Dodge County Wisconsin Newspaper

Dodge County Wisconsin Newspaper

Dodge County Wisconsin Newspaper

Housewives throughout America went into shock on November 9th, 1959 when the country’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that cranberries and associated products such as cans and jars of cranberry sauce and cranberry jelly, produced in the states of Oregon and Washington over the previous 18 months or so, should be withdrawn because they had been contaminated by the carcinogenic herbicide aminotriazole.

Contamination of Cranberries Caused Nationwide Panic

Although the announcement by the FDA’s Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Arthur S. Fleming, only referred to cranberry products from two US states, it caused a nationwide scare which saw the removal of all cranberry products from shops, restaurants and kitchen cupboards. It also threatened the country’s entire cranberry crop – valued at some $45 million, according to an article on the cranberry crisis in The Times newspaper of November 16th 1959.

The timing of the announcement, just 17 days before Thanksgiving Day, couldn’t have come at a worse possible moment. Apart from the threat to the economy of the cranberry farmers, it also threatened to ruin traditional Thanksgiving Day family feasts up and down the land. Thanksgiving would not be Thanksgiving without a dollop of cranberry sauce to accompany a large slice or three of traditional roast turkey in the eyes of most Americans.

Politicians Ate and Drank Cranberry Products to Support Farmers

As the nation reeled over the news and threw out all things cranberry, medics quickly added their voice to the debate. The Times article of 1959 also reports that medical opinion was of the view that people would have to “eat heaped bowls of cranberries three times a day for at least three weeks” before any trace of aminotriazole would be found in their bodies.