Bitter Harvest (1981 film)
| Bitter Harvest | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Drama |
| Written by |
Frederic Halbert (book "Bitter Harvest") Sandra Halbert (book "Bitter Harvest") Richard Friedenberg (written for television by) |
| Directed by | Roger Young |
| Starring |
Ron Howard Art Carney Tarah Nutter Barry Corbin |
| Theme music composer | Fred Karlin |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Charles W. Fries |
| Producer(s) | Tony Ganz |
| Cinematography | Gayne Rescher |
| Editor(s) | Thomas Fries |
| Running time | 94 min. |
| Production company(s) | Charles Fries Productions |
| Distributor | NBC |
| Release | |
| Original network | NBC |
| Original release | May 4, 1981 |
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.
De Vries calls the local veterinary authorities from the Michigan Farm Bureau who study his animals, take samples, and kill a small ailing calf to take the remains for autopsy. Judging from the results, they claim he is responsible for his problem. 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. 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. 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 frustrated in his search for an answer. Indeed his first thoughts that the rats would be part of the solution are now dashed, because naturally his family do not eat cattle feed, and they too are showing signs of skin complaints, headaches and feeling generally unwell. 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. By mistake, one of the tests was allowed to run all night long. Toward the end of this long print-out a single un-identified blip appeared on the result chart, showing an un-known substance 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 PBBs. Exposure symptoms match what they already know, and include memory loss and possible cancer. They find that the substance that has poisoned his livestock can be passed on to humans by eating beef and drinking milk. This is clearly shown by his family's poor health. 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 stored in body fat and is cumulative. It's firmly in the food chain, and the long-term effects are uncertain, as there is no known way to remove PBB once it has been ingested.
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