The Deadly Soup Recall That Ended An Old-School Brand

Recalls are an unfortunate reality for the American food industry. From a tuna recall that sickened over 400 diners to lead and bacteria contaminants in baby food that made mothers fear for their infants, tainted foodstuffs have shaped U.S. food safety laws for more than a century. One such incident, which occurred in the 1970s, came in a form that many would consider safe — canned soup.

The Newark, New Jersey-based Bon Vivant Soup Company made a variety of canned soups under a number of different brand names. One of their products was vichyssoise, a soup made with leeks and potatoes that was often served cold. The soup was quite popular until July 2, 1971, when the company unknowingly sent out cans of the soup that were tainted with botulin toxin. This resulted a massive soup recall, but not before one person was left paralyzed and another dead.

New York resident Samuel Cochran and his wife, Grace, both consumed a can of Bon Vivant's vichyssoise soup and became seriously ill. Cochran died of botulism, and his wife was paralyzed for months. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a public warning, and Bon Vivant voluntarily recalled 6,444 cans of soup while an investigation took place. What it uncovered would change the future of the company forever.

The FDA uncovered five cans of soup which contained the toxin, but further research into Bon Vivant's processing facilities also found that their practices were unsafe: The soup was not heated sufficiently to kill all bacteria, which resulted in the growth of botulinum type A, a neurotoxin with debilitating and often fatal side effects. This applied not only to vichyssoise, which was seen as a classy soup at the time, but also to other items that had been packaged there. Also, Bon Vivant's record-keeping was inaccurate, making it difficult to determine which batches were bad. 

On July 7, everything came to a head when the FDA shut down Bon Vivant's production plant. The company couldn't track down where all its products had ended up, so all Bon Vivant soups across the United States were seized; over a million cans were pulled from circulation, effectively ending the company's business. Just a few short weeks later, Bon Vivant filed for bankruptcy. The fallout was so shocking that other brands of vichyssoise took a dip in popularity as well.

You'd think that bankruptcy would be the end of Bon Vivant, but that's only half correct. The company's owner, James Paretti, went to court to reclaim the seized cans from the FDA. His idea was to sell them through a new company with Bon Vivant's previous name, Moore & Co, which he hoped it wouldn't be associated with Bon Vivant's scandal. However, the FDA destroyed all the cans by incineration, burning over 60,000 gallons of soup.

Paretti's rebranding dream didn't last either. Though the FDA reported that its Newark plant had met safety regulations, the damage had been done. After his company had been in the soup business for more than 100 years, Paretti called it quits in 1974.

Today, safety regulations are stricter, so food production plants are inspected more regularly; as coverage noted, the FDA hadn't visited the Bon Vivant plant for four years prior to the recall. If a company doesn't take proper safety precautions with food, it can result in a huge recall that can affect millions. Perhaps the most striking result of the recall: If you go to a grocery store, you're very unlikely to find cans of vichyssoise for sale, as it fell out of favor after this incident.