Liquid eggs intended for desserts, creams, fresh pasta and industrial products and giant farms with over a million hens. With “La Frittata”, the investigation aired on Report on May 24, Giulia Innocenzi returns to focus attention on the less visible side of the food industry: that of intensive egg production.
The report, signed by the journalist who wrote the documentary Food for Profitfocuses above all on the system that revolves around the transformation of eggs into products intended for the catering and confectionery industry.
At the center of the investigation are the images collected in the Eurovo factory in Occhiobello, in the province of Rovigo. According to what reported by Report, the broadcast would have come into possession of exclusive material linked to a complaint presented by 58 workers. Here, in this plant, the so-called egg liquid is prepared, which is sent to pastry shops, restaurants and the food industry in general. But the conditions of the eggs that are treated are terrible: dirty, full of chicken waste and blood.
Report’s investigation
The hardest heart of Report’s investigation is undoubtedly the one set in the Occhiobello factory, which among other things is one of the main Italian centers for the industrial processing of eggs. It is here that, according to what Giulia Innocenzi told us, the testimonies and materials collected by the broadcast are concentrated through internal documents, exclusive videos and the complaints of dozens of workers.
Among the most discussed passages are references to eggs with traces of mold, expired products that would presumably have been relabelled, anomalies in the management of raw materials and doubts about internal controls relating to products destined for the industrial food chain.
It happened that there were products that had expired four or five days ago, says one of the workers interviewed. It was a change that happened every day.
A picture which, if confirmed, would open up huge questions not only about food safety, but also about the functioning of a supply chain that is often invisible to consumers. Because industrial liquid eggs almost never end up directly on our tables: they are used as ingredients in packaged products, industrial desserts, creams, fresh pasta, mayonnaise and preparations intended for large-scale distribution and catering.
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And this is precisely one of the most disturbing aspects highlighted by the investigation: the end consumer hardly has the tools to know where the eggs used in the products he buys every day really come from.
Once shelled and pasteurized, the liquid egg was destined for the general food industry, but in the factory, the expired egg liquid was often returned to another tank, mixing it with other healthy product. And not only that: pieces of gloves and glasses also ended up inside, and even what looked like a chicken carcass. Not to mention the mice that wandered around the plant and then ended up drowned in the liquid.
Eurovo’s reply
Eurovo rejects the complaints in a note saying that ” has always operated ensuring full compliance with the most rigorous safety standards” and advocating that any non-compliant products are regularly discarded. And again, among other things:
Every year, Eurovo supports continuous audits by customers, certification bodies and competent authorities, partly unannounced and planned. Any deviations from the expected standards are addressed promptly through the activation of specific corrective plans.
Finally, the water used is purified in the factory and is subjected to periodic analyses, and the presence of plastic, rodents or birds is considered not only unacceptable, but also a remote possibility, almost certainly attributable to voluntary sabotage aimed at damaging the company and the brand. Such contamination, however, would immediately cause serious technical problems for the systems and products, consequently generating a complaint from customers.
In some cases it is possible to reuse the product (only if it has always remained under company control,
there is documentary evidence of the storage conditions, the microbiological risk was
assessed in compliance with the procedure set out in the HACCP plan). In case of returns from the market, if
these fall within the conditions previously set out, the product can be reused; In the
if at least one of these is not respected, it is instead disposed of according to regulations
in force.
The other big theme: mega intensive farms
But “Magic Liquid” isn’t just about food safety. The other major issue of the investigation concerns the production model of intensive farming.
According to what reported by Report, among Eurovo’s suppliers there would also be Fattorie Menesello, the farm of Simone Menesello, president of the Confagricoltura poultry farmers. The same farm had already ended up at the center of previous investigations by Giulia Innocenzi, which had shown very critical conditions inside the structures.
There is talk of a plant that could host up to 1.3 million laying hens in the area of Lozzo Atestino, in the province of Padua: over 600 animals per inhabitant. The images released in the past showed carcasses left in cages next to live animals, piles of dead chickens in the corridors and eggs stained with blood and faeces.
However, subsequent checks by the authorities found a limited number of anomalies compared to what was shown in the images released by journalistic investigations.
However, the debate on the intensive farming model remains open, increasingly contested for its environmental and health impact. There are enormous issues on the table: emissions, waste management, land consumption, animal welfare and epidemiological risk. A topic that has become even more central after the avian flu epidemics that have affected several European farms in recent years, leading to the slaughter of millions of animals.
And this is probably precisely the most important point raised by Report: the true cost of low-cost eggs is not only measured in the final price paid at the supermarket, but also in the environmental, health and social consequences of a production system increasingly driven towards industrial maximisation.
