I was just wondering if anyone else has this phobia about raw eggs .. whenever I bake a cake I have this extreme fear of making someone sick with raw eggs ... Once I crack open an egg and drop it into my measuring cup (so I can pick out any shells if any drop) I immediately feel as though I have to wash my hands with soap and dry them before I can even crack open up another egg! I do this repeatedly no matter how many eggs I need ... and once all the eggs are cracked I have to wipe down everything with a hot soapy dishrag and then I have to use disinfecting wipes too ... I know each cake I make I usually waste about fifteen to twenty minutes disinfecting my kitchen once an egg is cracked ... am I way to paranoid? Or is this common? I am also this way about uncooked chicken too ...
The risk of getting a salmonella-infected egg is 1 in 20,000 or even lower than that. Practice good food safety measures in your kitchen, of course, but I am not afraid of eggs. They are not little salmonella bombs. Eggs are our friends. 
http://www.aeb.org/LearnMore/EggSafety.htm
http://www.pastrywiz.com/storage/eggs.htm
thanks you guys ... I guess I do feel better knowing that I won't get sick or get anyone else sick with regular kitchen cleaning .. I mean of course I will clean my kitchen top to bottom but maybe I can shave a half hour by not sanitizing in between each cracked egg! Thanks for those websites kelleym, I read them top to bottom! 
I'm the same way, one of the reasons why I won't try a meringue frosting, I know they are delicious but the fear of raw eggs keeps me from it. I'm the same way about handling raw meat, I hate touching uncooked meat-ooooooo meatballs, I love the taste but man I never feel like my hands are clean enough after making them.
Raw eggs don't bother me - I do the regular clean up and sanitization but I've been eating raw batter for years and it hasn't killed me yet. 
My husband is all about the protein shakes and egg drinks - he's been sloshing down raw egg drinks every day since I've known him (9 years - 4 to 5 eggs per drink) and he hasn't ever gotten sick. Ok - I wouldn't recommend it but I'm just using it as an example.
Just to be absolutely safe, I didn't lick any batter with raw eggs while I was pregnant. Better to be totally safe than sorry.
Undercooked chicken is a whole different issue - I've been known to send chicken back to be cooked or BBQd more if it isn't done and I'm meticulous about where I put meat trays, washing hands after handling, sanitizing counter, etc.
brickflor dont even get me started on raw meat! I cannot stand the idea of touching raw meat .. in fact whenever we do have meat for dinner (which is pretty rare since I have a fear of eating undercooked meat) I make my dh touch the stuff .. but you can bet I am right there supervising him! Awolf my sister in law always wants to eat my leftover batter and I tell her ... theres raw eggs in that! She doesn't care ... but I never send it over to her house (we live next door to each other) it goes right down my drain .. I could not imagine drinking raw eggs but more power to those who can!
My wife is just as bad, not just because of bacteria but also because she can't stand the smell of eggs or raw chicken!!!
This is another case where the media has put the fear of god into people. If you still fear eggs, buy pasteurized eggs or organic eggs, these are even more safe than your other eggs.
And if you don't want your hands to touch food, wear thin gloves, but my suggestion is to get over it by just DOING it.
Melissa
OMG, As I was reading your post ... I was thinking to myself... WOW there is someone like me .... my main fear though is chicken. You know that commercial that has the lady cleaning the counter-tops with the raw chicken (I can't even tell you what the commercial is for) I am unable to watch it, totally freaks me out!!!!! My husband says that I have chicken OCD. Just thinking about it right now gives me the eeekies and shivers. YUK!!!!!!!!
The rest of the house may be a mess BUT my counter=tops are spotless, everytime I go through the kitchen, I have to wipe them down (with a wipe) of course. My mom thinks it is just soooo funny but I can't help it! She does buy wipes for her house, so I can go OCD over there.
LOL ... we should start a club!!!!!!
