Chapter 2.3: The N & N Egg Story

Up and early for another Next Chapter Farm Tour. On 23rd July 2016, we headed to N&N Agriculture to learn more about the Egg Story. Before entering the premises, we were greeted at the entrance with a thorough car wash! This helps to keep the egg processing facilities in a clean and hygienic condition at all times.

We kickstarted the farm tour with an introduction to the Singapore Young Farmers Initiative by our very own Frog Princess, Chelsea!

The Egg Story

Established in 2001, N&N Agriculture (also known as Egg Story) has embarked on new frontiers in food safety management. N&N is one of Singapore’s high tech local farms with a daily production of 400,000 eggs and the only local poultry farm to utilise a multi-patented pasteurization technology.

To ensure maximum bio-security, N&N also has an automated Feedmill System that is capable of delivering food and water to the chickens on a timely basis while ensuring that human contact is minimised.

Sum, our experienced N&N guide presenting interesting egg facts, myths and nutritional information. 

Breakfast for champions - Knowledge!

Nitrogen rich chicken manures are highly prized for its ability to generate electricity and organic fertilizers. The manures are automatically removed on a daily basis to ensure high level of hygiene and effective odour control. They are then composted inside an anaerobic digester to produce methane gas for electricity generation to power up the farm’s machineries. 

Fun Facts About Eggs

#1 Eggs do not raise blood cholesterol

Egg cholesterol especially in the yolk does not raise blood cholesterol and will not increase the risk of heart disease. This is because eggs only possess a small insignificant amount of bad cholesterol but higher amounts of good cholesterol!

#2 Colour of Egg Shell = Chicken's Breed

As Sum explained, the various egg shell colours are linked to different chicken breeds. The quality of white eggs and brown eggs are similar in nutritional values. In addition, there are no significant difference in quality factors for eggs with pale brown shell, speckled shell, and darker yellow yolks too! 

#3 You Can Measure An Egg's Freshness

The freshness and measure of egg protein quality is determined by the Haugh Unit and is obtained by measuring the thickness of the egg white against the egg’s weight. The higher the Haugh value, the better the quality of the egg which also signifies that higher quality eggs have thicker whites.

Regular Egg Processing Facility

What an honour to have Mr Ma, CEO of N&N Agriculture giving us a briefing before we entered the well-ventilated regular egg processing facility.!

The eggs are transported from the chicken coops to the processing facility. They are then automatically thoroughly washed in warm water, dried, coated, sorted according to sizes, laser marked with the company’s logo and packaged into different egg trays.

Food grade coating on eggs is a crucial step because washing removes the shell’s micro membrane coating and exposes more than 10,000 tiny shell pores to bacteria. In addition, coated eggs maintained higher Haugh units as compared to uncoated eggs over a prolonged period of time.

The impressive robotic arm effectively reduces the manpower labour costs, taking away the back breaking work of transporting heavy egg trays from one location to another.

Here’s a video snippet of the entire egg processing workflow

Pasteurized Egg Processing Facility

The rising number of food poisoning cases related to the Salmonella bacteria has been a worrying trend in Singapore and is generally associated with the consumption of contaminated poultry meat and half boiled or raw eggs.

But fret not! N & N Agriculture has an exclusive right to utilise a multi-patented shell egg pasteurization technology to kill any bacteria such as Salmonella bacteria and bird flu virus that maybe present inside and outside the eggs without cooking it!

This is us, all covered in our hygiene attires before entering the pasteurized egg processing facility!

The 3 step pasteurisation process explained in simple terms.

To put it simply:

1. Nutritious, fresh eggs are carried through a warm water bath, where precise time and temperature standards accurately pasteurise the eggs without altering the wholesome quality and farm fresh flavour.
2. The pasteurised shell eggs are then sealed with a protective food grade coating over the eggs and marked with a ‘P’.      

Are you able to tell the difference between a non-pasteurised egg and a pasteurised egg? Hint: Pasteurised eggs have slightly cloudy whites!

Before It Ends...Yummy Samplings

Pasteurized Soft Boiled Egg (Hanjuku Tamago) has an outer firm texture with yellow yolk oozing out after biting into it. The addition of soya sauce definitely sealed the whole package by amplifying the egg natural flavours. You can find them at 7-Eleven convenience stores island-wide!

Thank you for your active participation in the N&N Agriculture farm tour. We hope you have enjoyed yourself as much as we do! Catch our next insightful blog about Quails on Talking COCK with Uncle William!