Death in Cans

The day had been stifling, so chilled vichyssoise straight from the can seemed like the perfect dish when Banker Sam Cochran, 61, and his wife Grace, 63, sat down to dinner at their Bedford Village, N.Y., home a fortnight ago. But they did not finish their shallow bowls of cold soup. It tasted spoiled, Mrs. Cochran later told their doctor.

Proper Precaution. It was. By 8 the following morning, Cochran complained of double vision. Shortly thereafter, he began to have trouble speaking. By the time he was admitted to a hospital later that afternoon, he had difficulty moving his arms and legs. Shortly before midnight he died. Only after his wife was admitted to the hospital with similar symptoms did doctors, who had not seen a case of the disease in nearly 40 years, suspect that the couple had contracted botulism, a deadly form of food poisoning. Mrs. Cochran, though in critical condition at week's end, may still be saved by the antitoxin that was rushed to her from an out-of-town laboratory.

Meanwhile, state and federal health authorities identified the soup as the source of the poison and ordered the recall of all products prepared by Bon Vivant Soups, Inc. of Newark, N.J. The task is proving complicated. The company processes 4,000,000 cans of food a year--mostly soup--under its own name plus 34 other labels. Some of the cans bearing such well-known brand names as Gristede's, S.S. Pierce and Marshall Field are in fact Bon Vivant products.

The precaution, however, was well taken. Of the first 324 cans of Bon Vivant vichyssoise recalled and tested, five were found to be contaminated. A number of others had telltale bulges, which often but not always signal the presence of botulinum toxin, one of the most deadly poisons known to man. (One ounce of the poison is enough to kill the entire population of the U.S.) The toxin is produced by the hard-shelled spores of the Clostridium botulinum bacteria, which lie dormant in !he soil but flourish in the airless environment of canned foods when they are improperly processed. Heating at 212DEG for five hours or at 240DEG for 30 minutes is sufficient to kill the bacteria during the canning process. But occasionally food is unsufficiently heated, particularly during home canning. (The FDA investigation seemed to point to insufficient heating procedures, but Bon Vivant has not yet given an explanation.) Since 1960, there have been 78 outbreaks of botulism in the U.S. and 182 individual cases, of which 42 proved fatal. Twenty-six of the deaths were caused by home-canned foods.

Preventable Poison. Botulism, however, need not be fatal if diagnosed in time and treated promptly. Supplies of antitoxin against the three main types of botulin poisoning known to affect humans are stockpiled at the U.S. Public Health Service's Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. Authorities warn that the antitoxin should be administered only after certain diagnosis since panicky patients who are suffering from other forms of food poisoning can have dangerous or even fatal reactions to it. They add that botulism need not be contracted at all. Because bringing food to a boil destroys the odorless and usually tasteless toxin, health authorities recommend that consumers take this precaution before serving canned foods, and refrain from tasting until they have done so.

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