Walk into a supermarket in India and you will usually find eggs stacked neatly on open shelves, sitting comfortably at room temperature alongside bread or packaged foods. Visit a grocery store in the United States, Canada, or many parts of Europe, however, and the story is completely different. There, eggs are almost always lined up inside chilled refrigerators, and shoppers rarely think twice about it. At first glance, it seems puzzling. Aren’t eggs the same everywhere? Shouldn’t they either always need refrigeration or never need it? The answer lies not in the eggs themselves, but in what happens to them long before they reach supermarket shelves. Surprisingly, the way eggs are cleaned, handled and regulated differs dramatically from one country to another, making refrigeration essential in some places and far less critical in others.
