Bitter Harvest is a 1981 American drama television film directed by Roger Young, from a teleplay by Richard Friedenberg, based on the 1978 book of the same name by Frederic and Sandra Halbert. The film stars Ron Howard, Art Carney, Tarah Nutter, and Richard Dysart, and chronicles the Michigan PBB contamination incident. Bitter Harvest originally aired on NBC in the United States on May 4, 1981. The film received positive reviews and was nominated for four Primetime Emmy Awards. Plot Ned De Vries 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 (MFB) 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 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 MFB veterinarians, they pay no regard to his claims or fears that the feed might be poisoned, leaving him frustrated in his search for an answer. His first thoughts that the rats may be pointing to the problem fades when his family, who do not eat cattle feed, begin showing signs of skin complaints, headaches and feeling generally unwell. De Vries makes an impassioned plea to one of the MFB'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, a respected scientist and researcher. Dr.