The Meat Inspection Act
"President Theodore Roosevelt was sickened after reading an advance copy. He called upon Congress to pass a law establishing the Food and Drug Administration and, for the first time, setting up federal inspection standards for meat." -www.capitalcentury.com
- Discovery Education
"The Federal Meat Inspection Act impacts the inspection procedures, and also the American public which consumes the meat on a daily basis. The FMIA requires inspection of livestock before slaughter, and specific inspection instructions for the livestock postmortem. The Act also set a standard of absolutely necessary sanitary expectations and “allowed the USDA to issue grants of inspection and monitor slaughter and processing operations, enabling the Department to enforce food safety regulatory requirements.” - "Upton Sinclair's The Jungle: The Legal and Social Impacts of a Classic Novel" by Ashley McIntyre
"Roosevelt overcame meat-packer opposition and pushed through the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. The law authorized inspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop any bad or mislabeled meat from entering interstate and foreign commerce. This law greatly expanded federal government regulation of private enterprise. The meat packers, however, won a provision in the law requiring federal government rather than the companies to pay for the inspection.
-U.S.D.A Documentary, 1946
Passage of the Meat Inspection Act opened the way for Congress to approve a long-blocked law to regulate the sale of most other foods and drugs. For over 20 years, Harvey W. Wiley, chief chemist at the Department of Agriculture, had led a "pure food crusade." He and his "Poison Squad" had tested chemicals added to preserve foods and found many were dangerous to human health. The uproar over The Jungle revived Wiley's lobbying efforts in Congress for federal food and drug regulation."
- Constitutional Rights Foundation
- Constitutional Rights Foundation
Certain material that was deemed important is underlined in red.
"The original 1906 Act authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to inspect and condemn any meat product found unfit for human consumption. Unlike previous laws ordering meat inspections, which were enforced to keep European nations from banning pork trade, this law was strongly motivated to protect the American diet. All labels on any type of food had to be accurate (although not all ingredients were provided on the label). The law was partly a response to the publication of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, an exposé of the Chicago meat packing industry, as well as to other Progressive Era muckraking publications." -http://crywolfproject.org
-U.S.D.A Documentary, 1946