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 (01:00):
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 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.
He 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 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

(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 chaired 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 Huper,
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):
Cranberrys 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 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 farther back.

(05:20):
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 their high

(05:43):
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 delany claws, you have to understand the
unique nature of the fruit. Cranberries grow on trailing vines
like a strawberry, but the vines thrive on a special

(06:04):
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 lightning prevented materials from leaching into the groundwater,
and as the glaciers melted, rocks and organic materials were

(06:24):
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 by the seventeenth century,

(06:46):
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 greendit 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 lather 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,
and nineteen fifty nine looked to be a bumper record
crop one hundred and twenty five million pounds. Growers were expecting

(10:15):
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 the

(10:35):
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

(10:59):
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, the Delaney clause said that

(11:20):
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 stags, which produced a

(11:41):
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

(12:02):
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 cranberries off

(12:23):
of shelves, restaurants dropped them from their menus, and some
communities banned their sale. Like Magazine published a list of
alternative dishes, including spiced crab apples, frosted grapes, currant jelly,
and beach plum preserve. John Deccis, cranberry grower from Massachusetts,
said on National Public Radio, we had forty trailer loads
of Cranberry's canceled within one hour after that announcement. My

(12:45):
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 all
cuable damages caused by your ill formed 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 in breathless news reports. The FDA tried to limit
the damage, creating a tensting in the labeling program to
clear berries before Thanksgiving, but the death boat 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 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,

(15:18):
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 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