The Great Thanksgiving Cranberry Scare of 1959

On this episode of Our American Stories, in the fall of 1959, Americans were told their Thanksgiving cranberries might be contaminated. Overnight, stores cleared shelves, farmers lost millions, and families wondered if their holiday tables would have to go without the familiar red sauce.

The History Guy revisits the panic that started with a single food safety warning and grew into a nationwide scare.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
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

(00:36):
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

(00:56):
Great Cranberry Scare of nineteen fifty nine.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
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

(01:22):
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

(01:42):
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

(02:05):
in the chemistry of sugar, as the department was interested
in growing a US sugar industry based on sorgum. In
the position, Whiley 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,

(02:28):
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
nineteen oh six, also called the Wiley Act. For his contributions,
Wyley 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

(02:51):
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

(03:11):
macrating journalists and events such as the tragic mass poisoning
caused by the untested pharmaceutical elixir sulfon ilamide 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

(03:31):
of the Food and Drug Administrations, 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

(03:52):
in and with respect to food products. The results of
his findings resulted in the nineteen fifty eight Food Additives
Amendment to the Food, Drugs 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,

(04:12):
or after tests found to induce cancer in animals. The
reasoning behind the strict nature of the Delady 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

(04:37):
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 macrocarpin, otherwise
known as the North American cranberry. Cranberries are naturally hard, sour,

(05:01):
and bitter. The name is likely derived from craneberry, and
is because part of the flour 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
narrogant 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 pemicana, highly nutritious preserved

(05:24):
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 sea content. The
same text noted their sour tastes and said that they

(05:47):
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 claws,
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,

(06:09):
peaked and gravel that are commonly called bogs. The bogs
were originally formed by receding glaciers, which carved imperiable kettle
holes lined with clay. The clay lightning prevented materials from
leaching into the ground water, 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,

(06:30):
an adequate fresh water supply, and a growing season. It
extends from April to November. Wild cranberries of Massachusetts, for example,
flour 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

(06:51):
in the eighteenth century in both American and English cookbooks. Still,
because of their unique nature, cranberries were still being collected wild,
not cultivated.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
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 Story Folks, if you love the great American

(07:33):
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(07:53):
help us keep the great American stories coming. That's our
Americanstories dot Com. And we continue with our American stories
and the story of the Great Thanksgiving Cranberry scare of

(08:15):
nineteen fifty nine. The History Guy brings us back to
where he last left off.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
It wasn't until the early eighteen hundreds at 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

(08:45):
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 granite related sugar, allowed
the fruit to grow in popularity. As it did, it
grew in association with the holiday season. The berries were bright,

(09:08):
shiny red, making excellent decorations. They were harvested and it
available in winter, and as they are so to spoiled,
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 leather what

(09:29):
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 solely developed, including less time intensive methods of harvesting.
This was largely the result of careful study of growing
factors and methods in The finicky nature of the plant

(09:51):
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 dollars a year business.
In nineteen fifty nine looked to be a bumper record
crop one hundred and twenty five million pounds. Growers were

(10:14):
expecting to make record profits, and likely they would have
except for the Delaney clause. The problem was an herbicide
called a minute triazole, a chlorophyll inhibitor. A minute triasol
was used by cranberry growers starting in the nineteen fifties
to eliminate sedges, rushes, horsetails, and deep rooted grasses from

(10:35):
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.

(10:58):
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 a minute triazole a carcinogen,
and while the study suggested that a rat would have
to eat a vast quantity of contaminated cranberries over its
entire life span to increase its risk for cancer, the

(11:19):
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 in Oregon, stage

(11:40):
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

(12:01):
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 a minute triazole.
Despite the fact that only a tiny portion of the
crop and tested positive for the chemical, grocery stores pulled

(12:22):
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 crab apples, frosted grapes,
currant jelly, and beach plum preserve. John Deccis, a cranberry
grower from Massachusetts, said on National Public Radio, we had
forty trailer loads of Cranberry's canceled within one hour after

(12:44):
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's had a telegram to Fleming.
We demand that you take immediate steps to rectify the
inca cuble damages caused by your ill informed and ill
advised press statements yesterday. There were efforts by politicians as well.

(13:06):
Richard Nixon, then Vice president and campaign for president, ate
four helpings of Cranberry's on November twelfth 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.

(13:29):
The post then noted by partisan 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 foods care in the nation. It was a time
of more powerful media, of a more educated public, of

(13:49):
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 apple sauce instead.
The AP headline read no cranberries for President. The season

(14:14):
was a disaster. The cranberry industry reported twenty million dollars
in losses. In January, Ocean Spray announced it laid off
at 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 ninety nine percent of the crop was found

(14:36):
to be uncontaminated, and a few batches that were 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 Waylon or
the American Council's Science and Health, the nineteen fifty nine

(14:58):
cranberry Scare set the stage for day 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

(15:18):
the holidays, which made it extremely vulnerable to disruption. Cranberride
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

(15:41):
actually grew cranberry crop today some seven times what it
was in nineteen fifty nine. The industry stopped using a
mean it triazol altogether, but it's still used in non
agricultural settings like clearing grasses from highway medias. Over time,
the zerotolerance policy for carcinogens became unsustainable, partly because of
the cranberry scare. Testing methods improved, and as New Yorker

(16:03):
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, when researcher noted, undermined the ability of
the food and agricultural industries to produce almost any food
stuff that was free of some degree of contamination. More

(16:24):
flexible methods of assessing toxicity were needed, and the Delany
clause was finally fully repealed in nineteen ninety two, but
definitive answers still elude us. Consumers are still caught between
advocates in industries, still faced with conflicting science, and still
confronted with what seems to be ever more common food scares.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
And 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 work. I mean, people love a good news
story and imagine the headline, and this is Eisenhower, right.

(17:05):
This guy led America through World War Two, 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.

(17:25):
Here on our American Story