Egg-streme deception

Egg-streme deception

FAKE eggs, which are allegedly full of chemicals, have been found in Penang.

A housewife who bought a tray of 30 eggs for RM11 in a market has complained to the Consumers Association of Penang (CAP) that they were fake.

CAP president S.M. Mohamed Idris said the housewife brought the eggs to the association’s office on Jalan Mesjid Negeri yesterday morning after finding something fishy about them when she tried to cook them.

“She said the eggs did not smell like real eggs and were tasteless.

“They had unusual shapes and were larger than real eggs. The fake egg also had a rougher surface than the genuine one.

“When broken, there were no signs of the chalazae which is the opaque ropes of egg white that hold the egg yolk in the centre of the egg. The fake egg white and egg yolk quickly mixed together unlike those of genuine eggs,” Idris told a press conference yesterday.
The fake egg yolk is of a darker yellowish hue.

He said they found that the yolk of the fake egg was more yellowish than the real one when they cooked one of the fake eggs to find out the difference.

Idris said an e-mail circulated in the Internet had stated that fake eggs were common in China and were full of chemicals.

“According to the e-mail, the shell is made of calcium carbonate while the yolk and egg white are made of sodium alginate, alum, gelatin, benzoic acid and calcium chloride besides water and food colouring.

“Calcium chloride may cause liver diseases while benzoic acid can be harmful to the brain and nerve cells,” he said.

Asked how consumers can differentiate fake eggs from genuine ones, Idris said it would be very hard to do so as they looked almost the same.

“Try to look out for the weird shapes,” he said, adding that CAP staff went to buy eggs from the shop where the woman had bought the fake ones and the staff found the eggs were indeed fake.

He said CAP would write complaint letters to the Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Ministry and the Federal Agriculture Marketing Authority to urge them to carry out investigations.

The ministry’s Penang enforcement division head M. Guna Selan said his office had not received any complaints of fake eggs so far.

“I will check with CAP first on the details of the complaint before deciding on the next course of action,” he said.

The content of the circulated e-mail was found through a Google search.

It stated that various ingredients, including an unknown powder and alum, are mixed together to make the egg white.

For egg yolk, some lemon- yellow colouring powder is mixed to a liquid and stirred.

The liquid is then poured into a round-shaped plastic mould and mixed with so-called ‘magic water’, which contains calcium chloride.

Hardy shells are formed by pouring paraffin wax and a liquid onto the concoction which are then left to dry.

-News courtesy of The Star-