FDA Reforms
"Although it was not known by its present name until 1930, FDA’s modern regulatory functions began with the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act, a law a quarter-century in the making that prohibited interstate commerce in adulterated and misbranded food and drugs. Harvey Washington Wiley, Chief Chemist of the Bureau of Chemistry in the Department of Agriculture, had been the driving force behind this law and headed its enforcement in the early years, providing basic elements of protection that consumers had never known before that time."
-http://www.fda.gov
-http://www.fda.gov
"The 1906 law (the Pure Food and Drug Act) marked the official beginning of the FDA and established the principle that the federal government could regulate food and drugs on a broad scale." -"Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle Failed to Deliver Its Socialist Message"
The FDA Before The Jungle
This video displays how the main focus of the Prior to the publication of The Jungle, the FDA was not yet concerned with the foods and drugs that consumers would be in direct contact with, but with aspects of agriculture.
|
|
Harvey Washington Wiley
"A pure food and drug bill would probably not have passed in 1906 without the unceasing commitment of one man: Harvey Washington Wiley. A doctor and a chemist, Wiley (1844–1930) recognized early the need to regulate the adulteration of food and later joined the crusade for pure drugs."
"...with the backing of President Theodore Roosevelt, the landmark Pure Food and Drugs Act was passed by Congress in 1906 and signed into law. The bill prohibited adulteration and misbranding of food and drugs and was the most comprehensive legislation of its kind in the United States."
- Chemical Heritage Foundation
"...with the backing of President Theodore Roosevelt, the landmark Pure Food and Drugs Act was passed by Congress in 1906 and signed into law. The bill prohibited adulteration and misbranding of food and drugs and was the most comprehensive legislation of its kind in the United States."
- Chemical Heritage Foundation
"Conditions in the U.S. food and drug industries a century ago can hardly be imagined today. Use of chemical preservatives and toxic colors was virtually uncontrolled. Changes from an agricultural to an industrial economy had made it necessary to provide the rapidly increasing city population with food from distant areas. But sanitation was primitive in the light of modern standards. Ice was still the principal means of refrigeration. The great pioneers of bacteriology were just starting their string of victories over infectious diseases. Milk was still unpasteurized. Cows were not tested for tuberculosis...
This comic strip shows that Theodore Roosevelt was a vital figure involved in the passing of the FDA and food safety laws in America. Without the leadership and intuition of President Roosevelt, The Jungle may not have had the extensive effects that it did.
...Within weeks of the publication of The Jungle, meat sales dropped by half across the United States... Meat companies were frightened, and ready for some rules to govern the trade, but leaders in Congress still refused to pass a bill. Women's organizations from around the country and the American Medical Association (AMA) threatened everything including a march on the offices of the congressional leaders if no action was taken this year. A watered-down version of a bill was finally released, but Roosevelt read it and found it worse than the status quo. He had held back releasing the report of his meat plant investigators, but now he turned it over to the newspapers. It verified in fact the conditions described in Sinclair's fiction, and it secured the passage of the nation's first broad food and drug acts. They were signed in June 1906."
- FDA.gov
"The time period directly following the publishing of Sinclair’s novel was one of which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was administered. While there are many factors that contributed to this, The Jungle helped an unaware audience recognize that there needed to be change." - "Upton Sinclair's The Jungle: The Legal and Social Impacts of a Classic Novel" by Ashley McIntyre
"The original Food and Drugs Act is passed by Congress on June 30 and signed by PresidentTheodore Roosevelt. It prohibits interstate commerce in misbranded and adulterated foods and drugs. The Meat Inspection Act is passed the same day. Shocking disclosures of insanitary conditions in meat-packing plants, the use of poisonous preservatives and dyes in foods, and cure-all claims for worthless and dangerous patent medicines were the major problems leading to the enactment of these laws." -A Brief History of Early Drug Regulation in the United States, a timeline from toxipedia.org
"The agency grew from a single chemist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1862 to a staff of approximately 9,100 employees and a budget of $1.294 billion in 2001, comprising chemists, pharmacologists, physicians, microbiologists, veterinarians, pharmacists, lawyers, and many others."
- fda.gov
- fda.gov