Food and Health Codes

Food and Health Codes

At the turn of the 20th century most politicians were not all that concerned with health and food safety concerns. By 1900 most American states had enacted food laws, but they were poorly enforced.

In 1905, a journalist and social activist name Samuel Hopkins Adams published a series of articles in Collier’s magazine describing the patent medicine business.Many companies were patenting and marketing potions they claimed would cure a variety of illnesses. Many patent medicines had more than alcohol, sugar and colored water. Others contained caffeine, opium, and other dangerous compounds. Consumers were not really sure what they were taking.

At the turn of the 20th Century, America’s food was rotten. A good part of the reason for this were the filthy conditions in the slaughter houses and packing houses, mostly in Chicago, where cattle and other livestock were butchered and processed for the consumer. There was no law permitting the federal government to inspect the packing plants and to keep bad meat and other foods from crossing into other states. Bills had been introduced in Congress to address this problem, but each time the beef industry was able to beat back any law that would force it to clean up its act.

The effort to enact a federal law was led by Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, head of the Bureau of Chemistry in the Department of Agriculture. He issued reports documenting the dangerous preservations being used in what he called “embalmed meat.”

Scandals concerning the purity and quality of food sold to the U.S. public became widespread as the unsanitary methods used by the food industry were disclosed. In 1906, Upton Sinclair wrote a book titled The Jungle Though a novel, its descriptions of what went on in these packing houses was accurate - and revolting.Indiana senator Albert Beveridge, who earlier had sought Congressional action to address the situation, gave the book to President Theodore Roosevelt, who, sickened by what he read, ordered a new investigation by the Department of Agriculture (an earlier one had whitewashed the problem), and when he read it, he put the weight of the White House behind legislation. But Congress still stalled. The President released part of the report to the public, so alarming it that Congress was forced to pass a remedying law. On June 30, 1906, President Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drug Act into law.

Public pressure forced a reluctant Congress to consider a Pure Food and Drug bill in 1906. The law was initially concerned with ensuring products were labeled correctly. Habit-forming drugs such as cocaine were not illegal so long as they were labeled with their contents. This labeling requirement gave way to efforts to outlaw certain products that were not safe.

Provisions of the measure included the following:

• Creation of the Food and Drug Administration, which was entrusted with the responsibility of testing all foods and drugs destined for human consumption
• The requirement for prescriptions from licensed physicians before a patient could purchase certain drugs
• The requirement of label warnings on habit-forming drugs.

The law now prohibited allowing diseased and otherwise bad food in interstate and foreign commerce. The use of spoiled animal and vegetable products was now illegal. Food could not have either substituted ingredients that would reduce its quality or added harmful ingredients. The act also dealt with drugs with false or misleading statements on their labels. Drugs had to abide by established and impartial standardspurity and quality. Offending food and drugs could be condemned and seized by the government, and offending persons could be fined and jailed.