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Federal Judge Halts Plans to Start Horse Slaughters

August 2, 2013 by

Judge Christina Armijo of Federal District Court issued a restraining order in a lawsuit brought by the Humane Society of the United States and other groups in a case that has set off an emotional national debate about how best to deal with the tens of thousands of unwanted and abandoned horses across the country.

Judge Armijo scheduled another hearing for Monday in the lawsuit. The move stops what would have been the resumption of horse slaughters for the first time in seven years in the United States.

The groups contend the Department of Agriculture failed to do the proper environmental studies before issuing permits that allowed the companies to open horse slaughterhouses, which they had said they planned to open as soon as Monday.

The horse meat would be exported for human consumption and for use as zoo and other animal food.

The Valley Meat Company of Roswell, N.M., has been at the fore of the fight, pushing for more than a year for permission to convert its cattle plant into a horse slaughterhouse.

The Agriculture Department in June gave the company the go-ahead to begin slaughtering horses. Federal officials said they were legally obligated to issue the permits, even though the Obama administration opposes horse slaughter and is seeking to reinstate a Congressional ban that was lifted in 2011.

Another permit was later approved for Responsible Transportation in Sigourney, Iowa.

The move has divided horse rescue and animal welfare groups, ranchers, politicians and American Indian tribes about what is the most humane way to deal with the country’s horse overpopulation.

Some American Indian tribes, including the Navajo and Yakama nations, are among those who are pushing to let the companies open. They say the exploding horse populations on their reservations are trampling and overgrazing rangelands, decimating forage resources for cattle and causing environmental damage.

On the other side, the actor Robert Redford, former Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, current Gov. Susana Martinez and the attorney general, Gary King, are among those who strongly oppose a return to domestic horse slaughter, citing the animals’ longtime role as companion animals in the West.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/business/federal-judge-halts-plans-to-start-horse-slaughters.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Horse Meat Processing Applicant’s Food Safety Is Questioned

March 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The complaints raise questions about whether the Agriculture Department, which oversees meat processing, will approve the company’s application. Under the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the grounds around a meat processing plant “must be maintained to prevent conditions that could lead to insanitary conditions, adulteration of product, or interfere with inspection.”

Catherine Cochran, a spokeswoman for the U.S.D.A., said the department cannot comment on pending applications.

The complaints included a 2010 letter to state health officials from an Agriculture Department inspector reporting that piles of animal remains were as high as 15 feet high along the back property line of the plant. “I am told that during fly season the pile literally moves due to maggots,” wrote Ron C. Nelson, the district manager for the department’s Food Safety Inspection Service in Denver, who took pictures of what he saw.

A. Blair Dunn, a lawyer for the company, Valley Meat, said many of the complaints, documented in e-mails and letters obtained by Front Range Equine Rescue, an advocacy group that opposes horse slaughter, were false.

“These groups have been saying all of these horrible things about my clients, and none of it was ever true,” Mr. Dunn said. “If you’re trying to make a point and keep something from opening, you have to be a little sensational.”

He said the owners of the company in Roswell, N.M., Sarah and Ricardo de los Santos, had been struggling financially because of the sharp drop in beef cattle prices over the last three years and could not afford to have the compost and other waste hauled from the facility. In an e-mail, Mr. Dunn said there were never any environmental concerns or health hazards at the site.

However, Auralie Ashley-Marx, chief of the solid waste bureau of the New Mexico Environment Department, called Mr. Dunn’s assessment “factually inaccurate,” saying that after three inspections of the site in 2010, the department had issued a “notice of violation” listing Valley Meat’s failure to register as a composting facility and to properly dispose of waste, as well as the improper composting of offal.

Valley Meat’s application to begin slaughtering horses for human consumption, has created a furor. Horse slaughtering was effectively banned in the United States until 2011, when language prohibiting the financing of inspections of horse meat facilities fell out of an appropriations bill.

Since then, the U.S.D.A. has received applications from six companies seeking permission to start slaughtering horses, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Bruce A. Wagman, a lawyer for Front Range. In addition to Valley Meat, facilities in Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Rockville and Gallatin, Mo., have sought U.S.D.A. approval, Mr. Wagman said.

