These Are the Biggest Food Disasters of the Past Century

At this very moment, untold volumes of food and drink are being transported around the world. Normally, these processes occur without a hitch as supermarkets remain ever-stocked. Sometimes, however, accidents occur and disaster strikes, resulting in serious food disasters.

Be it warehouses catching on fire or food tainted with lethal chemicals, massive quantities of food can get seriously spoiled. These incidents are rare, but when they happen, they result in shocking food disasters. As such, let's examine some of the biggest food disasters of the past century. (For food budgeting, discover how to feed a family of six for less than $50 a week.)

To compile a list of the biggest food disasters of the past century, 24/7 Tempo consulted a range of food and lifestyle websites. These included freshbyte.com, foodmanufacturing.com, and KMBC.com. From there, we confirmed aspects of our research using sites like BBC.com and CNN.com.

In January 2013, a lorry driver got a surprise as he transported caramelized brown goat cheese through Norway. As he reached the Rattli Tunnel near Tysfjord in Northern Norway, he noticed his truck trailer aflame. The driver quickly ditched his vehicle as the fire grew. Indeed, the 27 tonnes of caramelized brown goat cheese–a delicacy known as Brunost–caught fire and burned for five days, effectively closing off the tunnel and creating a food disaster. Thanks to the cargo's high concentration of fat and sugar, the cheese burned almost like petrol.

The picture above may look like a type of syrup, but it's actually molasses, which is the viscous byproduct of refined sugarcane or sugar beet juice. It's thick, sticky, and prone to cause a mess. Such a mess happened in Honolulu, Hawaii, in September 2013. As a massive load of molasses was being loaded onto a ship, a faulty pipe caused 1,400 tons of the substance to dump into the Honolulu Harbor. It instantly sank to the bottom of the harbor and caused deoxygenation. In the process, it killed over 26,000 fish and 17,000 corals.

In the aftermath, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Matson Navigation Co. reached a $15.4 million settlement, with part of the money allocated to regrowing the coral nursery. This disaster effectively ended Hawaii's sugar industry.

In May 2000, a fire broke out at the Wild Turkey Distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. The distillery was comprised of seven floors packed to the brim with Kentucky bourbon. Thanks to the high alcohol content, the flames grew into a massive bonfire within minutes, leveling the distillery. Thanks to the Wild Turkey fuel, the fire burned for days. The bourbon that didn't go up in flames, drained into the Kentucky River, disrupting the water's oxygen, and killing nearly 250,000 fish.

This isn't the only time bourbon has resulted in disaster. Four years before the Wild Turkey disaster, the nearby Heaven Hill bourbon distillery also went up in flames. The process repeated itself in 2019 when a fire broke out at a Jim Beam warehouse in Kentucky, destroying over 45,000 bottles of aged bourbon.

Looking to give their wines an extra boost of flavor, the Austrian wine industry made a serious mistake when it added Diethylene glycol to its wines for extra sweetness in 1985. The Austrian wine industry had a growing reputation, but climate change forced them to take drastic measures to compete with sweet German wines. While Diethylene glycol gave their wines extra body, it also made them lethal. Fortunately, no one died from drinking the spiked wines, but the Austrian wine industry's reputation was ruined after the scandal came to light.

In the summer of 1972, a ship loaded with Thai tapioca caught fire in Cardiff Bay, Wales. The lumber on board caught fire, but responders quickly doused the flames. The problem was, however, that the water dripping through the deck caused the 1,500 tons of tapioca to expand. This threatened to destroy the hull, capsize the ship, and create a serious food disaster. It took several days, but firefighters managed to save the ship and prevent the tapioca from expanding past the point of no repair. During the rescue effort, a local fire chief made history when he called it a huge tapioca time bomb.

A serious tragedy struck the country of Iraq in 1971 when grain treated with methylmercury fungicide was imported and eaten. Though it wasn't intended for human consumption, the tainted grain made its way into the food supply and killed nearly 500 people (some estimates put the death toll at 5,000). Blame for the food disaster was placed on a misunderstanding of warnings in Spanish and English but not Arabic. Furthermore, the skull and crossbones emblem on the grain packages was not seen as a dangerous warning by locals.

On April 25, 2017, a Pepsi warehouse's roof unexpectedly collapsed in Lebedyan, Russia. This resulted in two minor injuries and a torrent of fruit juices filling the city's streets. Some 28,000,000 liters of juice flooded through Lebedyan and the nearby Don River. Fortunately, the aquatic ecosystem of the Don River remained healthy. Pepsi immediately apologized for the incident and offered to pay for damages. (For disasters in the skies, discover the deadliest commercial airline disasters of the past 50 years.)