An ad hoc group on food security appointed by the Macao Special Administrative Region government on Monday confirmed that they had not found evidence for previous media reports that eggs sold in Macao contain abnormal elements.

Supermarkets in Macao are under close scrutiny.

Last week, local broadcaster TDM reported that a pregnant woman in Macao claimed to eat six suspected artificial eggs bought from local market, which had rubber-like yolks. She said she was even more convinced that the eggs were problematic after watching a TV news report about fake eggs found in China's Fujian Province. The eggs she ate were imported from Hubei Province.

Fake egges were found years ago in Beijing.

However, the ad hoc group found, through experiment, that yolk will become "elastic" and "larger", when being cooked, if the eggs were previously stored in below-centigrade-zero environments and shaken for a certain period of time. The group has taken samples from local stores and markets for tests.

Previously, an official from Macao's Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau said it had received 10 reports of suspected fake eggs since January, according to a report by the South China Morning Post.

Suspected fake eggs were firstly discovered in Xiamen, a coastal city in Fujian, when a local person bought some from a street vendor and found the yolks could bounce like ping-pong ball after being cooked, according to media reports.

The ad hoc group said that they had found no problem concerning the wholesale process of eggs in the local market, but the mark of batch number and date printed on the shell of some eggs were not up to the national standard.

It also said that further investigation on the retail of eggs in Macao had been launched as the group did not rule out the possibility of artificial eggs being imported into local market.

(Xinhua News Agency February 24, 2009)