With bad eggs around, you might expect something of a stink, but the American Egg Board’s smart use of social media during the US egg recall is producing the sweet smell of a PR success.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is recalling vast quantities of eggs amid a large-scale salmonella outbreak in the United States, but it doesn’t seem to be causing too much negative chatter online – on Facebook and Twitter the most popular conversations are those encouraging the purchase of local eggs.

The American Egg Board, the principle industry body, has responded by directing traffic to its new egg safety site, which gives tips, up-to-date announcements on the recall and directs people to its social media outlets. Its Twitter and Facebook pages are, in turn, directing people back to the site and are providing trending announcements for the public.

Granted, there doesn’t seem to be anything overly exciting about the AEB Twitter page, but at least the Twitter panic seems to be contained.

It’s a far cry from the way the auto companies handled recent recalls. When Toyota held a hybrid recall back in March, it slowly rolled out “we care about you” videos on its YouTube channel that nobody really watched and failed to put anybody at ease.