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BY TRACY PFEIFFER

ANCHOR MEGAN MURPHY

You're watching multisource U.S news analysis from Newsy.

Salmonella is one of the more common food-borne illnesses in the United States -- but a recent outbreak linked to ground turkey has the public looking for answers.

GULSTAN DART, KCRA: “Tainted ground turkey meat is being blamed for 77 cases of salmonella poisoning across the country, and one death in Sacramento county, but health officials don’t know yet exactly where the meat’s coming from.”

DANIELLE LEIGH, KCRA:“Health officials have been searching for the source of the outbreak since March, but as of tonight, there’s still no recall.”

And as ABC’s Dan Harris reports -- this outbreak could be particularly dangerous.

DAN HARRIS, ABC: “Making matters worse, this is a strain of salmonella which is called Heidelberg, that is resistant to several forms of antibiotics, which means it can be difficult, if not impossible to treat... It can be deadly, especially for people who have weak immune systems like the elderly and infants.”

One food litigation lawyer tells the LA Times -- keeping a lid on information could put the public at even higher risk.

“As this is an ongoing outbreak, this is likely a frozen product people have in their freezers ... What FSIS should be saying is, ‘Don’t eat frozen turkey products until we know what products are safe and what aren’t.’ They’re not telling the public anything that they can use to help protect themselves.”

A writer for TIME’s Ecocentric blog says -- although the government shouldn’t be given a free pass, it is very difficult to track an outbreak of this nature.

“Epidemiologists have to depend on victims accurately remembering where and what they ate before they get sick, and confirming a single case of contamination can take weeks. Ground meat can be particularly dangerous—a single package of ground beef or turkey can actually contain meat from different animals and different slaughterhouses...”

And a reporter for WLKY highlights how geographically spread the reported cases have been -- possibly making the investigation even more complex.

ERIC KING, WLKY: “This is an odd one, because typically when there is an outbreak of this nature, there’s some rhyme or reason to it -- you can kind of track where it is. But in this case, that’s not what’s happening at all. Take a look -- here’s a map of the United States. You can see some different shades of green. What it’s showing is, the darker green states have higher concentrations or more numbers of salmonella poisoning.”

TIME reports - salmonella infects some 1.4 million people in the United States each year, and approximately 400 die from it. Health officials say it is okay to eat ground turkey tainted with salmonella -- as long as it is completely cooked. 

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