A Horrible Thing — Spring 2004
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The Great Lakes… 84% of the continent’s fresh water… a different story in every drop.
By Jon Brosseit
“What a horrible, horrible thing. We are doing everything that can be done,” Dornbos said. Talking to a reporter on the telephone he said his company was doing all possible to cooperate in the investigation. He then suddenly dropped the phone. His wife picked it up. “He’s terribly broken up over this,” Mrs. Dornbos said.
Muskegon Chronicle
Tuesday, October 8, 1963
The ‘horrible thing’ was the deaths of seven people and illness, some serious, of 18 others caused by Type E botulism poisoning after eating smoked fish processed by the H. J. Dornbos & Bros. Company of Grand Haven, Michigan. This tragic event forever changed the face of commercial fishing throughout the nation.
Prior to October 1963, the H.J. Dornbos & Bros. Company had been smoking whitefish chubs for 74 years without incident. Harold J. Dornbos, the owner speaking on the phone in the quotation above, became sole owner of the firm in 1951. He purchased the business from his father and uncle, who founded the company in 1889. By 1951, 90% of Dornbos’ trade was in smoked fish, making them one of the largest suppliers of smoked fish in the nation.
At the time of the botulism poisoning in 1963, Dornbos was still one of the largest suppliers of smoked fish in the nation with 38 employees processing four to five tons of smoked whitefish chubs per week. Tax records indicate gross sales averaged close to half a million dollars annually in the years just prior to 1963. Dornbos distributed smoked fish to between 600 and 900 stores, including the major chains of A&P, National Food, and Kroger (a Kroger store in Knoxville, Tennessee, was identified as having sold the tainted fish that caused the deaths and illness).
The facts were simple. The following is from newspaper reports and an interview with attorney Harvey Scholten who represented the Rooks Transfer Co. in the resulting lawsuits.
The pre-packaged fish ordered by the Kroger stores of Tennessee were loaded on a Rooks Transfer truck in Grand Haven on Thursday, September 19, 1963. Rooks delivered the order to Chicago for transfer to another carrier for delivery to Tennessee. Packed in dry ice, it was estimated the fish could remain at a refrigerated temperature for about three days, although the boxes did not indicate the fish required constant refrigeration.
Rooks delivered the fish to the trucking terminal in Chicago that same Thursday. The fish were loaded last on the next available Atkins Cargo Express truck so that they would be the first to be unloaded. The Atkins truck arrived Friday in Nashville where the fish were to be unloaded and delivered to 18 Knoxville area Kroger supermarkets by a local carrier, Tennessee Cartage. However, the Atkins truck was not unloaded that Friday or over the weekend. In fact, the fish did not appear on Kroger shelves until the following Wednesday or Thursday, September 26 and 27. The disruption of the planned delivery schedule was never explained. The lack of refrigeration and/or the lack of sufficient cooking temperature and an environment absent of oxygen, allowed a powerful toxin to grow into the rare Type E botulina bacteria. It was reported at the time by University of Michigan scientists that Cobra venom and arsenic are considered mild when compared with this bacteria.
In 1963, such hazards were relatively unknown. The early Sixties were part of the growing heyday of consumerism. Following the introduction of the first “supermarket,” credited to Michael Cullen in Queens, New York City, in 1930, consumerism began to reflect the growth of the middle-class — owning more cars and refrigerators. The burgeoning supermarket concept encouraged food processors to package their products for convenience. This decade saw the first packages of chicken parts available in stores rather than whole chickens … an innovation of Don Tyson and Frank Purdue.
The modern advance of vacuum-packed smoked fish may have been a contributing factor in this case. In May 1960, an article in the local Grand Haven Tribune touted the new plastic wrap being used by the H.J. Dornbos & Bros. “has put new life into the old smoked fish business.” In that article, Harold Dornbos noted, “the new plastic wrap adds 10 cents a pound to the cost but is what the housewives want and they are the big buyers to satisfy in the market place.” Previously, consumers purchased smoked fish from their local fish market. Attorney Harvey Scholten remembers buying smoked chubs for his mother from Dornbos “right off the counter.” This new packaging was a sign of the times.
Danger
There were clues as to the danger of selling smoked fish in this new packaging.
One clue was a letter introduced as evidence in the court files of the lawsuits that followed the incident. The letter, from the State of Minnesota Department of Agriculture Dairy and Food, dated October 5, 1960, and addressed to H.J. Dornbos, reported an outbreak of food poisoning in Minneapolis which resulted in two deaths specifically attributed to “Clostridium Botulinum toxin carried by smoked ciscoes … packaged in vacuum-pack pliofilm.” The letter goes on to state the belief that the smoking procedure process would not restrict the growth of the botulism toxin. It therefore recommended against packaging in a vacuum container. The letter indicated the department was not ready to issue regulations but was simply recommending against the use of vacuum packing for smoked fish.