Mary
That's what I do Melissa, I MAKE myself do it because I love eating meat and my kids like it too. My hubby gets a kick out of the lengths I go to sometimes to avoid touching the meat-you should see me making chicken parm., I have at least 3 forks and 2 sets of tongs to get me through the recipe! I have gotten a little better about it, like using my fingers to pat the bread crumbs on the chicken-but I still cringe 
Cakerator, you're cracking me up because you must be my long lost twin or something. I don't wash my hands after each egg but I do wash after I'm done with all of them and wipe everything down that may have raw egg on it. I even remove the little white "snot" looking thing from the raw eggs before I use them because that thing totally grosses me out! What is that thing anyway?
Raw meat is a gross out too! Sometimes I can't even eat the chicken I made for dinner because after messing with it while it's raw (I never touch it, always move it from place to place with a fork) I feel kind of ill about it! Glad to know I'm not the only one...my husband thinks I'm a weirdo!
OMG, As I was reading your post ... I was thinking to myself... WOW there is someone like me .... my main fear though is chicken. You know that commercial that has the lady cleaning the counter-tops with the raw chicken (I can't even tell you what the commercial is for) I am unable to watch it, totally freaks me out!!!!! My husband says that I have chicken OCD. Just thinking about it right now gives me the eeekies and shivers. YUK!!!!!!!!
Mary
That commercial is totally gross!!! But it's also TOTALLY WRONG. You know, if you were to spread a chicken all over your kitchen, a couple hours after your counters dried and aired out, they wouldn't be full of bacteria any more. Bacteria can't live in a dry environment... I would still be grossed out to use the not washed counters, but the reality is, they are safer than one that used an old sponge 20 minutes previously. The dish sponge is the big problem if they aren't sanitized.
Melissa
I'm with crablegs-love to eat the cake batter, muffin batter, whatever. Handling raw meat doesn't affect me one bit. I guess I am just a "tough" girl. We were over at a friend's house not too long ago and had hamburgers, but she asked me to make the burgers because she had been handling raw chicken earlier in the week and said she can only take so much of handling it. I always wash my hands and counters afterwards,
but I don't have any problems handling it.
my grandmother wont eat eggs if the little "snot" things Tweedie refered to are left in the eggs (they are the little unfertilized chickens ... this is what i've always been told and i believe it because now we buy organic eggs from a farm and we have to be very careful about fertilized eggs and bad ones) ... it's pretty funny to me because I used to scoop them out ... but now with 3 eggs a cake mix, i've come to the conclusion that it is all chicken products and i just leave them in. 
(I clean like crazy when dealing with raw chicken but the eggs don't scare me ... I do wash my hands though!! )
Funny but raw eggs never bother me. I love eating the batter! Sometimes I deliberately leave extra out of the pan so I can have more to eat! It's so yummy. My boyfriend also drinks raw eggs for his protein drinks and such and that grosses me out. Ironic, isn't it.
Meat, though, I can't stand. I prefer burnt to pink for hamburgers and stuff. As for chicken, I'm super clean about chicken. Won't touch anything with my raw chicken hand until it's been thoroughly washed and almost always do a very thorough counter clean afterwards.
I'm reading this thinking YAY I'm not the only one! lol I do wash my hands after every single egg, takes forever when you need 8 eggs or something, then I wash down the counter when I'm finished with them all. Forget handmade hamburger patties, I will not mush my hand into raw hamburger, even with gloves on, because it's the texture of it that makes me want to hurl. If I'm just browning ground beef I open the plastic wrapper with a fork, tip the package upside down to dump it in the skillet, and break it up with the spatula. I just can't handle touching the stuff at all. I will put a raw chicken breast in the skillet but I have to wash after each one just like with the eggs, and I won't touch the salt or pepper shaker to season them until I have completely disinfected my hands. Needless to say I could never make it as a chef.
Okay now I feel like a total freak. I think I need professional help.
I dont ge the big deal about raw eggs. We eat it in ceasear salad dressing, raw cake batters,protein shakes all sorts of things. If they hadnt invented meringue power we would still be using it in our royal icings as well. I mean people get sick from lots of different food related things but we cant start banning everything or we would starve lol. I just believe in using common sense when cooking and cleaning. Also people dont seem to realize that we are killing our immune systems because we are not giving it a chance to strenghten that is why a lot of diseases are become so hard to get rid of as we are becoming immune to the antibotics because we have become a paranoid society.