On Wednesday, Senator Mary Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana; Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina; Representative Patrick Meehan, Republican of Pennsylvania; and Representative Jan Schakowsky Democrat of Illinois, introduced a bill to prohibit horse slaughter for human consumption and forbid the transport of horses across the border for slaughter in other countries.

The recent uproar over horse meat began in Europe earlier this year when trace amounts were found in products labeled 100 percent beef. Major food companies and restaurant chains, like Nestlé and Taco Bell, pulled products off shelves and tables in 14 countries.

In describing the series of events involving Valley Meat, Ms. Ashley-Marx said her department’s inspections were prompted by the letter Dr. Nelson of the inspection service sent to the New Mexico health department on Jan. 22, 2010, after a visit he had made to the plant earlier that month.

“Approximately 200 yards behind the facility, Mr. de los Santos drags dead cattle (mostly old dairy cows) and piles them on a concrete pad where he leaves them to rot,” Dr. Nelson wrote. “He calls it composting, but by all appearances rotting would be more accurate.”

Dr. Nelson, who is a veterinarian, said his concern was that materials that could cause bovine spongiform encephalitis, known commonly as mad cow disease, could find their way into the soil and feed.

Mr. Dunn disputed Dr. Nelson’s findings, saying, “Let’s get the facts straight — there never was this mountain of dead, rotting animals.” He added that his clients had been working with state officials to remove the remains.

Ms. Ashley-Marx said she had not seen any carcasses, either, when she and a colleague visited the site about four months after Dr. Nelson wrote his letter. But she said the agency had identified other problems. The company did not have state permission to compost its waste materials and did not know how to properly compost animal tissue, a method called mortality composting.

Wrangling between the company and state and federal officials over permits and proper waste disposal of animal carcasses continued until last August, when New Mexico officials fined Valley Meat $86,400, the maximum penalty it can impose. The fine was later reduced to $5,000, after the company attracted new investors who helped it pay to clear the animal compost piles off its site.

Mr. Dunn blamed New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez’s opposition to horse slaughter for some of his client’s problems. “Everything was moving along just fine until she got involved, and now it’s all become political,” he said.

Jim Winchester, a spokesman for the Environment Department, denied political influence had any bearing on the state’s actions against Valley Meat.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/business/horse-meat-processing-applicants-food-safety-is-questioned.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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U.S.D.A. May Approve Horse Slaughter Plant

March 1, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The plant, in Roswell, N.M., is owned by Valley Meat Company, which sued the U.S.D.A. and its Food Safety and Inspection Service last fall over the lack of inspection services for horses going to slaughter. Horse meat cannot be processed for human consumption in the United States without inspection by the U.S.D.A., so horses destined for that purpose have been shipped to places like Mexico and Canada for slaughter.

Justin DeJong, a spokesman for the agriculture department, said that “several” companies had asked the agency to re-establish inspection of horses for slaughter. “These companies must still complete necessary technical requirements and the F.S.I.S. must complete its inspector training,” he wrote in an e-mail referring to the food inspection service.

He said the Obama administration was urging Congress to reinstate an effective ban on the production of horse meat for human consumption that lapsed in 2011.

The impending approval comes amid growing concern among American consumers that horse meat will somehow make its way into ground beef products in the United States as it has done in Europe. Major companies, including Tesco, Nestlé and Ikea, have had to pull food from shelves in 14 countries after tests showed that products labeled 100 percent beef actually contained small amounts of horse meat. Horse meat is not necessarily unsafe, and in some countries, it is popular. But some opponents of horse slaughtering say consumption of horse meat is ill-advised because of the use of various kinds of drugs in horses.

“We now have the very real prospect of a horse slaughtering plant operating in the U.S. for the first time in six years,” said Wayne Pacelle, chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States. The last plant that slaughtered horse meat for human consumption in the United States closed in 2007, after Congressional approval of an appropriations bill that included a rider forbidding the U.S.D.A. from financing the inspection of such meat. That rider was renewed in subsequent appropriations bills until 2011, when Congress quietly removed it from an omnibus spending act.

That opened the door for a renewal of the horse slaughter business, but only if the U.S.D.A. re-established inspections. The agency never moved to restart its equine inspection service.

