Factors That Led Up To The Pure Food And Drug Act Of 1906

UNSAFE PRODUCTS Even though corporations do not wish to cause harm to consumers, they have in fact all too often done so when the drive to maximize profit or survive in the marketplace has taken priority over concern for consumer safety. An massive range of consumer products including many foods, drugs and medical devices, vehicles, domestic products, and cosmetics have been acknowledged as dangerous to various degrees. Around 70,000 Americans are suspected to die yearly from product-related accidents, and millions more suffer incapacitating injuries at a cost of over $100 billion in property damage, lost wages insurance, litigation, and medical expenses. Even though certain products are intrinsically dangerous, much evidence suggests that corporations, in their almost single-minded pursuit of profit, have been negligent- sometimes criminally- in their disregard for consumer safety.

This eventually led to the creation of the federal department of Food and Drug Administration which lays out laws for what is safe for inclusion in the food and medicine consumed by the

The author of “Dethroning the Deceitful Pork Chop” shows that, “no single food has more profoundly

The fast food industry also hurts environments around farms in general. It has created an unsustainable cycle that farmers cannot escape. In order to feed themselves and their family, farmers play it safe and buy more fertilizer than needed. When the farmers do not use all of it, they must dispose of it, because that fertilizer will not be as effective next year, so they dump the fertilizer in the areas surrounding their farms. But what this causes is too much nitrogen in the environment because too much nitrogen can kill plants and throw the nitrogen cycle out of balance, in turn hurting the environment.

Wiley, chief chemist at the Department of Agriculture, had lobbied for over 20 years for federal food and drug regulation as he had tested chemicals added to preserve foods and found many were dangerous to human health (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2008). The tumult over The Jungle, strengthened Wiley's lobbying efforts in Congress and on June 30, 1906, President Roosevelt was able to push through the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 and the Pure Food and Drug Act (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2008). The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 authorized inspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop any bad or mislabeled meat from entering market. The Pure Food and Drug Act regulated food additives and outlawed misrepresentative labeling of food and drugs. Does that policy exist today?

Many of his other decisions were also about protecting the consumer, such as the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug

Despite the Pure Food and Drug Act being formed, many the deaths and issues from drugs were still proceeding. After 107 people including a six year old, died from a poisonous ingredient in Elixir Sulfanilamide, a chemical relative of antifreeze, the distraught mother of the child wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt about her grief and how something must be done. President Roosevelt responded by enacting The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938. This act improved the past act by requiring manufacturers to submit an application to the FDA before marketing a drug, and by calling for adequate labeling for safe use of drugs. This act created requirements that certain drugs be labeled for sale by prescription only.

Americans in the early 1900’s drank three times as much alcohol as people do today. The commonness of alcohol in the daily life was clearly visible. Americans love for alcohol caused clear problems: crime, domestic violence, neglected families, economic ruin, disease, and death. All these effects of alcohol abuse led reformers to go against alcohol. In 1920 the 18th Amendment was put into the Constitution to ban the production, transportation, importation, and sale of alcohol.

That same day, The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was created. This act required the makers of prepared food and medicine to host government inspection as well. Overall, these acts have now been a reassurance to the public that meat and other things are in good

Intro: When people eat food they do not think about what is in it, or how it is made. The only thing people care about is what the food tastes like and how much they get. During the 1900’s the meat packing industry had not regulations of any kind. All that mattered to the industry was that they made as much money as possible with as little expenditure as possible. During this times people were often made sick and died either from working conditions or poor food quality.

How would you feel people would feel knowing that they were ingesting contaminated foods? This was the case in the late 18th hundred and early 19th hundred many social and economic problems came to be in the United States. For example, one of the many problems that arose during these years were the sanitation conditions in the companies. To be more precise, food companies were getting away with many of the inspections the government would act on. Meat packing industries were becoming more unsafe everyday.

The Pure Food and Drug act of 1906 was the 1st consumer protection law by the Federal Government, this act was passed by President Theodore Roosevelt. The main purpose of the Pure Food and Drug act was to prohibit transportation of contaminated, poisonous, and misbranded foods, drugs, medicines and liquors. Without the pure food and drug act our food, medication, and other product would be filled with dangerous chemicals that would have harm in our health and potentially cause death. Before the 20th century, there were no laws or regulations that protected Americans from hazardous foods and medicines. This meant that there were no restrictions of what chemicals could be put in one’s food or medicine, leaving the open to mass deaths of contaminated or poisonous products.

Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle is a novel, which affected the food industry in 1900’s but also in America today. People have learned over the years the truths about the food industry, revealed through Sinclair’s detailed evidence. Sinclair meant to aim at the public’s heart but instead he shot straight at their stomachs. One would easily be convinced to never again buy or eat meat again. Fortunately, people have seen changes from 1906 and have been currently trying to repair the Food Industry.

“‘If they’ve got a pulse… we’ll take an application’” (Schlosser 162). Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the American Meal by Eric Schlosser and The Jungle by Upton Sinclair convey corporations treating the public inhumanely. The books discuss how the companies will fix their prices, the lengths they will go to avoid unionization within their establishments, highlight how their employees are struggling to survive on their low wages, and provide a look into the risks of working for these corporations.

Don’t even get me started on the American food industry! The american food industry is one of the only food industries in the whole wide world that favors money over the health of its citizens. The food that most Americans eat is processed crap, if you can even call it food! How many of you have eaten popcorn, chips, candy, or crackers in the last week? The amount of chemicals in the food we eat as a country on a daily basis is freaking ridiculous.