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 
eges 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° F. 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 zine and supported the cases of eggs and individual breaking equipment. The 
egos 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 
egos 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 egesa minute. As itis 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 eges and. those with cracked shells were wrecked. 
The extra work and unnecessary loss that such Roo candling entailed in the breaking 
room was shown, for example, by one breaker who found 9 bad eggsin 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 ege 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 galyanized-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 time 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 OF 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. 