Valley Meat sued Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, and Al Almanza, the head of the food safety inspection service, charging that the department’s failure to offer inspection of horse meat violated the Federal Meat Inspection Act.

That law directs the agriculture department to appoint inspectors to examine “all amenable species” before they enter a slaughtering facility.

“Amenable species” were animals subject to the act the day before it was enacted, including cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, horses and mules.

A. Blair Dunn, the lawyer for Valley Meat, said that the Justice Department recently asked the company for an additional 60 days to file a response to its lawsuit. Mr. Dunn said the Justice Department indicated it was asking for the extra time because “the U.S.D.A. plans to issue a grant of inspection within that time, which would allow my clients to begin operations.” Mr. Dunn said that Valley Meat had hired experts in the humane treatment of horses for slaughter and was training employees. The company is not planning to sell meat in the United States, at least at the outset of its operations. “Last spring, they were in discussions with several companies in European countries about exporting their products,” he said of his clients. “I’m sure if markets do develop in this country for horse meat for human consumption, they will look at them.”

He cautioned that Valley Meat might still face challenges to opening, noting that several parties had filed briefs on both sides of the case. The Humane Society has petitioned the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration to delay approval of any facility for horse slaughter, raising questions about the presence of drugs like phenylbutazone, which is used to treat inflammation in horses.

Conversely, R-CALF USA, an organization representing about 5,000 family cattle ranching operations, has filed a brief supporting Valley Meat’s legal case. Bill Bullard, its chief executive, said his members needed horse slaughtering facilities to humanely dispose of the horses they used in their businesses once they became old or incapacitated.

“Beginning in 2006, when inspections were temporarily prohibited, these U.S. horses continue to be slaughtered in foreign countries like Mexico and Canada,” Mr. Bullard said. “We believe the Mexicans do not adhere to the same humane standards as in the United States, and so some of our members won’t sell their horses.”

Mr. Pacelle said he had been surprised to see anyone from the beef industry supporting horse slaughter. “For the cattle industry, it is a self-destructive move, since the more horse meat that’s circulating, the greater the chance it will infiltrate the food supply and decrease consumer confidence in beef,” he said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/business/usda-may-approve-horse-slaughter-plant.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Concerns Raised about Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes

October 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Researchers on Sunday reported initial signs of success from the first release into the environment of mosquitoes engineered to pass a lethal gene to their offspring, killing them before they reach adulthood.

The results, and other work elsewhere, could herald an age in which genetically modified insects will be used to help control agricultural pests and insect-borne diseases like dengue fever and malaria.

But the research is arousing concern about possible unintended effects on public health and the environment, because once genetically modified insects are released, they cannot be recalled.

Authorities in the Florida Keys, which in 2009 experienced its first cases of dengue fever in decades, hope to conduct an open-air test of the modified mosquitoes as early as December, pending approval from the Agriculture Department.

“It’s a more ecologically friendly way to control mosquitoes than spraying insecticides,” said Coleen Fitzsimmons, a spokeswoman for the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District.

The Agriculture Department, meanwhile, is looking at using genetic engineering to help control farm pests like the Mediterranean fruit fly, or medfly, and the cotton-munching pink bollworm, according to an environmental impact statement it published in 2008. Millions of genetically engineered bollworms have been released over cotton fields in Yuma County, Ariz.

Yet even supporters of the research worry it could provoke a public reaction similar to the one that has limited the acceptance of genetically modified crops. In particular, critics say that Oxitec, the British biotechnology company that developed the dengue-fighting mosquito, has rushed into field testing without sufficient review and public consultation, sometimes in countries with weak regulations.

“Even if the harms don’t materialize, this will undermine the credibility and legitimacy of the research enterprise,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, professor of international health law at Georgetown University.

The first release, which was discussed in a scientific paper published online on Sunday by the journal Nature Biotechnology, took place in the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean in 2009 and caught the international scientific community by surprise. Oxitec has subsequently released the modified mosquitoes in Malaysia and Brazil.

Luke Alphey, the chief scientist at Oxitec, said the company had left the review and community outreach to authorities in the host countries.

“They know much better how to communicate with people in those communities than we do coming in from the U.K.” he said.

