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Chickens are commonly contaminated with Salmonella but Foster Farms has a problem at three of its plants, causing an uptick in illnesses, scientists said.

(The Associated Press)

The

warned Foster Farms this week that it intends to suspend production at three of its plants in California over an ongoing Salmonella outbreak traced to raw poultry.

The agency told the company in a notice on Monday that it has not followed food safety measures designed to prevent contamination.

“Your establishment has failed to demonstrate that it has adequate controls in place to address Salmonella in your poultry as evidence by the continuing illness outbreak,” the Notice of Intended Enforcement said.

The

has been tracking the outbreak since March. At least 280 people have been sickened in 17 states, including Oregon, and more than 40 percent have been hospitalized.

The USDA gave Foster Farms three business days, or until Thursday, to fix the problems or face having inspectors pulled and the USDA's stamp of approval withdrawn. Without them, the plants would have to close.

The company did not respond to a request by The Oregonian for comment.

On Monday, the day the notification letter was sent, Foster Farms said in a statement it had bolstered its food safety procedures at the three plants. The company also blamed the outbreak on improperly handled and undercooked chicken.

But the USDA said in the notification letters that tests in September of poultry products at the three plants revealed “a high frequency of Salmonella positives,” particularly strains of Salmonella Heidelberg involved in the outbreak. It said those two factors indicated that the plants "pose a serious ongoing threat to public health."

The USDA requires that producers test raw poultry for Salmonella. It allows up to a 10 percent rate of contamination.

The agency visited the three plants — two in Fresno and another in Livingston — in September and collected samples of whole chickens, poultry parts and chicken tenderloins/strips. The tests showed a 25 percent rate of Salmonella at the two Fresno plants and a 27 percent rate in samples from the Livingston plant.

The letter also said that between January and through September, the USDA had cited Foster Farms 10 times for noncompliance with safety standards after inspectors found "fecal material on carcasses" along with "poor sanitary dressing practices, insanitary food contact surfaces, insanitary nonfood contact surfaces and direct product contamination."

USDA officials also tested samples of poultry from the company's plant in Kelso, Wash., which was implicated in an outbreak that started last year in Oregon and Washington. But the two states were largely spared in the latest outbreak. Foster Farms says it's bolstered its food safety procedures at the Kelso plant, which supplies the Northwest with most of its Foster Farms' poultry.

Federal officials have confirmed more than 400 illnesses in the two outbreaks. That means about about 10,000 people may have been sickened based on a commonly accepted epidemiological multiplier that assumes that for ever known case, 25 other people got sick as well.

The USDA has not ordered a recall, and Foster Farms has not pulled its products from stores. One large retailer, Safeway, has posted Foster Farms' statement to packages of raw chicken in a refrigerator chest.

Consumer Reports, which regularly tests meat and poultry, issued a statement saying it, too, had found the outbreak strain on one sample of Foster Farms chicken. It called on the company to pull its products.

"It is outrageous that Foster Farms has not issued a recall in the face of so many illnesses associated with their product," said Dr. Urvashi Rangan, toxicologist and head of the company's food safety center. "We are calling on Foster Farms and the retail outlets that sell Foster Farms to recall the chicken processed at these plants."

Most of the suspect poultry was shipped to Oregon, Washington and California, which has more than 200 cases. The packages are stamped with the establishment numbers of P6137, P6137A or P7632 inside the USDA mark of inspection.

-- Lynne Terry