Gecko in chicken egg may be salmonella breakthrough

[apothecary]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/15/2245496.htm

The Northern Territory president of the Australian Medical Association says he may have accidentally discovered how the potentially deadly salmonella bacteria gets inside chicken eggs.

Dr Peter Beaumont was cooking when he discovered a dead gecko between the inner shell and the membrane of a chicken egg he cracked open.

He believes the discovery is a world first and has handed the egg shell over to health authorities who will look for the presence of bacteria in the yolk and try to work out how the gecko got into the egg.

Dr Beaumont says he suspects the gecko entered the chicken before it entered the egg.

"Eggs are made inside chooks up this tube from their bottom.

"Now obviously this tube is in contact with the whole outside world.

"It has to be that the gecko climbed up inside the chook and died up there while the egg was being formed before the shell was put on it."

He says the discovery could have wide reaching implications for the egg farming industry, as it may explain how the potentially deadly salmonella bacteria gets into eggs.

He says this could be something geckoes do regularly, and they could be responsible for infecting some eggs with salmonella.

"There are still people poisoned from salmonella from eggs and particularly from chickens that aren't cooked properly and if there is a simple way of preventing eggs from becoming infected with salmonella, then it could have have a significant public health gain."

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Highly technical terms highlighted in red.

Edited May 15, 2008 by Sina

[Torsten]

I emailed Dr Beaumont this morning about this because I think he is on the right track, but has got the wrong species of interfering critter.

=======================================

I just read the news article about the Gecko found in a hen egg and how this could be the explanation for salmonella colonised eggs. Geckos are not terribly common in northern europe where the rate of salmonella poisonings is about the same as in australia, so I thought it might help to know that I had a similar discovery, but not involving a gecko.

About 5 years ago I cracked an egg open and in the membrane between the shell and the egg liquids was a juvenile cockroach about 10mm long. It was weak and nearly dead even though I would have thought food & moisture would not be an issue. I also noticed that the air space in this egg was somewhat bigger than usual. I turfed the egg and thought nothing more of it until I read your news item today.

Cockroaches are much more common than geckos and love tight moist places like the rear end of a chicken. I would not be surprised if salmonella colonisation of eggs corresponded with cockroach population density. I had assumed that my cockroach was deposited in the egg as a cockroach egg and hatched there, but after reading your story it now seems more likely that a baby cockroach of maybe 2mm length could have crawled up the egg tube, got processed into the hen egg, and then developed to 10mm size over the 2 weeks or so till i cracked the egg open.

You are in a much better position to make such a connection public so I thought I'd share this with you rather than the media.

regards, Torsten Wiedemann

[incognito]

weird.....

[chilli]

Jono also loves tight moist places like the rear end of a chicken, perhaps you should have mentioned that in the letter?

[devance]

http://www.physorg.com/news130146511.html

'he largest python caught so far in Florida measured five meters (16.4 feet) and weighed 70 kilograms (154 pounds). '

Glad its not a anaconda, they would give a AUS sea croc a fight.

http://www.extremescience.com/BiggestSnake.htm

But reply to the subject a cross between a toad and hen when hatched is call a cockatrice if male, if female if a basilisk.

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/b/basilisk.html

'The mythical king of the serpents. The basilisk, or cockatrice, is a creature that is born from a spherical, yolkless egg, laid during the days of Sirius (the Dog Star) by a seven-year-old rooster and hatched by a toad.'

[devance]

'However, even the basilisk has natural enemies. The weasel is immune to its glance and if it gets bitten it withdraws from the fight to eat some rue, the only plant that does not wither, and returns with renewed strength. A more dangerous enemy is the cock for should the basilisk hear it crow, it would die instantly.

The carcass of a basilisk was often hung in houses to keep spiders away. It was also used in the temples of Apollo and Diana, where no swallow ever dared to enter. In heraldry the basilisk is represented as an animal with the head, torso and legs of a cock, the tongue of a snake and the wings of a bat. The snake-like rump ends in an arrowpoint. '

I

Soo sad so true.

[incognito]

Jono also loves tight moist places like the rear end of a chicken,

u have been in NZ to long IB, dont project ur penchant for beastiality onto me thankyou very much.

i know how much that thought excites u, but keep it in ur pants and off the forums, ta.