A newspaper article at the time, examining the problem of vacuum-packed, smoked fish and botulism, noted that the toxin was “highly resistant to heat and [known to] grow only in the absence of oxygen.” The suggestion being that when smoking fish, it was not the intention to cook the fish; smoking was for flavoring, and the vacuum-pack inherently would create an oxygen-starved environment. Put into the context of the times, however, this was still an unknown area. One cautionary letter and some newspaper speculation, compared to tons of smoked fish consumed for 74 years without incident, would understandably not raise a dramatic red flag.
Another sign of the times was suggested by attorney Scholten in his opening arguments to the jury in the civil lawsuit. Scholten put the blame on the American public who, “contaminated the lake, the lake contaminated the fish.” He suggested that pollution, not present earlier, introduced the toxin first into the lakes and then into the fish.
When the case finally came to trial in 1971, pollution was much on the public’s mind following the first Earth Day in 1970.
Dramatic Effects on Commercial Fishing Industry
The effects of the tragedy went beyond the smoked fish industry. The power of such a deadly poison as Type E botulism induced fear in consumers of all fish. Reports warned this toxin needed only the presence of one one-hundred billionth part of a gram to kill. This was scary stuff for the consumer to imagine … a deadly poison present in the food they might purchase in the supermarket. In their memory, nothing like this had ever happened in the generation of the fish market.
The Great Lakes fishing industry was already reeling against the effects of the sea lamprey on Lake trout fishing. When the botulism tragedy struck, fishermen across the Great Lakes began halting operations … some 20,000 workers were laid off. One newspaper reported on October 31, 1963: “Tom Brown, owner of Brown Fisheries at Whitefish Point in Upper Michigan, planned to dismiss the 20 fishermen he employs and pull in his nets for the last time today. He said there no longer is a market for the fish. His family’s firm has been taking fish from the Great Lakes since the days before the Civil War.”
Michigan Governor George Romney began to take action to insure public health and to insure a healthy fishing industry. Government agencies worked quickly to issue new regulations on smoked fish and to provide funds to aid the recovery of the fishing industry. On May 20, 1964, it was announced Congress had passed a Bill to authorize $2.75 million in federal grants to be distributed over a five-year period to states suffering the resource disaster. Commercial fishermen and processors suffering substantial economic injury because of the botulism episode could apply for disaster loans from the Small Business Administration.
The H.J. Dornbos & Bros. Company
It appeared H.J. Dornbos & Bros. Company might recover by selling frozen perch fillets. In 1964, after installing $60,000 worth of new equipment, including gas-fired ovens to meet new smoking guidelines, they even resumed sales of smoked fish in new “breathable” cellophane bags. Gone were the hours of smoking over burning hard wood chunks and hickory sawdust which Harold Dornbos’s father had used when he began the company in 1889. But even this was not enough. Harold Dornbos sold his company property at 614 Monroe Street in Grand Haven to a plumbing firm in February 1967. He died two years later on June 26.
Legalities
In June of 1965, H.J. Dornbos & Bros. sued Kroger and the trucking companies involved for $500,000 to recover damages to the business in general and Harold Dornbos in particular: “Harold Dornbos has suffered new and recurrent ulcers and a serious deterioration of his general health.”
Counter suits followed. Kroger’s insurance company had paid the claims of those who died or suffered from the poisoning. The largest settlement of $180,000 was to the Cohen family. Marilyn Cohen suffered the loss of her husband and her 10-year-old daughter Amy Beth after they both ate the tainted fish and died.
Although the Dornbos estate pursued the suit after H.J.’s death, it took eight years of motions, appeals, and depositions, before a jury was selected in March 1971. Harvey Scholten delivered his opening “pollution theory.” Then all parties agreed to an out-of-court settlement in which “no party won or lost,” according to Scholten.
The legacy of this case suggests it to be an example of the cumulative steps in our progression of modern times. It shows us that the journey is not always smooth and reminds us of the hazardous unknowns progress sometimes creates.
Sources
Newspapers: Muskegon Chronicle and Grand Haven Tribune, reports of H.J. Dornbos Co. Harold Dornbos becomes sole owner of firm; new plastic wrap packaging, reports of botulism incident, immediate post-incident reports, and lawsuit reports.
Dornbos Lawsuit Case file #615 at Ottawa County Court, Grand Haven, Michigan: Copy of letter from State of Minnesota Department of Agriculture, copies of income tax returns, insurance settlement reports. Affidavits and depositions of Atkins Cargo Shippers. Copies of State of Michigan Disaster loans program, copy of Dornbos’ “Facts about our new Vacuum-Gas-Packed Smoked Fish.”
“The Chicken Story,” by John Steele Gordon. American Heritage, September 1996, Vol. 47, No. 5 p. 52.
“The Rise of the Supermarket,” by J. Tevere MacFadyen. American Heritage, October/November 1995, Vol. 36, No. 6, p. 22.
Harvey Scholten interview with author, June 18, 1997.
About the Author
Jon Brosseit is a high school teacher in Spring Lake, Michigan, presently working in Education Research for learning strategies delivered by CD software programs. Brosseit first discovered this story working with students on a video project about commercial fishing in Grand Haven.
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