Bitter Harvest (1981 film)
Encyclopedia
Bitter Harvest was a 1981 television docudrama about an accidental poisoning of cattle feed in the Midwest in the 1970s. Its plot is based on the 1973 Michigan PBB contamination incident.
Ned De Vries (played by Ron Howard
) is a Michigan dairy farmer, a young ambitious man with a wife and family, but he has a problem. His cattle are getting sick. The dairy herd are showing strange symptoms, from skin lesions and abscesses to sores that don’t heal, and patches of hairless skin. Calves are being still-born, their hooves deformed, and the whole herd is starving.
De Vries calls the local veterinary authorities from the Michigan Farm Bureau who study his animals, take samples, and cull a small ailing calf to take the remains for autopsy. From the results they claim he is responsible for the problem, as his animals are suffering from malnutrition.
De Vries claims to have been feeding his livestock only on the recommended protein enriched feeds, commonly marketed across the state by Michigan Farm Bureau Services. But he is met with disbelief and condescension. Satisfied with their test results, the Bureau specialists are not willing to listen to his claims.
After scouring his pastures for signs of contaminants and studying his livestock to try to explain their symptoms, De Vries thinks he has made a breakthrough when he finds a nest of dead rats, and his own brief examination shows they all had symptoms similar to his cattle. His first thoughts are that they may have passed on a disease, but closer study shows that they have one other thing in common with his livestock. The nest, like the rats, is full of cattle feed.
When he presents his findings to the Bureau veterinarians, they pay no regard to his claims or fears that the feed might be poisoned. They choose to ignore him, leaving him no further forward in his search for an answer. Indeed his first thoughts that the rats would be part of the solution are now dashed, as his family are showing signs of skin complaints, headaches and feeling generally unwell. And naturally they do not eat cattle feed. By now dispirited and desperate, Ned De Vries makes an impassioned plea to one of the Bureau’s lab technicians who wrote the report on his livestock. After some urging the man provides information that may help. The farm samples were tested by gas chromatography, the tests being run for several hours. But by mistake, one of them was allowed to run all night long, and toward the end of this long test a single un-identified blip appeared on the result chart, showing an un-known substance was found in the calf’s tissues. Unable to help further, the technician gives De Vries the charts and points him in the direction of Dr. Morton Freeman ( Richard Dysart ), a respected scientist and researcher.
Dr Freeman responds to De Vries request for help and identifies the blip on the chart as Polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), a flame retardant used in Firemaster extinguishers. At last the answer is in his hands.
De Vries is surprised to find Dr Freeman visiting him the following morning, but the doctor has been doing further research into PBB’s. Exposure symptoms match what they already know, and include memory loss and possible cancer. The substance that has poisoned his livestock can be passed on to humans by eating beef and drinking milk which is why his family is sick… his wife can no longer breast feed her baby, as that too would pass on any PBB she has in her body. The substance is cumulative, its is firmly in the food chain, the long term effects are quite unknown, and there is no way to remove the contamination once it has been passed.
After so long being met with scepticism De Vries finds he is now bogged down in bureaucratic inertia, even with the support of Dr Freeman and his findings. He travels the state in his spare time, gathering all the information he can about the spread of the contaminant. He finds another farmer like himself, dispirited and without hope after a long struggle with the Farming Bureau and official policy. His family is also in poor health, and he has carried the burden of guilt that he is somehow directly responsible for all that has happened to him.
The source of the contamination is revealed as the film draws to it’s close. In the Farm Bureau Services mill near Battle Creek, Michigan, the proteins that are mixed to produce animal feeds and the chemicals used to provide fire retardant extinguisher powder are being stored in identical coloured paper sacks, on pallets placed side by side. No-one can tell at a glance which is which.
The film concludes a year after the initial outbreak, with the culling of Ned De Vries’ herd, the animals led into a deep open pit, to be shot and bulldozed over with soil.
De Vries is philosophical; despite all his hopes, his dreams have come to nothing, and he, like so many others now await government intervention in what could become a very long, hard to resolve legal battle for recognition of the problem, and compensation, if any.
