Pure Food Law Research Articles

Fish Is a Fighting Food: North American Canned Salmon and the First World War

The Northern Review 44 (2017): 457–464 During the First World War, the Pacific Northwest canned salmon industry, which was headquartered and operated in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, sent millions of cases of its product to Britain and France for consumption by Allied troops and civilians. The war transformed the canned salmon industry in ways that reverberated long after the 1918 armistice. In order to meet the ever growing demand for fish, the industry expanded dramatically, almost doubling overnight in some regions, which led to overfishing, depleted fish stocks, and concomitant government regulation of fisheries that would only increase over time. In addition, the high rates of product spoilage—a direct result of new and disreputable packing companies entering the market in hopes of securing guaranteed government contracts—led to greater enforcement of pure food laws and safety regulations, an action that in turn educated the public about sanitation and the emerging science of nutrition. The adoption of canned salmon as a wartime ration may in hindsight seem obvious, yet the process was by no means inevitable but rather required industry lobbying and negotiations with the United States and Canadian governments over prices, delivery procedures, and general fishing operations. This article examines the complex and occasionally contradictory process of bringing Pacific Northwest canned salmon to Europe during the First World War. This article is part of a special collection of papers originally presented at a conference on “The North and the First World War,” held May 2016 in Whitehorse, Yukon. https://doi.org/10.22584/nr44.2017.020

Legal Remedy Against Adulterated Human Life

The interested interests, instigated by the devil and all selfishness, can so manipulate State legislation as to make it practically ineffective as to the protection of the people. There is an enormous capital employed in food supplies, in their procurement, in their preparation, and in their adulteration; and just so long as this enormous capital can protect those engaged in the business, just so long will the people be cheated and gulled and poisoned. The proper remedy is a pure food law covering the conditions absolutely, and the sooner we get such a law the better it will be for our stomachs, our pockets, and our morals.

Pharmacy Is a Science-based Profession

Pharmacy Is a Science-based Profession

The pure food, drink, and drug crusaders, 1879-1914

Under a likeness of President Theodore Roosevelt in the Library of Congress, a plaque lists the Pure Food and Drink Law of 1906 as one of the three landmark achievements of his administration. Few authorities would disagree. Designed to ensure the safety of foods, drinks and drugs, the law was one of the first pieces of social legislation enacted in the United States. Among the most enthusiastic and persistent crusaders for the bill's passage were a wide array of women's groups, many politically active for the first time. Based in large part on primary sources, this work examines the many groups involved in the passage of the Pure Food and Drink Law and how their work affected American society. Part One examines the origins of the movement and why women became so involved. Part Two focuses on the primary groups involved in the law's passage, such as the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the General Federation of Women's Clubs. How it was that such diverse groups rallied around this issue is also explored. The industrial and political opposition to the law and how the crusaders overcame it is covered in Part Three, along with details on how the law's proponents were able to pressure the U.S. Congress into passing it and how they worked to see it fully implemented.

When Historians Turn to Fiction

THE INDIAN SCHOLAR, ADOLF BANDELIER, like so many scholars past and present, once wrote a novel. He did so because his bank account was low, but he never justified The Delight Makers, the story he published in 1890, as a sordid device to make money. Instead, he contended, By clothing sober facts in the garb of romance, I have hoped to make the 'truth' about the Pueblo Indians more accessible and perhaps more acceptable to the public in general. Thus one historian turned to fiction with mixed desires heavily colored by social intent. There are always those who become frustrated with their work and who seek the story as a more effective tool. Harriet Beecher Stowe translated her communion visions into the more direct instrument, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Helen Hunt Jackson, disappointed in the effects of her historical study (A Century ofDishonor), in order to reach an audience, furiously wrote a novel, her Ramona. Upton Sinclair turned from muckraking articles (a journalistic form of history) to The Jungle, and through it saw the Pure Food and Drug law enacted in 1906. But these people are only dabblers in history. A bit closer to the point would be someone like Ignatius Donnelly, who wrote a good deal of pseudo-history about the authorship of Shakespeare and the island of Atlantis before turning to fiction. On the night he was defeate ' for political office in 1889, he began the writing of Caesar's Column to show how his belly-driven, debased society was leading toward a totalitarian nightmare. Donnelly used a pseudonym, like so many historians have done, and

