Cranberry chaos: The food recall that almost ruined Thanksgiving in 1959

Thanksgiving just wouldn’t be the same without cranberries but one year, many homes were left without the popular holiday fruit.

On November 9, 1959, 17 days before Thanksgiving, a government bureaucrat caused mass pandemonium by recalling two shipments of cranberries which had tested positive for residues of a herbicide believed to be carcinogenic.

Contaminated cranberries

Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Arthur S. Flemming explained in a press conference that two batches of cranberries had been contaminated with aminotriazole, a toxic weed killer which he added, had been found to cause thyroid cancer in laboratory rats.

Flemming told consumers in Washington and Oregon not to buy cranberries “to be on the safe side”.

However, rather than assure the public that most cranberries were safe to eat, Flemming’s words caused a widespread panic and collapsed the cranberry market - affecting the previous year’s crop which had been processed into canned jelly, sauce and juice.

Housewives stopped buying any cranberry-related food, grocery stores and supermarkets stopped stocking them and restaurants took the fruit off their menus.

While aminotriazole had cause rats to develop thyroid and liver cancers in a laboratory test, there was no evidence that the toxin would have the same effect in humans and besides, the doses used would be unthinkable. A human would have to eat about 15,000 lbs. of cranberries a day over the years to develop the same symptoms.

Samples of lots from Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Washington were tested and over half showed no signs of residues of aminotriazole.

Flemming forced to restore calm

On November 19, 10 days after his press conference caused hysteria, Flemming was forced to retract his statement and assure the public that cranberries were safe to eat.

The following year, farmers stopped using aminotriazole on food crops. In 2009, Amitrol was included in a biocide ban proposed by the Swedish Chemicals Agency after it was linked to an excess of cancers in railroad workers who had sprayed herbicides.

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