On November 9, 1959—just two-and-a-half weeks before Thanksgiving—the U.S. secretary of Health, Education and Welfare made a startling announcement: some cranberries grown in the Pacific Northwest may have been contaminated by a weed killer that could lead to cancer in rats. This meant that cranberry sauce, a popular staple of Thanksgiving dinners, might not be on the menu anymore.
“If housewives are unable to determine where berries were grown,” the New York Times reported, “the Government advises them not to buy, either in canned or fresh form, despite the approach of Thanksgiving.”
Thus began the cranberry scare of 1959, a crisis that temporarily crashed the cranberry market and sent Americans scrambling for alternative fruit-based dishes for Thanksgiving (Life magazine provided a few interesting suggestions, including pickled watermelon rind).
The day after Thanksgiving, the Associated Press informed curious readers that, like many Americans, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and First Lady Mamie Eisenhower had gone without cranberry sauce at their holiday table. But instead of pickled watermelon rind, they just had applesauce.
1958 Food Additives Amendment Triggers Warning
The legal basis for the U.S. cranberry warning was a food safety law called the 1958 Food Additives Amendment. This amendment to the 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act contained a clause—known as the Delaney Clause, after U.S. Congressman James J. Delaney—that laid out a new rule: “No additive shall be deemed to be safe if it is found to induce cancer when ingested by man or animal.”
The next year, the Food and Drug Administration raised the alarm when testing showed that cranberries grown in Washington and Oregon had been contaminated by a weed killer called aminotriazole (the FDA later detected the chemical in berries from other states too). Previous tests suggested this chemical suppressed thyroid function in rats, leading rats to develop tumors. To ensure public safety, the FDA wanted to pull berries that may have been contaminated from the market.
When Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Arthur Flemming issued his warning about cranberries at a press conference on November 9, he called for cranberry companies to pull products from affected states until a testing system was in place to determine which berries were safe. By the week of Thanksgiving, the government had cleared over 16 million pounds of cranberries as safe for sale, but the effects of the recall were already in motion. Like Ike, many Americans went without cranberry sauce at their holiday table. And some weren’t happy about it.
A Nation in (Cranberry) Crisis
In response to the health warning, grocery stores and restaurants pulled cranberry products from their shelves and menus, and the U.S. government began seizing cranberry products for testing. Political cartoons poked fun at the cranberry scare, and a band called Robert Williams and the Groovers released a song called “Cranberry Blues.”
“I don’t think a lot of people know this story today, but it obviously was a pretty major incident and story in 1959 and ’60 when it was happening,” says Todd Arrington, director of Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum & Boyhood Home in Abilene, Kansas.
As with many major incidents, people with opinions on the cranberry scare were eager to share them with others. “The amount of correspondence that the public sent in to the White House—the telegrams, the letters—just the sheer amount was really surprising,” says Kristyn Crossley, an archivist at the Eisenhower Museum.
Many of the letters and telegrams the White House received were from people connected to the cranberry industry who were angry over the crisis. One woman from Canada wrote that her father was a cranberry grower, and she thought Eisenhower owed her father and other cranberry growers an apology, Arrington says.
Americans unconnected to the cranberry industry wrote to the White House, too. Some thanked Flemming for issuing the warning, while others questioned whether he had made the right decision or even called for his firing, Crossley says.
There were also a couple of prominent politicians who used the health scare to draw attention to themselves: Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy, who would soon run against each other in the 1960 presidential election.
Politics and Cranberries
A few days after Flemming issued his warning about cranberries, Vice President Nixon made headlines when he ate four helpings of cranberries at a dinner in Wisconsin, a state that happened to grow a lot of the fruit.
“I see no reason for hysteria over cranberries on any consumer’s part,” Nixon told reporters. “I am certain the Department of Health, Education and Welfare is working rapidly to separate those comparatively few contaminated cranberries, and I, like other Americans, expect to eat traditional cranberries with my family on Thanksgiving Day.” (Cranberries from the batch Nixon ate later tested positive for aminotriazole.)
That same night, Senator John F. Kennedy—who was also dining in Wisconsin—publicly drank two glasses of cranberry juice. The next day, The Washington Post described Nixon and Kennedy’s dinners as “bi-partisan cranberry consumption.”
Yet unlike Nixon and JFK, many Americans were hesitant to eat cranberries during the health scare, and sales figures showed this. By mid-November, fresh cranberry sales were down 63 percent from the year before, and canned cranberry sales were down 73 percent. In the aftermath of the cranberry scare, the U.S. government spent over $8 million on indemnity payments to cranberry growers, helping the industry to recover.
Modern Food Standards and Recalls
The cranberry scare is notable for being one of the first major national food recalls in the United States. Though scholars and scientists later questioned whether the amount of aminotriazole present in cranberries was dangerous to humans, the cranberry scare was a good-faith effort to protect American consumers from eating something that might cause cancer.
Over time, food and pesticide producers won out over attempts to keep cancer-causing additives out of food entirely. In 1996, the U.S. government repealed the Delaney Clause through the Food Quality Protection Act. The new act said these additives could be present in food as long as there is “reasonable certainty of no harm.”