Plot
The film is a docudrama based around the events of the 1973 ‘Poisoning of Michigan,’ the Michigan PBB incident when contaminated animal feeds were manufactured in error, and distributed to farms within that state.Ned De Vries (played by Ron Howard
Ron Howard
Ronald William "Ron" Howard is an American actor, director, and producer. He came to prominence as a child actor, playing Opie Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, and later the teenaged Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days for six years...
) is a Michigan dairy farmer, a young ambitious man with a wife and family, but he has a problem. His cattle are getting sick. The dairy herd are showing strange symptoms, from skin lesions and abscesses to sores that don’t heal, and patches of hairless skin. Calves are being still-born, their hooves deformed, and the whole herd is starving.
De Vries calls the local veterinary authorities from the Michigan Farm Bureau who study his animals, take samples, and cull a small ailing calf to take the remains for autopsy. From the results they claim he is responsible for the problem, as his animals are suffering from malnutrition.
De Vries claims to have been feeding his livestock only on the recommended protein enriched feeds, commonly marketed across the state by Michigan Farm Bureau Services. But he is met with disbelief and condescension. Satisfied with their test results, the Bureau specialists are not willing to listen to his claims.
After scouring his pastures for signs of contaminants and studying his livestock to try to explain their symptoms, De Vries thinks he has made a breakthrough when he finds a nest of dead rats, and his own brief examination shows they all had symptoms similar to his cattle. His first thoughts are that they may have passed on a disease, but closer study shows that they have one other thing in common with his livestock. The nest, like the rats, is full of cattle feed.
When he presents his findings to the Bureau veterinarians, they pay no regard to his claims or fears that the feed might be poisoned. They choose to ignore him, leaving him no further forward in his search for an answer. Indeed his first thoughts that the rats would be part of the solution are now dashed, as his family are showing signs of skin complaints, headaches and feeling generally unwell. And naturally they do not eat cattle feed. By now dispirited and desperate, Ned De Vries makes an impassioned plea to one of the Bureau’s lab technicians who wrote the report on his livestock. After some urging the man provides information that may help. The farm samples were tested by gas chromatography, the tests being run for several hours. But by mistake, one of them was allowed to run all night long, and toward the end of this long test a single un-identified blip appeared on the result chart, showing an un-known substance was found in the calf’s tissues. Unable to help further, the technician gives De Vries the charts and points him in the direction of Dr. Morton Freeman ( Richard Dysart ), a respected scientist and researcher.
Dr Freeman responds to De Vries request for help and identifies the blip on the chart as Polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), a flame retardant used in Firemaster extinguishers. At last the answer is in his hands.
De Vries is surprised to find Dr Freeman visiting him the following morning, but the doctor has been doing further research into PBB’s. Exposure symptoms match what they already know, and include memory loss and possible cancer. The substance that has poisoned his livestock can be passed on to humans by eating beef and drinking milk which is why his family is sick… his wife can no longer breast feed her baby, as that too would pass on any PBB she has in her body. The substance is cumulative, its is firmly in the food chain, the long term effects are quite unknown, and there is no way to remove the contamination once it has been passed.
After so long being met with scepticism De Vries finds he is now bogged down in bureaucratic inertia, even with the support of Dr Freeman and his findings. He travels the state in his spare time, gathering all the information he can about the spread of the contaminant. He finds another farmer like himself, dispirited and without hope after a long struggle with the Farming Bureau and official policy. His family is also in poor health, and he has carried the burden of guilt that he is somehow directly responsible for all that has happened to him.
The source of the contamination is revealed as the film draws to it’s close. In the Farm Bureau Services mill near Battle Creek, Michigan, the proteins that are mixed to produce animal feeds and the chemicals used to provide fire retardant extinguisher powder are being stored in identical coloured paper sacks, on pallets placed side by side. No-one can tell at a glance which is which.
The film concludes a year after the initial outbreak, with the culling of Ned De Vries’ herd, the animals led into a deep open pit, to be shot and bulldozed over with soil.
De Vries is philosophical; despite all his hopes, his dreams have come to nothing, and he, like so many others now await government intervention in what could become a very long, hard to resolve legal battle for recognition of the problem, and compensation, if any.