Dr. Alphey was a zoology researcher at Oxford before co-founding Oxitec in 2002. The company has raised about $24 million from investors, including Oxford, he said. A major backer is East Hill Advisors, which is run by the New England businessman Landon T. Clay, former chief executive of Eaton Vance, an investment management firm.

Oxitec says its approach is an extension of a technique used successfully for decades to suppress or even eradicate pests, which involves the release of millions of sterile insects that mate with wild ones, producing no offspring.

But the technique has not been successfully used for mosquitoes, in part because the radiation usually used to sterilize the insects also injures them, making it difficult for them to compete for mates against wild counterparts.

Oxitec has created Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the species that is the main transmitter of the dengue and yellow fever viruses, containing a gene that will kill them unless they are given tetracycline, a common antibiotic.

In the lab, with tetracycline provided, the mosquitoes can be bred for generations and multiplied. Males are then released into the wild, where tetracycline is not available. They live long enough to mate but their progeny will die before adulthood.

The study published on Sunday looked at how successfully the lab-reared, genetically modified insects could mate. About 19,000 engineered mosquitoes were released over four weeks in 2009 in a 25-acre area on Grand Cayman island.

Based on data from traps, the genetically engineered males accounted for 16 percent of the overall male population in the test zone, and the lethal gene was found in almost 10 percent of larvae. Those figures suggest the genetically engineered males were about half as successful in mating as wild ones, a rate sufficient to suppress the population.

Oxitec has already said a larger trial on Grand Cayman island in 2010 reduced the population of the targeted mosquito by 80 percent for three months. That work has not yet been published.

Dr. Alphey said the technique was safe because only males were released, while only females bite people and spread the disease, adding that it should have little environmental impact. “It’s exquisitely targeted to the specific organism you are trying to take out,” he said.

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E. Coli Ban in Ground Beef to Be Expanded

September 13, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The new rule, which officials said would be announced on Tuesday, means that six relatively rare forms of E. coli will be treated the same as their notorious and more common cousin, a strain called E. coli O157:H7. That strain has caused deaths and illnesses and prompted the recall of millions of pounds of ground beef and other products. It was banned from ground beef in 1994 after an outbreak killed four children and sickened hundreds of people.

“We’re doing this to prevent illness and to save lives,” said Dr. Elisabeth Hagen, the head of food safety for the Agriculture Department, which regulates meat. “This is one of the biggest steps forward in the protection of the beef supply in some time.”

It is not illegal to sell fresh meat or poultry containing most toxic bacteria, like salmonella; they are frequently found on groceries’ meat, and thorough cooking typically kills the pathogens. But since the 1994 outbreak, which involved hamburgers served at Jack in the Box restaurants, regulators have treated E. coli in ground beef differently.

Many people eat rare or undercooked ground beef, and if it is tainted, resulting illnesses can be deadly. Toxic E. coli, in its most common O157 form, is so virulent that just a few organisms can make people violently sick. The toxic E. coli live in the digestive tracts of cows and can get on meat during slaughter. It can cause bloody diarrhea, stomach cramps and, in severe cases, kidney failure.

In recent years, scientists found that several other strains of E. coli in food were also making people sick, and they identified the six most potent, called the Big Six non-O57s. Beginning at least four years ago, the U.S.D.A. began considering extending its ban to those additional toxic strains.

But the American Meat Institute, an industry group, has argued that safety measures already in place are sufficient. On Monday, the group was highly critical of the extended ban.

“Imposing this new regulatory program on ground beef will cost tens of millions of federal and industry dollars — costs that likely will be borne by taxpayers and consumers,” the group said in a statement. “It is neither likely to yield a significant public health benefit nor is it good public policy.”

While several outbreaks caused by the Big Six strains have been linked to produce, the group pointed to the fact that only one has been related to ground beef. In that outbreak, last year, three people fell ill.

“It’s just not supported by the science,” James H. Hodges, the institute’s executive vice president, said in an interview.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that E. coli strains other than O157:H7 cause nearly 113,000 illnesses each year, one-third of which can be attributed to tainted beef, according to U.S.D.A. officials. Until recently, few cases were reported, however, because most medical labs were not equipped to test for the less common forms.

