It all started last March with a salmonella outbreak that officials traced to Foster Farms chicken. In October, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued an unusual warning about chicken from three of Foster Farms plants in California.

The company issued an apology. It said it had bolstered food safety measures. But people kept getting sick, with nearly 500 illnesses to date.

Foster Farms did not issue a recall, and the USDA did not press for one. Officials said they lack authority to ban salmonella on raw chicken. They said the bacteria were "naturally occurring" in healthy chickens and that all the public had to do was follow good hygiene in the kitchen and cook poultry thoroughly. They also said it would be impossible to get rid of salmonella in poultry.

While reporting on this story, the late William Keene, senior epidemiologist at Oregon Public Health, told me that Denmark had done just that. Talk to a food safety specialist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Keene said. He's Danish. He'll tell you.

That phone call and subsequent emails led to months of reporting, with many early morning calls from Portland to Copenhagen. It was not easy to get people to call back. It was even more difficult to obtain photos. But in the end, I interviewed key players, from scientists, to leaders in industry, researchers and a food safety manger at the country's biggest retailer.

The story is a long one that we've broken up into parts:

The first part

The second part

The third part

The fourth part

Timeline:

For those that have time to

As readers, we'd like your feedback. Do you think that Denmark should be a model for the U.S.? Is it possible to eliminate salmonella from poultry in the U.S.?

-- Lynne Terry