The Great Thanksgiving Cranberry Scare of 1959

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. And our next story comes to us from a man who is simply known as the History Guy. His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages on YouTube. The History Guy has also heard here at Our American Stories. Four hundred million pounds of cranberries are consumed by Americans each year. Twenty percent of that is during the week of Thanksgiving. That’s eighty million pounds in a week, and five million gallons of jelly cranberry sauce are consumed by Americans every holiday season as well. Here’s the History Guy to share the story of the Great Cranberry Scare of nineteen fifty-nine.

The history of US regulation of domestically produced food and pharmaceuticals goes back to the end of the nineteenth century and a pioneering researcher named Harvey Washington Wiley, who was the chief chemist of the Department of Agriculture’s Division of Chemistry. And from those early beginnings, a regulatory environment developed in fits and starts over time, as consumers in government and industry taught to develop the best way to protect the nation’s food supply, and one of the first great tests of that regulatory environment came in nineteen fifty-nine, when a new regulation went into a venerable product and resulted in what has been described as the nation’s first great food scare. The Great Cranberry Scare of nineteen fifty-nine changed the way Americans looked at their food, trusted their government, and consumed their cranberries. Its history that deserves to be remembered. Born in eighteen forty-four, Harvey Wiley was a Civil War veteran who had degrees in both medicine and chemistry. Offered the post of Chief Chemists for the Department of Agriculture in eighteen eighty-two, largely because of his expertise in the chemistry of sugar, as the department was interested in growing a US sugar industry based on sorghum. In the position, Wiley started conducting research into the adulteration and misbranding of food and drugs on the American market, including so-called poison squad studies, where the effects of a diet consisting in part of the various preservatives were tested on human volunteers. The studies and subsequent publications moved the public, including a campaign where a million US women wrote the White House and spread Congress to pass the landmark consumer protection act called the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, also called the Wiley Act. For his contributions, Wiley was popularly called the Father of the Pure Food and Drugs Act. While they Act gave the Division of Chemistry some regulatory power, its ability to enforce regulation was constantly challenged, and the ever-present wrangling between industry and regulation led to a nineteen twenty-seven reorganization of the Division of Chemistry into the Food, Drug, and Insecticide Organization, which then in nineteen thirty was renamed the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA. A growing consumer movement, pressured by muckraking journalists and events such as the tragic mass poisoning caused by the untested pharmaceutical elixir sulfanilamide that killed one hundred people in nineteen thirty-seven, pressed Congress to give the FDA significantly more robust powers with the nineteen thirty-eight Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The Act has been omitted many times, and today is the center of the Food and Drug Administration’s, which today has nearly fifteen thousand employees and a budget in excess of five billion dollars, regulatory power. One of the amendments to the Act was driven by James Delaney, a US Congressman from New York, who shared a select committee to conduct an investigation and study the use of chemicals, pesticides, and insecticides in and with respect to food products. The results of his findings resulted in the nineteen fifty-eight Food Additives Amendment to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that was commonly called the Delaney Clause. It read: “The Secretary of the Food and Drug Administration shall not approve for use in food any chemical additive found to induce cancer in man, or after tests, found to induce cancer in animals.” The reasoning behind the strict nature of the Delaney Clause was stated by influential researcher Doctor Wilhelm Super, who testified before Congress. “I do not believe that one can establish a safe dose of carcinogens,” he said. “I do not think that we have the method or evidence available but which we can reliably determine a safe dose.” The legislation was undoubtedly well-intended, but it would lead to some thorny questions, as we have found out that, essentially, pretty much anything can give a rat cancer if you give it to a man a large enough dose, and one of the first tests of the amendment had to do with the berry from a dwarf evergreen shrub called Vaccinium macrocarpon, otherwise known as the North American cranberry. Cranberries are naturally hard, sour, and bitter. The name is likely derived from craneberry, and is because part of the flower of the shrub resembles the neck, head, and bill of a crane. There are many craneberry varieties in Europe where the name was derived, but the North American berries were introduced to colonists by Narragansett peoples who had harvested wild berries at least from the sixteenth century, perhaps much farther back. The berries were often ground with dried meats into pemmican, highly nutritious preserved food that was a significant part of Native American cuisine. The berries were also used for red dyes and due to their astringent qualities in medical poultices. Despite the sour taste, they were recognized fairly early for their nutritional value, with a sixteen seventy-two book noting they’re excellent against the scurvy, a quality derived from their high vitamin C content. The same text noted their sour tastes and said that they were generally boiled down with sugar to make a sauce for meat that is a delicate sauce, especially with roasted mutton. To understand how cranberry fit in with the Delaney Clause, you have to understand the unique nature of the fruit. Cranberries grow on trailing vines like a strawberry let. The vines thrive on a special combination of soils and water properties found in wetlands. Cranberries grow in beds layered with sand, peat, and gravel that are commonly called bogs. The bogs were originally formed by receding glaciers, which carved impermeable kettle holes lined with clay. The clay lining prevented materials from leaching into the groundwater, and as the glaciers melted, rocks and organic materials were deposited on top of the clay, creating the ideal environment for cranberries, which require acid peat soil, an adequate fresh water supply, and a growing season. It extends from April to November. Wild cranberries of Massachusetts, for example, flower in June and July and are ready to pick by September. North American cranberries were being exported to Europe by the seventeenth century, and recipes for preserving the berries, as well as making sauces, tarts, and pies were common in the eighteenth century in both American and English cookbooks. Still, because of their unique nature, cranberries were still being collected wild, not cultivated.

