Before gobbling your gobbler, take care

NEW YORK — There’s no reason to skip Thanksgiving dinner because of a salmonella outbreak linked to raw turkey.

That’s according to health officials who’ve been monitoring the year-old outbreak. But reminder you to properly prepare your holiday bird. Cooking kills salmonella.

According to the USDA, the people who got food poisoning reported eating different kinds of turkey products and brands. Cases also included people who handled raw turkey pet food or worked with live turkeys.

Salmonella spreads through animal feces. It is blamed for an estimated 1 million cases of food poisoning a year, with symptoms including diarrhea, vomiting and stomach cramps. Whether someone gets sick depends on the strength of the strain, the amount and the person’s susceptibility, the USDA notes. But the agency says cooking should kill salmonella.

The USDA tied one illness in Arizona to Jennie-O ground turkey meat. The recall by JennieO was limited to turkey from a single day’s production in September from a manufacturing line in Wisconsin. The packages had use-by dates of early October but could still be in freezers.

Regulators say more products from other companies could still be linked to the illnesses. Parent company Hormel Foods Corp. said it owns five of the 29 plants that tested positive for the germ.

The ongoing outbreak doesn’t necessarily mean there’s more food poisoning from salmonella. Improved detection might just be discovering outbreaks that in the past might have seemed like unrelated cases, said Sarah Sorscher of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

“It’s shedding a light on a longstanding problem,” she said.

Health officials say proper handling and cooking should kill any salmonella. A few points to remember:

■ It seems counterintuitive, but don’t rinse raw turkey — that can spread any germs.

■ Clean hands and cooking surfaces that come into contact with raw turkey.

■ Cook birds to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees.

Hormel’s Richard Carlson stressed salmonella in turkey is not unusual and that proper handling and cooking should get rid of it — even in the JennieO ground turkey recalled last week. Regulators, though, say to throw it out.