured in Plate IV. 



At one end of the room was a long sink with hot and cold water, where all the utensils 

 were washed. Tables extended along each side of the room. These were covered 

 with zinc and supported the cases of eggs and individual breaking equipment. The 

 eggs were broken on an apparatus (PL IX, fig. 2) consisting of a wedge-shaped knife sup- 

 ported on a half-inch iron pipe which was screwed by a flange to the table top. A 

 funnel-shaped metal collar surrounded the knife and discharged the leakage from the 

 eggs into the shell tubs. This collar was added late in the season and served to keep 

 tables and floors far cleaner than they had previously been. There was still, how- 

 ever, a great waste of egg from leakage. 



The girls broke from 13 to 24 eggs a minute. As it is impossible to grade at this rate, 

 good eggs were sometimes discarded and bad eggs were sometimes used. 



The number of bad eggs going to the breakers was unnecessarily increased because 

 the candling was not accurate. The candlers simply "flashed" eggs in front of the 

 light and threw them, pell-mell, into the cases, so that a large number of eggs with 

 sound shells were made into cracked eggs and those with cracked shells were wrecked. 

 The extra work and unnecessary loss that such poor candling entailed in the breaking 

 room was shown, for example, by one breaker who found 9 bad eggs in one case. These 

 she threw away and with them 24 good ones. She also made nine trips the entire length 

 of the room, to get clean pans, since instructions were to take a pan to be washed after 

 it had received a tanners' egg. 



The liquid egg was collected in buckets. Those, in turn, were emptied into a 

 large churn through a wire screen. Rubber hose led from the churn to the long 

 creamery tank before mentioned. This hose was dirty and could not be cleaned. It 

 was replaced by sanitary piping, which permitted of sterilization in every part, just as 

 soon as the actual condition of the rubber hose was made known to the management. 



From the tanks the egg was led by a gate valve into buckets; the buckets were 

 carried to galvanized-iron tanks which supplied the feeding trough of drying machines 

 of the belt type. The belt was constructed in the usual way. The temperature was 

 about 160° F., and the tune required was from one to one and one-half hours for one 

 run. Flaky egg was the result. It was put up generally in barrels, or in small tin 

 cans, for household use. Two grades were made — one for food purposes, the other for 

 tanning leather. 



SOURCES OP BACTERIAL CONTAMINATION. 



Observation would indicate that the method of cleaning utensils in use in E house 

 failed to cleanse, bacteriologically speaking. The facts that the laboratory revealed 

 are indicated in Plate III, figures 1, 2, and 3. The importance of the findings in rela- 

 tion to the bacterial content of the product is emphasized by the fact that the tests 

 were made at noontime, when an especially thorough washing was given to insure 

 cleanliness during the afternoon. 



The breakers paid no attention to cleanliness of hands, so far as the egg itself was 

 concerned. Their hands were constantly wet with good egg, and bad and dirty shells 

 were handled regardlessly. 



