Pure Food and Drug Act

Pure Food and Drug Act. Signed into law on 30 June 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt, the Food and Drugs Act—popularly know as the Pure Food and Drug Act—with its companion piece the Meat Inspection Amendment, originated the regulatory apparatus that became the Food and Drug Administration. This landmark statute prohibited the “misbranding” of any foodstuff or pharmaceutical offered for sale or their “adulteration” by any ingredient not specified on the label. Congress authorized the Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agriculture to enforce the law by testing random specimens for misbranding or adulteration, notifying suspect manufacturers, and granting them a hearing. Only if a manufacturer refused to comply could the bureau turn the case over to a district attorney for prosecution. Convictions carried fines of up to three hundred dollars and imprisonment for up to one year, with confiscation of the offending product the ultimate punishment.

Dr. Harvey W. Wiley (1844–1930), chief chemist of the Department of Agriculture from 1883 to 1912, was the moving force behind the law. Wiley publicized the problem by feeding dubious preservatives to volunteers dubbed the “poison squad.” For over two decades, Wiley functioned as the chief propagandist, organizer, and strategist for the law, and then as its principal enforcer. Public support for such a law grew steadily thanks to a series of reports on harmful and unsanitary meatpacking processes published in muckraking magazines and in Upton Sinclair's 1906 exposé, The Jungle. The measure won backing from a broad‐based coalition including the National Association of State Dairy and Food Departments, the National Consumers' League, the American Medical Association, and the General Federation of Women's Clubs, joined by some well‐established manufacturers seeking to eliminate marginal competitors. Its opponents included the National Food Manufacturers' Association; the National Liquor Wholesale Dealers' Association; and the Proprietary Association of America, the drug industry's lobbying arm. Sponsored by two Republican senators and by two GOP congressmen, and aided by an eleventh‐hour endorsement by Roosevelt, the final bill passed both houses by overwhelming margins and stands as a major Progressive Era legislative achievement.
See also Consumer Movement; Economic Regulation; Federal Government, Executive Branch: Department of Agriculture; Food and Diet; Health and Fitness; Meatpacking and Meat Processing Industry; Muckrakers; Pharmaceutical Industry; Women's Club Movement.

Bibliography

Oscar E. Anderson Jr. , The Health of a Nation: Harvey W. Wiley and the Fight for Pure Food, 1958.
James Harvey Young , Pure Food: Securing the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906, 1989.

John D. Buenker