The Great Thanksgiving Cranberry Scare of 1959

On this episode of Our American Stories, 400 million pounds of cranberries are consumed by Americans each year. Twenty percent of that is during the week of Thanksgiving. That's 80 million pounds! And 5,062,500 gallons of jellied cranberry sauce are consumed by Americans every holiday season. Here’s the History Guy to share the story of the Great Cranberry Scare of 1959.

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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 is 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 (01:01):
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 tried 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 Wileye was a Civil
War veteran who had degrees in both medicine and chemistry.
It was offered the post of Chief Chemists for the
Department of Agriculture in eighteen eighty two, largely because of

(02:04):
his expertise 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 sold 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

(02:28):
the public, including a campaign, where a million US women
wrote the White House and spurred Congress to past the
landmark consumer protection act called the Pure Food and Drug
Act of nineteen oh six, 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

(02:50):
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,

(03:10):
pressured by muckraking 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

(03:31):
the center 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 in and with respect to food products. The

(03:55):
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, or after tests found to induce cancer

(04:15):
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.

(04:36):
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 macrocarbon, otherwise known as the North American cranberry.

(04:59):
Cranberry's are naturally hard, sour, 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 barriers
were introduced to colonists by narrogantic peoples who had harvested
wild berries at least from the sixteenth century, perhaps much

(05:19):
farther back. The berries were often ground with dried meats
into pemicana, 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

(05:42):
their high vitamin sea 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 is fit in with the Delaney claws, you have
to understand the unique nature of the fruit. Cranberries grow
on trailing vines like a strawberry, but the vines thrive

(06:03):
on a special combination of soils and water properties found
in wetlands. Cranberries grow in beds layered with sand, peaked,
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 lightning prevented materials from leaching
into the groundwater, and as the glaciers melted, rocks and

(06:23):
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,
flour in June, in July and are ready to pick
by September. North American cranberries were being exported to Europe

(06:45):
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.

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
American Stories dot Com. And we continue with our American
Stories and the story of the Great Thanksgiving cranberry scare

(08:15):
of 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 great related sugar, allowed
the fruit to grow in popularity. As it did, it
grew in association with the holiday season. The berries were bright,

(09:09):
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 led to

(09:29):
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 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

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

(10:14):
growers were 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

(10:34):
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.
Manufactures 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

(10:57):
a problem. New research had suggested that large, long term
doses of the chemical suppressed thybroid 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 lifespan to increase its risk for cancer,

(11:19):
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 in Oregon,

(11:40):
stage 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

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

(12:22):
stores pulled cranberries off of shelves, restaurants dropped them from
their menus, and some communities banned their Salefe magazine published
a list of alternative dishes, including spiced crab apples, frosted grapes,
currant jelly, and beach plum preserve. John Deccas, 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 Presidents had a telegram to Fleming.
We demand that you take immediate steps to rectify the
inc allcuable damages caused by your ill informed and ill
advised press statements yesterday. There were efforts by politicians as well.

(13:07):
Richard Nixon, then Vice president and campaigning 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 and breathless news reports. The FDA tried to limit
the damage, creating a testing in the labeling program to
clear berries before Thanksgiving, but the death boat came Thanksgiving
Day when the first Lady, Namie 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 Waylan and
the American Council's Science and Health, the nineteen fifty nine

(14:58):
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,

(15:19):
which made it extremely vulnerable to disruption. Cranbride 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's popular year round and therefore less

(15:39):
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 a Meana triazol altogether,
but it's still used in non agricultural settings like clearing
grasses from highway medias. Over time, the zero tolerance policy
for carcinogens became unsustainable, partly because of the cranberry scare.

(16:01):
Testing methods improved, and as 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,
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 flexible methods of

(16:25):
assessing toxicity were needed, and the Delanny 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 new 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