INDIANAPOLIS — While federal food safety officials are scrambling to deal with the recall of a half-billion eggs from two Iowa farms, a small state agency housed in a poultry building on a college campus has been quietly tending to the business of egg safety in Indiana.

Over the last year, the three fi eld staff inspectors who work for the Indiana State Egg Board have inspected more than 5,000 egg farms and nearly 1 million eggs, rejecting about one-third of those eggs for failing to meet state and federal standards.

Their mission is to register and regulate every wholesaler and retailer in Indiana that sells or serves eggs.

Late last year, ISEB executive administrator Mark Straw moved to increase fees charged to egg producers and to clarify rules that could give his inspectors more authority.

It was a move supported by the ISEB’s board of directors, who are appointed by the governor and who represent the Indiana egg industry and some of their major consumers.

Straw said their support for food safety is driven by self-interest. Referring to the recent  recall of eggs linked to what the Centers for Disease Control calls the largest outbreak of salmonella-related illnesses in a decade, Straw said: “They know if something happens like this, they could be out of business.”

Housed in the poultry science building at Purdue University, the state egg board was created by state lawmakers in 1939  to  establish standards for egg size and quality.

The egg industry in Indiana has changed significantly since then, with a move toward large-scale farms with tens of thousands of laying hens.

Indiana is now the third largest producer of shell eggs in the U.S., with approximately 23 million laying hens that produce 6 billion eggs a year.

But the fastest growing sector of egg producers in both the U.S. and Indiana are the small-flock producers selling eggs to local retailers and through farmers’ markets. Over the last decade, the egg board has seen an increase of about 80 new small-flock producers a year. In 2009, the number increased by 160.  

Most of Indiana’s egg producers sell less than five cases of eggs, which is 150 dozen, a week. While the state egg board regulates all of them, the new federal egg-safety rules only cover the big producers for now.

Last week, the federal Food and Drug Administration announced plans to inspect all of the country’s largest egg farms by the end of 2011. The inspections are to be conducted as part of new FDA rules that cover large egg producers — those with 50,000 or more hens.  

The rules require those large egg producers to submit to environmental testing designed to detect salmonella, a group of bacteria that’s the most common cause of food poisoning in the U.S.  The new FDA rules will eventually cover producers with 3,000 or more laying hens.

The recent recall has put the Indiana egg industry into a quandary. None of the half-billion recalled eggs originated in Indiana, but they were distributed here to a number of groceries and restaurants.

That’s left industry representatives like Paul Brennan, vice president of the Indiana Poultry Association, having to both defend egg producers and advise consumers to cook their eggs thoroughly, since heat kills bacteria.

It’s advice he’s been issuing long before the latest outbreak, he said. “For the 20 years I’ve been in this job, I’ve been telling people: Cook your food.”

Maureen Hayden is statehouse bureau chief for CNHI’s Indiana newspapers. She can be reached at maureen.hayden@indianamediagroup.com.