I sure am glad there are others out there like me! And yes, we should start a club! I don't know about any of you guys, but I have had food poisoning before and it was not fun! It was a rough week before I even went to the drs but once I was so weak from not being able to keep anything in me my dh took me there and the dr listened to my stomach and said ... "It sounds like a freeway in there!" LOL I think that is what put the fear into me .. Im 27 years old and I have been married for over four years now and I still call my mommy to make sure my food is safe to eat ... my dh will say "its fine!" but it's not really fine until my mommy says it is! I guess that's just the way I am .. but eggs ... chicken .. meat ... ickey eww eww! I wish I wasn't so paranoid but its a comforting feeling knowing I am not the only one out there
I with ya on the raw egg thing, can't stand them. But coming from a from a family of hunters you have to get used to the raw meat. I cant count the number of times I would come home from school and there was a deer hanging outside waiting to be butchered. We brought it in and threw it on the kitchen table then would spend the next six hours or so with our hands in raw meat!! Oh the good old days.
Val
vrmcc1, the only one in my family who is a hunter is my brother in law .. and since that is a new thing for the rest of us we tend to be leery on opening up his fridge .. cause the one time we did, there was a squirrel all pinned down!
Also people dont seem to realize that we are killing our immune systems because we are not giving it a chance to strenghten that is why a lot of diseases are become so hard to get rid of as we are becoming immune to the antibotics because we have become a paranoid society.
There is more and more evidence that our super clean water and our super clean environments are more toxic to the body - it's TRUE. They tried for year s to figure out why the rate of all these auto-immune diseases were SO much higher and GROWING in developed countries and finally they started to realize that it was because our bodies were starting to turn on THEMSELVES because they didn't have anything else to "fight" and our bodies were designed to fight - that's the reason they think for the rise in Chrone's Disease, eczema, Lupus, etc. There have started to be some radical treatments that are WORKING that involve giving the body something other to fight than itself and the eczema and chrohn's symptoms disappear!
And yes, we SHOULD disinfect by using soap, but these antibacterial things should be a BIG no-no because they are making the surviving bacteria resistent to antibiotics and we REALLy, REALLY don' t need that. Bleach and disinfecting soap work just fie without that extra unnecessary step.
Melissa
I just saw an old "Good Eats" episode that talked about this exactly! It's the episode calles "The Egg Files" at this website my hubby found:
http://tv-links.co.uk/listings/1/3404
Maybe it will help with the raw egg phobia.
Ohhh!!! I love Alton Brown!! He is very informative about the food and tells you things you would have never known otherwise. Too bad I can't watch his shows every night because when my husband comes home, he takes over the T.V. 
I did catch an episode not too long ago about popcorn and he showed how to cook it in a pan. I don't like the microwave popcorn so I pop my own, but I always had to drag out the popcorn popper-not anymore!!!
Raw batter - yuuuuuuuuummy!! I'm sorry, I've loved batter since I was small enough to lick my mom's beaters clean, and I have yet to get sick. I refuse to believe eggs are any more infectious now! Especially since I've worked in child care/schools and had 5 kids of my own to build up my resistance! (I also avoid antibacterials, for reasons already mentioned)
I had to laugh at this post, though, because of my DH. Everything he eats HAS to be charred for him to feel safe. When he watches Food Network with me, he screams "It's not juicy, it's RAW!" 
I'm the same way, one of the reasons why I won't try a meringue frosting, I know they are delicious but the fear of raw eggs keeps me from it.
by heating your egg to 160-170 degrees I believe that kills any bacteria and essentially pasturizes the egg, doesn't it???
novacaine24, I know exactly what your husband is thinking! I can't believe the amount of meat they serve raw on the food network! The tv host says "usually for this 2lb piece of meat I cook it for three to four minutes" Ok I might be exaggerating a litte but not by much!! Alanahodgson you might be correct in heating your eggs to a certain degree will kill of any bacteria .. I am not an expert so I will take your word for it ... its just that I can't make it and still feel safe about eating it ... ick!
Eggs...no. I agree with the other person who said contaminated eggs (salmonella) is very rare actually.
Now with raw chicken, I am a little ocd about washing my hands and the counter.
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