And you’re listening to the History Guy telling the story of the Great Cranberry Scare of nineteen fifty-nine. When we come back, more of the History Guy here on Our American Stories. Folks, if you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do, we’re asking you to become a part of the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America is a good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy-six cents is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to OurAmericanStories.com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com. And we continue with Our American Stories and the story of the Great Thanksgiving Cranberry Scare of nineteen fifty-nine. The History Guy brings us back to where he last left off.

It wasn’t until the early eighteen hundreds that Henry Hall, a veteran of the Revolutionary War who lived in Dennis, Massachusetts, started to cultivate the berries. Hall noticed that sand blown in from nearby dunes helped vines grow faster. By adding sand in appropriate quantities per acre, yields of berries increased. Modern growers still spread an inch or two of sand on their bogs every three years. As the berries grow on vines, the vines do not need to be regularly replanted, and some Massachusetts vines are reputed to be over one hundred and fifty years old and still producing fruit. Hall’s innovations allowed greater production than a commercial industry grew. That, combined with a greater availability of granulated sugar, allowed the fruit to grow in popularity. As it did, it grew in association with the holiday season. The berries were bright, shiny red, making excellent decorations. They were harvested and it available in winter, and as they are slow to spoil, lasted well through the Christmas season. The season was also known for feasts of roasted meat, which went well with cranberry sauce. Cranberries became so popular that after the Civil War, successful efforts to grow cranberries in New Jersey led to what has been described as a cranberry fever, a rush of investment to grow cranberries that was largely a bust. As the plants are finicky and the people hoping to get rich quick had little understanding of how to actually grow them. Cultivation methods slowly developed, including less time-intensive methods of harvesting. This was largely the result of careful study of growing factors and methods. The finicky nature of the plant meant that the industry developed growers’ organizations early on, which worked not just to help develop growing methods, but to collectively market the product. The success of a century of effort really showed in nineteen fifty-nine, when the industry had already become a fifty-million-dollar-a-year business. In nineteen fifty-nine looked to be a bumper record crop: one hundred twenty-five million pounds. Growers were expecting to make record profits, and likely they would have except for the Delaney Clause. The problem was an herbicide called aminotriazole, a chlorophyll inhibitor. Aminotriazole was used by cranberry growers starting in the nineteen fifties to eliminate sedges, rushes, horsetails, and deep-rooted grasses from the bogs clearing the water for the cranberries. Growers were instructed to use the chemical only after the harvest so as to keep it off the finished fruit, but trace amounts could still exist in extremely small quantities. Manufacturers petitioned the US Food and Drug Administration to allow small amounts of residue, up to one part per million if necessary, but the FDA rejected the petition. There was a problem. New research had suggested that large, long-term doses of the chemical suppressed thyroid function in rats, encouraging tumors possibly cancerous to form. That made aminotriazole a carcinogen, and while the study suggested that a rat would have to eat a vast quantity of contaminated cranberries over its entire lifespan to increase its risk for cancer, the Delaney Clause said that carcinogens were not acceptable in any amount. When trace amounts of the chemical were found in a part of the cranberry crop just seventeen days before Thanksgiving, the reaction by the FDA resulted in the Great Cranberry Scare of nineteen fifty-nine. The chemical was found in a few shipments of berries from Washington and Oregon, states which produced a tiny fraction of the annual crop. But strictly reading the new Delaney Clause and in an abundance of caution, the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Arthur Fleming, moved to limit the sale of berries from Washington and Oregon until the industry could develop a plan to separate out the contaminated berries. But the true damage came when a reporter asked the Secretary whether a housewife should buy cranberries for her family. Fleming answered that if a housewife wasn’t sure of the origin of the product, then, to be on the safe side, she doesn’t buy. Suddenly, cranberries were not safe, contaminated with a terrifying-sounding aminotriazole. Despite the fact that only a tiny portion of the crop, and tested positive for the chemical, grocery stores pulled cranberries off of shelves, restaurants dropped them from their menus, and some communities banned their sale. Life magazine published a list of alternative dishes, including