Busting the 'egg scandal' wide open.

These eggs were not broken to make an omelet.

Recently, Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, both located in lovable Iowa, have come under fire for "poisoning" the public with salmonella from their eggs. An egg source for 13 different retail brands, this news has rocked supermarkets nationally, and an even wider recall might be in the works.

"The history of ignoring the law makes the sickening of 1,300 and the forced recall of 550 million eggs shockingly understandable," says William D. Marler, a Seattle attorney representing someone who became ill from a 'dangerous' egg salad. (They're all dangerous in my opinion, especially on a hot day).

The numbers above got me wondering. What proportion of the recalled eggs were contaminated with salmonella? If 550,000,000 eggs resulted in 1,300 people becoming sick, the chance of any one egg making someone ill is .000236% . Eat a whole dozen, and your odds skyrocket to .0028%, a roughly one-in-35,000 chance of becoming ill from a tainted egg.

Surely, if you're one of those 1,300 people, hearing the numbers won't cure your stomach-ache and flu symptoms, but it should be reassuring for the other 99.99% of the population. Salmonella can be dangerous for the very young and very old, but many cases are so mild they aren't even reported.