1989 Chilean grape scare

The Chilean grape scare was a 1989 incident involving two grapes from Chile allegedly found tainted with cyanide after a threat was supposedly made by phone to the US Embassy in Santiago. No additional contaminated fruit was found, but the United States Food and Drug Administration banned the import of Chilean fruit and warned people not to eat grapes or Chilean fruit[1] despite the fact investigators found no traces of cyanide in any other fruit shipped from Chile to Philadelphia.

The scare

The individual who supposedly telephoned the U.S. embassy in Santiago on March 2 told them some Chilean grapes contained cyanide. No individual or group ever claimed responsibility for poisoning the two grapes or making the phone call. Just two grapes were said to have been injected with cyanide and the country's fruit export sector was thrown into panic. Table grapes are the leading Chilean agricultural export to the United States [2]. Thousands of farm workers lost their jobs and the Government was forced to provide temporary subsidies to offset the more than $400 million in losses.

The doubts

Because cyanide is highly reactive and the fact that a punctured grape decomposes rapidly, it is not possible for a grape to be injected with cyanide (or anything else for that matter) and arrive in the U.S. intact, two to three weeks later. This fact led the GAO (General Accounting Office) to investigate to determine whether the scare was a result of poor laboratory processes. The investigation was inconclusive.

The Military Chilean government suggested the scare was the work of local Marxist extremists [3]. It was suggested that fumigation prior to shipping for export could have been the source of the trace amounts actually detected, as some standard fumigation agents in use contained cyanide [4]. It may simply have been a hoax. [5].

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References
  1. Chilean Fruit Pulled From Shelves As U.S. Widens Inquiry on Poison, NY Times, March 15, 1989,
  2. U.S.-Chilean Trade: Developments in the Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry Sectors, GAO/GGD-93-88
  3. Eduardo Engel, 1996. Uvas envenenadas, vacas locas y proteccionismo, Documentos de Trabajo 9, Centro de Economía Aplicada, Universidad de Chile
  4. EE UU investiga un supuesto envenenamiento de uva chilena, El País, 15 Mar 1989
  5. ASIA : Between U.S. and Chile, a Grape Divide : A report that the 1989 poison scare was probably a hoax has growers angry once again. And California counterparts aren’t helping matters. LA Times, Dec. 31, 1994
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