The Agriculture Department will begin enforcing the rule in March, to give the meat industry time to prepare. The rule will apply to hamburger meat and trim or beef scraps that go into it, as well as some other products, like steaks that have been tenderized with machines that use needles to poke minute holes in the surface. Some meat processors have begun to test for the six strains in recent months in anticipation of federal action, and many others will most likely begin testing once the government begins its own testing.

Under the rule, raw meat containing the Big Six E. coli cannot be sold to the public. Currently, most packing plants divert meat containing E. coli O157:H7 for use in cooked products, and will most likely do the same with meat containing the new strains, as well. The bacteria is killed by heating the meat to 160 degrees.

While the new rule significantly expands the Agriculture Department’s beef ban, it does not include all forms of toxic E. coli. A highly virulent strain of the bacteria that caused dozens of deaths among people who ate contaminated sprouts in Europe this summer is not one of the Big Six because it has not been detected as a cause of illness in the United States.

Dr. Hagen said the list of banned pathogens might grow. “This is where we started and it doesn’t rule out the possibility that we would consider other pathogens in the future,” she said.

The new rule highlighted the patchwork and often confusing nature of food safety regulation, where most meat is under the jurisdiction of the U.S.D.A. while most other foods, including produce, are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. The F.D.A. already considers it illegal to sell food containing any bacteria, including toxic forms of E. coli or other substances that could make people sick.

Dr. Hagen also said the rule did not conflict with the Obama administration’s push to cut back on regulation that could increase costs for business at a time of economic hardship.

“There’s really no inconsistency between having a strong economy and having a safe food supply,” Dr. Hagen said. The U.S.D.A. estimated that the rule would cost the industry up to $10 million a year for testing and holding meat back from the fresh ground beef market.

“The amount this is going to cost is insignificant compared to the lives that will be saved,” said Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, who pushed for the expanded rule.

After the U.S.D.A. banned the O157 form of E. coli from ground beef in 1994, the meat industry sued to block the move, but the agency prevailed in court.

Mr. Hodges, of the meat institute, said the group had yet to see a full version of the rule and would consult with its members before deciding how to respond.

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Crop Yield Raises Risk to Food Cost

August 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Futures prices for those important crops jumped on Thursday, and commodities experts said that would lead to higher prices for manufacturers and consumers.

“The message, based on today’s report, is these higher costs should not be expected to abate any time soon,” said Bill G. Lapp, president of Advanced Economic Solutions, a commodity consulting firm that works with restaurant companies and food manufacturers. “It implies higher cost forthcoming and subsequent margin pressure, and at some point the need to increase prices at the retail level or on the menus.”

The Agriculture Department’s production and supply and demand reports, including information from a survey of farmers and visits to fields, predicted a national average corn yield of 153 bushels an acre, down from nearly 159 bushels in the government’s previous forecast. The department also predicted a small drop in the number of acres of corn that would be harvested this fall.

Hot temperatures and below average rainfall will lower yields, the report said. The dry, hot weather increases stress on the corn plant and keeps it from channeling an optimal amount of energy into the formation of kernels, according to Joel C. Widenor, a meteorologist with the Commodity Weather Group, an agricultural consulting firm.

Mr. Widenor said July was the hottest in the Corn Belt states since 1955. It was the fourth-hottest July in the prime corn-growing region in the last 117 years, he said.

The irony in the new forecast was that it still called for a total corn harvest near record levels. Farmers responded to high price expectations this spring by greatly increasing corn acreage, but an extremely large crop was needed to make up for depleted stockpiles which have been reduced by high demand for corn for animal feed and ethanol production. The coming crop will not be big enough to do that, so corn prices will stay high, pushing up prices for other grains, like wheat, as well.

The Agriculture Department’s reports also lowered the forecast for soybean yield and the total soybean harvest.

“The extreme blowtorch of heat this summer took our yield down,” said Don Roose, president of U.S. Commodities, an Iowa commodities broker and consulting firm. “The wet weather we had early took our harvested acres down. Between the two of them we’re in a situation where now we have to ration supplies.”

December corn futures on the Chicago Board of Trade opened by jumping 30 cents, the maximum daily increase allowed, to $7.18 a bushel. Trading ended the day at $7.14. Soybean futures for the November contract opened at $13.53 a bushel, an increase of $0.52. The contract closed at $13.32. Wheat prices also rose, with the September futures contract on the Kansas City Board of Trade closing at $8.08 a bushel, a gain of $0.23.

