{"id":9199,"date":"2015-07-10T00:01:35","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T04:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=9199"},"modified":"2015-07-10T10:52:06","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T14:52:06","slug":"seafood-scandal-in-society-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2015\/07\/seafood-scandal-in-society-hill\/","title":{"rendered":"Seafood Scandal in Society Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"North<\/a>
North side, Dock Street between Front and Water Streets, November 5, 1955. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All Don and Peggy Kleinschmidt wanted was a nice family dinner. The last<\/i> thing they wanted was for their three-year-old son, Dale, to become the poster child in a frenzied food-tainting scandal.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday March 24, 1959 Peggy went shopping at her local supermarket in Haddon Heights, New Jersey and arrived home with two pounds of flounder fillets. As her four children played nearby, Peggy unwrapped the fish, slathered it with breadcrumbs, salt, and pepper and set about cooking. Dale, the Kleinschmidt’s three-year-old, loved fish couldn\u2019t wait. As soon as Peggy fried the first fillet, she gave it to him, with a glass of milk. Dale scarfed down his meal and ran off to visit with his grandmother, who lived nearby. The rest of the Kleinschmidt family then sat down to eat.<\/p>\n

Almost immediately, Dale\u2019s grandmother sensed something wrong. At first, she attributed it to Dale having missed his usual nap. But within a few minutes he was crying and vomiting. Then he started turning blue. The Kleinschmidts called their family physician, who arrived quickly. By the time the doctor arrived, according to an account of the incident, Dale Kleinschmidt was \u201clying on a chair with no detectable blood pressure, eyes rolled back, and absent reflexes.\u201d By the time he arrived at Cooper Hospital in Camden, Dale was dead. And other family members were also suffering symptoms of food poisoning.<\/p>\n

What could it be? “The fish didn’t taste quite right,” observed Don Kleinschmidt. But for more than 24 hours, no one knew for sure.<\/p>\n

\"(PhillyHistory.org)\"<\/a>
Northwest corner of Dock and Water Streets, November 5, 1955. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The local police ordered the flounder removed from the supermarket fish counter. And as word spread, and reports came in, local, state and national health officials and the Food and Drug Administration investigated. The next morning, the Inquirer<\/i> reported several women becoming ill after eating fillet of flounder \u201cin a well-known restaurant in Philadelphia\u201c. The city health department \u201cissued a warning on a teletype service\u201d that reached \u201cnewspapers, radio and televisions stations.\u201d By 5 PM on Wednesday March 25th, every last radio announcer in the Philadelphia area cautioned: \u201cAll flounder purchased yesterday and today is poisonous.\u201d Don\u2019t eat it; Destroy it.<\/p>\n

Throughout the city and suburbs, flounder-lovers crowded emergency rooms requesting antidotes and pleading to have their stomachs pumped. And the alarm spread up and down the East Coast. \u201cPoisoned Fish Hits East; Baby Dies,\u201d read one headline<\/a>. \u201cBoy\u2019s Death Sparks Poison Food Search,\u201d declared another<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Quickly, the investigation pointed to a single source, Dan DiOrio\u2019s Universal Seafood Company, a fish processor at <\/span>Water and Dock Streets<\/a> on the Philadelphia waterfront. And investigators identified the additive that killed Dale Kleinschmidt: sodium nitrite.<\/span><\/p>\n

But just as the warnings were going out, DiOrio himself stood in front of news cameras denying the fish industry \u201chad or would use sodium nitrite.\u201d And even after his firm was identified as the likely processor, DiOrio held firm to his denial: \u201csodium nitrate is not used in his plant operations.\u201d DiOrio felt \u201cjust as sorry as anyone\u201d about the loss of life.<\/span><\/p>\n

At first, Food and Drug Administration District Director Robert C. Stanfill found nothing to contradict DiOrio\u2019s repeated denials. But upon further investigation, <\/span>Stanfill\u2019s team found<\/a> \u201cevidence of nitrites \u2026 on the concrete floor, and on the cutting table.\u201d Digging deeper, they traced several transactions. The day before Dale Kleinschmidt\u2019s death, a nearby chemical supply house made \u201can early-morning delivery of 400-pounds of sodium nitrite\u201d to DiOrio\u2019s facility. He \u201cpersonally authorized the order and personally accompanied\u201d the clearly labeled drum \u201cfrom the truck to the filleting room\u201d where 1,800 pounds of fish that would kill one and sicken at least 40 others were treated.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three-year old Dale Kleinschmidt died after consuming an estimated 460 milligrams of sodium nitrite, more than 2.5 times the amount that would \u00a0\u201cinduce hypotension, pallor, sweating, nausea, dizziness, and loss of consciousness\u201d in an adult.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dan DiOrio pleaded <\/span>nolo contendre<\/i><\/a>. Sentenced\u00a0to a month in jail, and served 16 days and remained on probation for three years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Burdened by scandal and lawsuits <\/span>Universal Seafood<\/a>\u00a0soon\u00a0closed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0[Additional sources consulted: Thomas L. Singley, III,\u00a0 M.D, \u00a0\u201cSecondary Methemoglobinemia Due to the Adulteration of Fish with Sodium Nitrite,\u201d Annals of Internal Medicine<\/i>, Vol. 57, No. 5, November 1962; Obituary of Margaret Kleinschmidt, 1931-2008.<\/span><\/a>]<\/span><\/p>\n

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All Don and Peggy Kleinschmidt wanted was a nice family dinner. The last thing they wanted was for their three-year-old son, Dale, to become the poster child in a frenzied food-tainting scandal. On Tuesday March 24, 1959 Peggy went shopping at her local supermarket in Haddon Heights, New Jersey and arrived home with two pounds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}