Great Cranberry Scandal
The Great Cranberry Scandal (translated "The Great Cranberry Scandal") or Cranberry Scare describes a supposed food scandal that caused a sensation in the USA in 1959 shortly before Thanksgiving .
Course of events
The herbicide amitrole, or aminotriazole, was approved by the US Department of Agriculture for use in cranberry fields in 1957 . This was linked to the requirement that it only be used after the harvest, which some farmers apparently did not adhere to. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) confiscated several batches of amitrole-contaminated cranberries in 1957. They were stored in cold stores until the dangerousness of the chemical was clarified. According to a long-term study completed in 1959, amitrol causes thyroid cancer in rats . In 1958 the Food Additives Amendment (also named Delaney Amendment after its initiator ) to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 was enacted. It stipulated that food must not contain any traces of carcinogenic substances in animal experiments. The FDA therefore had the frozen berries destroyed.
On November 9, 1959, a few weeks before Thanksgiving , Health Secretary Arthur Flemming gave a press conference about the amitrol residue. He advised consumers not to buy cranberries until the FDA has checked the entire crop for Amitrol. The recommendation came just as Americans used to buy large quantities of these berries for traditional Thanksgiving meals, and it caused a national stir.
Both the cranberry producers and the manufacturers of Amitrol ( American Cyanamid and Amchem ) protested violently, especially since no contaminated berries were found in the year in question. The prices for cranberries nevertheless fell sharply, large supermarket chains stopped selling and some restaurants took the berries off their menus. To reassure the public, Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson announced that his family would be serving cranberries for Thanksgiving. Even when Vice President Richard Nixon ate four servings of cranberries at a dinner in Wisconsin Rapids , the New York Times reported it on November 15.
By also using the cranberry growers' labs and hiring additional staff, the FDA was able to review all stocks well in advance of Thanksgiving. So the excitement quickly subsided and the matter was forgotten.
aftermath
The scandal is a meaning in the context of the book " Silent Spring " ( Silent Spring ) science writer Rachel Carson to. She attended the FDA hearings to redefine the allowed residue levels. The aggressive demeanor of representatives of the pesticide manufacturers, whose statements contradicted most of the scientific papers she had read in connection with her research, discouraged her and also made it clear to her that the chemical industry had a significant financial interest in continuing the spraying campaigns would have. They also made it clear to her that a book that criticized the widespread use of pesticides would expose her to massive attacks by the chemical industry. At the same time, however, the scandal also helped to make the public aware of the problem of pesticide residues in food. Synthetic pesticides had only been used in agriculture since the mid-1940s: DDT , for example, was only released for private use in August 1945. The Great Cranberry Scandal also falls into the time was applied in the large-scale sprayings with DDT of aircraft to be dragged insects such as Japanese beetles , fire ants and gypsy moth fight. These spray flights had met increasing resistance from the population.
As a consequence of the “cranberry scare”, the American pesticide industry stepped up its public relations work . This was one of the reasons for their quick and violent reaction to the release of Silent Spring .
literature
- Thomas R. Dunlap: DDT. Scientists, Citizens and Public Policy . Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1981, ISBN 0-691-04680-8 .
- Linda Lear: Rachel Carson. Witness for Nature . Henry Holt, New York 1997, ISBN 0-8050-3428-5 .
- Arlene R. Quaratiello: Rachel Carson. A biography . Greenwood Press, Westport CT, 2005, ISBN 0-313-32388-7 .