PORTLAND, Ore. -  Oregon health officials on Monday urged consumers to throw out certain brands of fresh cantaloupe in the wake of an investigation into a salmonella outbreak that has sicked 59, including five in Oregon and nine in Washington.

The cantaloupes were linked to a rare strain of the disease, which has affected people in the U.S. and Canada since the middle of January.

The fruit in question was grown in Honduras and grown or packed by "Agropecuaria Montelibano," also known as "Agrolibano," a major supplier of cantaloupe in the U.S.

"If you have any of this kind of cantaloupe at home, we recommend that you throw it out," Dr. William E. Keene, an epidemiologist at the Oregon Public Health Division, said in a news release. "If your cantaloupe has a sticker that says Guatemala or some other country, then it is not associated with this outbreak. If you can't tell where it came from, or if it came from Honduras, you could check with the store to see if it might be from this company."

Agrolibano distributes under many different label names, health officials said, and people should just throw out fruit that they are concerned about.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is trying to pinpoint the source of the contamination, but health officials said that may take months.

The news came as the president of Honduras on Sunday dismissed as "unjust" a U.S. alert urging consumers to discard the Honduran cantaloupes, saying the U.S. presented no evidence that the bacteria originated in his country.

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya called the move "extreme and imprudent," noting that the melons were contaminated on their peel, not inside, meaning they may have come in contact with salmonella bacteria after they were shipped.

"It's unjust that the (U.S.) has declared a unilateral health alert without any laboratory or clinical tests," he told reporters.

Trade Minister Fredys Cerrato meanwhile called for the FDA to release details of studies it performed on the tainted cantaloupe to prove it was in fact from Honduras - where there has been no corresponding outbreak of salmonella.

"This is causing us direct economic damage," Cerrato told CNN en Espanol on Sunday, noting that 5,000 Hondurans work processing melon, part of a $100 million industry centered around the country's southern Pacific coast.

Honduran agriculture experts will meet with FDA officials in Washington on Monday, he said, warning that the U.S. will have to compensate Agropecuaria Montelibano for its losses should the contaminated fruit be found to have other origins.

Fifty people in 16 states and nine others in Canada have fallen sick after eating tainted cantaloupes. No deaths have been reported, although 14 people have been hospitalized, the FDA said.

Symptoms of food-borne salmonella include nausea, vomiting, fever, diarrhea and abdominal cramps.

The 16 states that have reported illnesses are Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin.

The FDA said it was continuing to investigate the outbreak with the states and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)