It's not really about eggs, but reusing protein material that has folded incorrectly.
Eggs don't need to be refrigerated BUT only if they have never been refrigerated. So, if you take an egg straight from the nest, for example, you don't need to refrigerate it, and it will keep for a long time – definitely weeks, maybe even months, I don't know.
However, once an egg has been refrigerated, their natural protective coating, the cuticle, starts drying out. Also, most commercial egg processors wash eggs, mostly to make them look cleaner but also, in theory, to remove salmonella. So, between the washing and the dry refrigerator environment, that cuticle is mostly gone by the time it gets to the supermarket. When you take a cold egg and leave it out at room temperature, it begins to sweat, which facilitates the growth of bacteria that could contaminate the egg.
In summary, yes, fresh from the farm eggs, can be left out at room temperature. Refrigerated supermarket eggs should be kept in the fridge or used the same day they are taken out of the fridge – ideally within 2 hours.
Eggs last maybe 5 weeks after sell by date. It's great that you haven't had any problems, but don't forget that salmonella will be more severe for children or old people. Salmonella can, rarely, kill vulnerable people. "salmonellosis continues to be an important cause of preventable death [...]" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/20617938/
CDC estimated in 2005 that there were maybe 1.4m to 4m infections in the US, with about 500 to 600 deaths.
http://www.cfsph.iastate.edu/Factsheets/pdfs/nontyphoidal_sa...
> Eggs are handled differently in the EU and US meaning safe handling at home is different.
Not exactly. The chickens are handled differently. In the EU they immunize them from salmonella. (But in most other countries in the world they don't, and they don't refrigerate either.)
The whole washing the egg part is a red herring in a very nice article - but it actually makes no difference.
To deal with salmonella just cook the eggs. And I would not use a raw egg even if it was refrigerated. If I wanted raw egg for a dish I would get pasteurized eggs.
> Eggs last maybe 5 weeks after sell by date.
No, they last for several months. As in they don't spoil. The egg is lower quality though, but that only matter for some dishes.
USDA statistics from 1996 on salmonella in eggs put it at 1:10,000 to 1:20,000 chance of an egg being infected. It's a case of odds, and how you cook the eggs. If you're taking a dozen eggs and making mayo from scratch, then making 100 sandwiches in a cafeteria, the odds are sufficiently high that once a year you're going to make everyone sick. If you're making sunny-side up eggs, the yolk won't get heated enough to pasteurize it, but the impact is at least greatly reduced. If you're properly scrambling the eggs, then yes, they get hot enough to reduce the pathogen count to be a non-issue.
Egg's are washed which results in the membrane on the outside being removed. This allows easier access for bacteria if not refrigerated.
Actually it definitely is true. In most countries in the world except the US eggs are not refrigerated at all.
You probably had some broken eggs, or an egg had broken in the past and was never fully cleaned. The unbroken eggs were fine, but the smell from the broken ones was getting into them.