Phee said the analysis results were personally relayed to him by the department director, Dr Wan Mohd Kamil Wan Nik, through a text message yesterday morning after tests on 389 samples obtained from operations in Pulau Tikus and Bayan Lepas recently. "We are still unable to officially announce as three egg samples have already been sent to the Chemistry Department in Petaling Jaya to be analysed, to determine if they are real. We will know the outcome soon."
Phee said his side, together with the Domestic Trade. Cooperatives and Consumerism Ministry as well as the Agriculture and Agro-based Industry committees were making concerted efforts in monitoring to detect the sale of fake eggs. "All service centres have been instructed to monitor markets, grocery shops and supermarkets and they are to report immediately so as to ensure consumers do not fall prey. We believe these fake eggs exist as claimed by the Consumer Association of Penang (CAP) but monitoring and investigations have to be done to ensure the claims are valid," Phee said, adding that such instances had surfaced in Taiwan and China.
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It was reported that the Health Ministry would take legal action against anyone responsible for the sale of fake eggs in the market. Idris has advised consumers in the country to be wary, as there are fake eggs being sold in the market after receiving a complaint by a buyer who is believed to have bought 30 eggs at the Pulau Tikus market. When asked whether the eggs were imported, Phee said the country had banned the entry of imported eggs since the spread of bird flu.
How to distinguish between real and counterfeit eggs.
3 comments:
Wow, I'm impressed. I didn't know they could make fake eggs. Although now that I think about it, eggs are pretty simple things, superficially, so I shouldn't be surprised. Still, poisonous fakes are bad, m'kay?
Eggs don't seem that simple to me... you've got to get a yellow fluid encased in some kind of membrane so it forms an orb, then somehow have it suspended in the middle of a clear fluid. Then all that has to be surrounded by a thin, brittle shell. And the fluids have to be engineered so that they coagulate and become opaque when heated.
It's kind of amazing to me, actually, that they can make fake eggs cheaply enough to profit from selling them at the price of real eggs.
Apparently, this is a myth. The "fake" eggs are grade E and F eggs. In other words, eggs not meant to be sold to consumers (but okay in cakes and pastries).
After reading about how the fakes are made with gypsum powder, gelatin, sodium alginate, etc., I got suspicious. Real eggs are not that difficult or expensive to produce; such a fake egg would probably blow away any possible profit.
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