The Beginning of Modern Regulation of Purity of Food:

The Progressive Era Legislation in the United States

Prof. Roumen Genov

Department of History, New Bulgarian University

Abstract

            The legislative regulation of quality of foods and beverages has long history (for instance, the Reinheitsgebot - the "Bavarian Purity Law" of 1516, setting a standard for brewing of beer). There were many precedents, provisions, and legal experiments in individual states of the United States in the 1800s, but national regulation of consumer products, food and drugs first of all, started in earnest as part of the broad social and economic reforms during the “Progressive era” (1900-1918). The public opinion in the United States was roused by exposure of many abuses by investigative journalists (so called Muckrakers), like the unsanitary methods of meat processing at the slaughter houses, using of preservatives like borax, benzoate, formaldehyde, sulfites, and salicylates, medicines with high alcoholic and opium derivatives content intended for infants, etc.

            The result was the enactment by the United States Congress of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The former authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to inspect and condemn any meat product found unfit for human consumption and to ensure that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions; the latter was principally a "truth in labeling" law designed to raise standards in the food and drug. The enforcement of the Pure Food and Drug Act was assigned to the Bureau of Chemistry in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, since 1930 renamed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The law also establishes a corpus of federal food inspectors, and besides monetary penalties, goods that are found to be in violation of the law are subject to seizure and destruction at the manufacturer’s expense.

            The legislation was due to the education of the public and the exposures made by the “muckraking” journalists, like Upton Sinclair and Samuel Hopkins Adams, as well as to the determination of the “Progressive” President Theodore Roosevelt, who was deeply concerned with social reforms and ecology (which was termed at that time “conservationism”). Though the early federal legislation had certain gaps and deficiencies, and numerous amendments were made, or were replaced by new acts (Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, 1938, Poultry Products Inspection Act, 1957), it remained statutory basis for federal regulation of foods and other consumer products, and marked the beginning of modern regulation of purity of food with the respective positive social effect.

            Key words: quality of foods, foods and drugs control, “Progressive era” social legislation in the , education of the public.