Foodborne illnesses and your Thanksgiving dinner. What to know.

As a food safety attorney who handles cases of E. coli, salmonella, and campylobacter outbreaks, Bill Marler thinks about food, a lot, especially around foodie holidays like Thanksgiving.

"Do not, under any circumstance, wash your turkey," Marler told KUOW's Seattle Now. "Don’t do that. You really have to treat poultry like it’s contaminated, because it likely is."

That's also the advice from the USDA, which notes that it's nearly impossible to wash bacteria off of a turkey. What will likely happen is you will splash and spray your kitchen and contaminate your home.

Most meat foodborne illnesses in the USA are caused by poultry with salmonella and campylobacter. Marler notes that, unlike hamburgers, contaminated poultry can still knowingly be sold on the market.

Marler also recommends cooking stuffing outside the bird, not stuffed inside as the name implies. Undercooked meat is another issue that keeps him up at night. Add all this up, and that is why Marler cooks his turkey outdoors.

The USDA says the minimum safe cooking temperature for a turkey is 165 degrees Fahrenheit with a minimum oven temperature of 325 degrees.

What's will all the foodborne illness outbreaks these day?

Aside from undercooked meat, Marler says he doesn't eat sushi or sprouts. And he especially doesn't eat processed fruits and vegetables, which have recently become a problem around the United States.

“I’ve been doing this kind of work for 31 years, since the Jack in the Box outbreak, and even I feel a little exhausted by the last couple of months,” Marler said. “I’ve been speaking to a lot of people who have lost their husband, lost their wife, lost their parents. It’s just a terrible thing.”

Contaminated onions in McDonald's burgers caused a 13-state E. coli outbreak that included Washington in October. Washington was also part of an 18-state E. coli outbreak in November. In August, E. coli tainted Wagu beef in Montana, sickened 14, and killed one person. More than 100 people got sick in St. Louis from E. coli after eating salads from a caterer who served schools and funerals. And summer kicked off with a listeria outbreak among Boar's Head deli meats.

Even Marler has to admit that it feels like there are a lot more foodborne illness outbreaks these days, but he also says there's some nuance in the numbers. Back in 1992, the infamous Jack in the Box salmonella outbreak sickened more than 700 people, and four kids died. Large outbreaks like that don't happen as often anymore, largely because public health has gotten much better at genetic sequencing that can track outbreaks more efficiently.

“About the same number of people are getting E. coli, about the same number of people are getting salmonella, and campylobacter than they did 30 years ago," Marler said. "The mix of what is sickening us has changed. From about 1993 to 2000-ish, about 99% of my work was E. coli cases linked to hamburger. During that timeframe, the government banned E. coli out of hamburger. It’s kind of a crazy thing that in 1993 you could knowingly sell E. coli-contaminated hamburger to the public … when they banned it, the industry eventually stepped up, and I was out of the meat business. What has happened is it has shifted to leafy greens, and it’s shifted to environmental contamination events, which have become unfortunately more frequent."

While knowingly selling contaminated beef has been banned, that's isn't true for poultry. Marler says a large share of U.S. outbreaks are currently caused by poultry. Fruits and vegetable outbreaks also have become more common.

“Partly because we really like convenience in America," Marler said. "Instead of buying carrots and cleaning them yourself, and chopping them up, you buy baby carrots that are mass produced and guess what, we have an E. coli outbreak. Or we buy triple-washed salads that we can go to the grocery store, open them up, pour them out of a bag and eat them. That’s where all the E. coli outbreaks happen. This is what keeps me, frankly, busy these days."

Leafy greens and other plants are likely being contaminated because they are grown near cows. E. coli doesn't hurt cows, so they spread it, often through their droppings. Food growing and cattle raising are increasingly closer together, Marler said.