Word: fruitful
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Traditional risk assessment weighs the magnitude of the danger against the probability it will occur. The chance of dying from a cyanide-laced piece of fruit was infinitesimally small compared to the possibility of being run over by the proverbial bus on the way to the supermarket. But rather than issue a warning to examine fruit carefully, the Food and Drug Administration impounded ! 2 million crates of fruit at airports and docks in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Miami -- a still life of waste -- and advised consumers not to eat any Chilean fruit, which includes most of the peaches, blueberries, blackberries...
Some, particularly the Chileans, whose estimated $600 million fruit and vegetable industry was crippled, felt the U.S. had vastly overreacted. FDA Commissioner Frank Young explained his action with the statement that he would rather be "safe than sorry," and many Americans no doubt agreed with...
Ironically, it was the Government's failure to apply a safe-rather-than- sorry standard to another fruit that set off a similar fruit frenzy a week earlier. It started with a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental group, that apples treated with the growth regulator Alar were soaking small children with dangerously high levels of daminozide, a possible carcinogen. 60 Minutes aired the story, and actress Meryl Streep, now a leading lady in the fight against pesticides, was quickly booked solid on talk shows and Capitol Hill. Soon apples were ordered removed from school cafeterias...
...height of the apple panic that the Chilean fruit phobia began. The first phone call to the U.S. embassy in Santiago was followed by a more serious one on March 9. The caller said he had read in a Santiago paper that his threat was being treated as a hoax. Be warned, he said, it was no hoax. Fifty FDA inspectors were dispatched to the Almeria Star as it docked in Philadelphia. They set up tables along the pier and began examining 1,200 cases of grapes for softness, discoloration and the telltale welds caused by punctures. By Sunday...
That the cyanide was still present in the fruit after the two-week boat trip was disturbing. Acid in grapes quickly decomposes the poison, so the original amount injected could have been much greater. After an early-Monday meeting, Young decided to pull all Chilean fruit off the market...