Oregon Public Broadcasting

The national outbreak of salmonella related illnesses has sickened 575 people and is blamed for eight deaths. It’s been linked to peanut butter and peanut paste made at a Peanut Corporation of America processing plant in Georgia.

Public health officials have been urging people not to consume foods with peanut butter or peanut paste if they don’t know exactly where the peanut products came from.

So what should you do if you suspect you’ve consumed contaminated food? Should you call your local public health department? Should you take in your suspect food in for testing?

Havanna Nasserghandi suspects she contracted salmonella last month.

She says she got it after eating Kung Pao chicken at a Longview restaurant. She says the meal gave her severe cramps and horrible diarrhea.

So Nasserghandi called the Cowlitz County Health Department and told them she still had her leftovers if they wanted to test them for salmonella.

Havanna Nasserghandi “They said if we don’t call you back, we don’t want the food. Which I found really ridiculous because that would have been the sure-fire proof. I had the exact leftovers of what I didn’t completely finish. And they never called me back.”

Dr. Gary Oxman is the lead public health officer for Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas Counties in Oregon.

He says it’s common for people to ask if they should bring potentially contaminated food into county health departments for testing.

Gary Oxman: “They’re well intended in doing that. But when we investigate things, we really don’t ever test foods that somebody has already brought home because there’s opportunities for it to be contaminated in the home setting or in transport.”

Oxman says instead of bringing in your suspect food, get yourself to a doctor. He says often the food you suspect isn’t what caused the illness.

Gary Oxman: “Usually these things take 24-72 or 96 hours to incubate, depending on what the germ is. But people usually think it’s the last thing they ate -- it’s just very normal human behavior to do that.”

Salmonella is usually diagnosed by culture of a stool sample.  Which means your doctor will test you—not your food—for infection.

And if they find salmonella, healthcare providers in Oregon are required by law to report it to the Oregon Public Health Division within one working day of diagnosis.

Public health officials do run a 24-hour hotline for reporting food illness complaints in the Portland metro area.

However that hotline is designed to prevent disease outbreaks at restaurants or public venues, not for reporting individual illnesses contracted by food you’ve already brought home.

There are eleven documented cases of salmonella in Oregon connected to the current peanut product outbreak.

More than 1300 peanut products have been recalled because of possible salmonella contamination.

The complete list of these recalled products can be found on the FDA website.