spiced crabapples, frosted grapes, currant jelly, and beach plum preserve. John Decas, a cranberry grower from Massachusetts, said on National Public Radio, “We had forty trailer loads of cranberries canceled within one hour after that announcement. My reaction at the time was, ‘Oh my God, it’s over, Ocean Spray!'” Cranberry Grower Cooperative tried to limit the damage. The Executive Vice President had a telegram to Fleming. “We demand that you take immediate steps to rectify the incalculable damages caused by your ill-informed and ill-advised press statements yesterday.” There were efforts by politicians as well. Richard Nixon, then Vice President and campaign for president, ate four helpings of cranberries on November 12th that made the headline of The Washington Post. The next day, he stood proudly for the berry, saying, “I, like other Americans, expect to eat traditional cranberries with my family on Thanksgiving Day.” Not to be outdone, the Democratic nominee, Senator John Kennedy conspicuously drank two glasses of cranberry juice the next day. The Post then noted bipartisan cranberry consumption. On confirmed reports, said Kennedy, quipping, “If we both pass away, I feel I shall have performed a great public service by taking the Vice President with me.” This was the first great modern food scare in the nation. It was a time of more powerful media, of a more educated public, of more distrust of corporate motives. People were bombarded with contradictory science in breathless news reports. The FDA tried to limit the damage, creating a testing in the labeling program the clear berries before Thanksgiving. But the death blow came Thanksgiving Day when the First Lady, Mamie Eisenhower, served applesauce instead. The AP headline read: “No Cranberries for President!” The season was a disaster. The cranberry industry reported twenty million dollars in losses. In January, Ocean Spray announced it laid off a third of its workforce. Sales were seventy percent below normal for Thanksgiving and fifty percent below normal for Christmas. The industry needed some ten million dollars in subsidies just to survive the season. It was also unnecessary. In the end, more than 99 percent of the crop was found to be uncontaminated, and a few batches that were in minute amounts. Not one person is known to have been harmed by the berries. There’s really a mixed legacy for the Great Cranberry Scare of nineteen fifty-nine. It did give rise to some consumer advocacy that achieved some important reforms, but also, according to Doctor Elizabeth Whelan or the American Council’s Science and Health, the nineteen fifty-nine cranberry Scare set the stage for decades of completely unnecessary anxiety about trace amounts of agricultural chemicals and additives and food. The cranberry sales rebounded the following year, but the industry learned a valuable lesson. One of the reasons that the scare had been so devastating is that the product was almost exclusively consumed in the short period of the holidays, which made it extremely vulnerable to disruption. Cranberry juice was produced and sold at the time, but it was really, actually, formulated for the taste of growers, not the general public, and it wasn’t marketed by the industry, but the industry started to create products like cranberry juice, cocktails, and dried cranberries that make cranberry popular year-round and therefore less vulnerable to disruption, and over time the industry actually grew cranberry crop today some seven times what it was in nineteen fifty-nine. The industry stopped using aminotriazole altogether, but it’s still used in non-agricultural settings like clearing grasses from highway medians. Over time, the zero-tolerance policy for carcinogens became unsustainable, partly because of the cranberry scare. Testing methods improved, and as The New Yorker magazine noted, and the years that followed the cranberry scare, dozens and then hundreds of chemicals would prove carcinogenic in humans or animals. Testing sensitivity increased a millionfold. Strict application of the law, one researcher noted, undermined the ability of the food and agricultural industries to produce almost any foodstuff that was free of some degree of contamination. More flexible methods of assessing toxicity were needed, and the Delaney Clause was finally fully repealed in nineteen ninety-two, but definitive answers still elude us. Consumers are still caught between advocates and industries, still faced with conflicting science, and still confronted with what seems to be ever more common food scares.

A great job on the production as always by Greg Hangler, and a special thanks to the History Guy for bringing us the nineteen fifty-nine Cranberry Scare. And it’s typical of how regulations work and how overreaction in the news works. I mean, people love a good news story, and imagine the headline: this is Eisenhower, right. This guy led America through World War II, but he wouldn’t eat cranberries. “No cranberries for the President!” screamed the headlines around the country, and of course put an end to the business of cranberries essentially for that year. The story of the Great Cranberry Scare of nineteen fifty-nine. Here on Our American Stories.