FDA Relieved of Blame in ’89 Scare Over Chilean Fruit

PHILADELPHIA — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is not responsible for $210 million lost by Chilean fruit growers when their products were banned during a cyanide scare in 1989, a federal judge has ruled.

The scare began when anonymous callers to the U.S. Embassy in Santiago, Chile, claimed that fruit exported to the United States would be injected with cyanide.

The FDA reported March 12, 1989, that it had found cyanide in two grapes taken from a ship docked in Philadelphia. The next day, the agency urged consumers not to buy Chilean fruit and ordered dock workers not to unload fruit aboard ships.

The ban was lifted four days later after another test on the same two grapes failed to detect cyanide. But some fruit had spoiled, and sales of Chilean fruit around the world were affected, the growers alleged.

“The actions were clearly in furtherance of the FDA’s statutory mission to protect the American public from adulterated food,” U.S. District Judge Herbert J. Hutton ruled Wednesday.