“The markets over the past couple of weeks have been trying to figure out which is dropping faster, supply or demand,” said Chad E. Hart, an assistant professor of economics at Iowa State University. He said the U.S.D.A. reports, including the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates known as Wasde, provided an answer: “What the Wasde report said is, supply.”

High commodity prices will translate into higher meat prices because the cost of feeding cattle, pigs and poultry with grain will go up, forcing producers to raise fewer animals.

And pasta prices will be pushed up because the crop of durum wheat, the variety used to make pasta, is forecast to be almost half as big as last year’s, because of flooding in North Dakota.

The average retail pasta price is currently $1.53 a pound, according to the National Pasta Association, a trade group, and Walter N. George, president of the American Italian Pasta Company, said that may eventually increase by 10 to 20 cents.

“The shopper may see slightly higher prices at retail, and over the course of the next 18 months should see those prices begin to come to more normal levels given a replenishment of the durum stocks,” he said.

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Turkey Plant May Be Salmonella Link

August 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Federal officials said on Tuesday that they were investigating an apparent link between ground turkey meat and a nationwide outbreak of salmonella illness that has so far killed one person in California and sickened at least 76 more people in 26 states.

No meat has yet been recalled. Federal officials said the evidence found so far pointed to a single ground turkey factory, but they declined to identify it or the company involved.

However, the meat processor Cargill said that it had been contacted by the Agriculture Department and asked to provide information as part of the salmonella investigation.

“We are cooperating with the agency’s ongoing investigation into the source of the illnesses,” Mike Martin, a Cargill spokesman, said in an e-mail message. Food safety advocates said the outbreak was particularly alarming because it involved a strain of salmonella that is resistant to antibiotics. Salmonella illnesses can cause diarrhea, stomach cramps and fever. Many cases do not require treatment with antibiotics, but resistance to the drugs can make severe cases more difficult to treat.

“In the past, U.S.D.A. has acted promptly to recall products when they find outbreaks from antibiotic-resistant salmonella, and it’s urgent that they identify the company and issue a recall here in order to better protect the public,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group.

Neil Gaffney, a U.S.D.A. spokesman, said in an e-mail that so far, there was not enough evidence that “conclusively links these illnesses to any specific product or establishment. Without specific enough data, it would not be appropriate to issue a recall notice.”

Ground turkey is a popular substitute for ground beef for grilled burgers. Ms. Smith DeWaal said that many people might have turned to ground turkey because they think it is healthier or safer than ground beef, which has been associated with illness outbreaks caused by E. coli, also bacteria.

But poultry poses its own risks. Last year, the U.S.D.A. found that 10 percent of ground turkey samples that it tested contained salmonella. Just 2 percent of ground beef samples contained the bacteria, while 19 percent of ground chicken samples were contaminated with the pathogen.

“Ground poultry meat is among the most contaminated products, and consumers really need to understand the importance of thorough cooking and proper handling,” Ms. Smith DeWaal said.

It is not illegal to sell meat contaminated with salmonella; cooking the meat thoroughly can destroy the pathogen.

Last Friday, the U.S.D.A. issued an alert warning consumers to fully cook ground turkey. It said that the meat should be cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees and that consumers should check the temperature with a thermometer rather than rely on instructions that tell how many minutes a product should be cooked.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said that people began falling sick in early March with a strain of the bacteria known as Salmonella Heidelberg. Illnesses have been reported in 26 states.

The California Department of Public Health said that one person in Sacramento County died after being infected.

The C.D.C. said that nearly half of the ill people interviewed by investigators reported eating food made from ground turkey in the days before they became sick.

The agency also said that four ground turkey samples tested as part of a routine nationwide sampling program were found to be contaminated with a strain of salmonella that had a genetic fingerprint that matched the outbreak strain. Three of those samples, bought at food stores, came from a single processing plant. Officials were working to identify the origin of the fourth sample.

William E. Keene, a senior epidemiologist at the Oregon Public Health Division, said it was significant that there had been one to 11 new cases reported each week since early March. He said that suggested there was a serious problem at the processing plant, rather than an isolated lot that got contaminated.

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