Transcript Pure Food and Drug

Pure Food and Drug Act
1906
Yuval Mor
Period 3
Important dates leading to the act
1898-1899, Soldiers in the Spanish-American War die from
eating badly-preserved meat.
1901, Children in St. Louis and Camden die from tainted
vaccines.
1902-1906, Dr. Harvey Wiley (known as the father of this
act) administers a study on twelve volunteers that agree to
eat food laced common preservatives.
February 1906, Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle which
exposes the meatpacking industry.
Three political forces that pushed
this act onto congressional agenda
1. Consumer movements dominated by organized
women activists.
2. Rise of Journalism, such as Sinclair’s The Jungle that
sold 1 million copies in its first year. Also, Samuel Adams
articles in Collier’s magazine on patent medicines and
advertising fraud.
3. Harvey Washington Wiley, leader of the Bureau of
Chemistry in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Excerpt from the Act/Purpose
“For preventing the manufacture, sale, or
transportation of adulterated or misbranded or
poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs,
medicines, and liquors…”
Relationship with other laws
The Pure Food and Drug Act was passed on the same day as the
Meat Inspection Act of 1906.
Mandated examination of livestock before slaughter , analysis
of carcasses, and required ongoing USDA inspection of
slaughterhouses and processing plants.
Enforcement of the Pure Food and Drug Act was assigned to the
Bureau of Chemistry in the USDA, which in 1930 was renamed the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The Meat Inspection Act was
assigned to what is now known as the Food Safety and Inspection
Service, which remains within the Agriculture Department.
Controversy/Impact of the Pure
Food and Drug Act
The act not only gave unprecedented new
regulatory powers to the federal government,
it also empowered a bureau that evolved into
today's Food and Drug Administration.
Other statutes have received more study, but
the Pure Food and Drug Act has had the
longest-lasting and most widespread
economic, political, and institutional impact.
Political Cartoons
Political Cartoons Contd.
Journalism
that pushed
this act onto
congressional
agenda
An example of dangerous
drugs marketed to U.S.
Citizens is Coca-Cola originally
containing excessive amounts
of cocaine.
Government pressure forced
the change from cocaine to
caffeine.