Influence of Dietary Fats and Estradiol 17 Beta Monopalmitate Upon the Edible Meat Yield of Roaster Chickens

THE beneficial effects of estrogenic type hormones for finishing roaster chickens have been known and studied for a number of years. The first material to gain wide commercial application in the poultry industry was diethylstilbestrol. The many advantages of this material as a finishing agent have been well examined and one attribute was that its use increased the dressing percentage (Detwiler et al., 1950; Fromm and Margolf, 1956). An amendment to the Pure Food and Drug law in 1962 prevented further use of diethylstilbestrol as a finishing agent in poultry.Diligent search for a material which would be acceptable for use in poultry was climaxed with the Food and Drug Administration approval of estradiol-17 beta-mono-palmitate in 1964. It has been reported that, among other attributes, this substance is also capable of increasing the dressing percentage or eviscerated yield (Wesley et al., 1965; Megally and Stadelman, 1967). The work reported here .

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

<h3>Yesterday.—</h3> Many of us are old enough to remember when the doctor was bearded, kindly, unworldly, and brought comfort to mankind. He helped us into life with a resounding spank and out of trouble later with a squeeze of the hand. His was the day when going to bed cured about half of our diseases and getting up the other half! We did not question his authority, his wisdom, or his economics. He prevented some disease, he healed some patients, he brought much happiness, and he was personally a relatively free man. He left us a professional heritage that (1) made and maintained its own standards of performance; (2) used its own judgment in the control of disease; (3) except for the Immigration Service, Pure Food Laws, interstate water control, and vaccinations, had heard nothing of Washington, the Establishment, or the Public Health Service; (4) financed itself chiefly on a

Upton Sinclair Studies Foreign Languages

UPTON BEALL SINCLAIR has enjoyed a prolific literary career that has arched its way across the twentieth century. In its course it has encompassed a galaxy of topics. The Jungle, his most famous work, is best remembered as a shattering expose of meat packing practices in Chicago that led to the enactment of the Pure Food and Drug laws. Undoubtedly the most sensational of the Muckrakers, Sinclair's career continued on and developed into a series of continuous crusades which were intended to better the life of the common man. At the beginning of this career, Sinclair sharply criticized the public schools and institutions of higher learning. Many other articles followed directed at various aspects of American education, but his first comments were critical of the teaching of foreign languages. Educated in the public schools of New York City, and later at Columbia University, Sinclair elaborated upon his personal experiences and used them as the themes of several articles.

THE PHYSICIAN AND THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION.

While some states had taken elementary steps toward drug regulation at the turn of the century, the problems of unwarranted promotion of drugs were basically uncontrolled until the passage of the first Pure Food and Drug Law in 1906. This law, judged by today's standards, was totally inadequate but, for the first time, it provided a limited control of interstate traffic in drugs. Judged by the standards of 1906, it was a landmark law of first importance. Over the following years, some improvements were made in the 1906 statute. For instance, a provision instituted in 1912 made it possible for the government to take action on false therapeutic claims for drugs, but only if it could be established that such claims were made fraudulently. Then came the Elixir of Sulfanilamide disaster in 1937, which lead to the death of over a hundred people before the product could be removed from

Progress and Progressivism

I HAVE FELT longer than some people would be willing to admit that there are many questions about the Progressive Era which want explication. What does Progressivism mean to anybody-what does it suggest? Different eras have different popular significance, under changing historical conditions. I venture to say that the Progressive Era has not, in recent decades, appeared to require urgent study of any sort. What do people think about, when they think of the American past? In recent years, we have had student parties based on the Roaring Twenties themes-F. Scott Fitzgerald and his Flappers and Philosophers. Here, by the way, is one of the real pieces of evidence that we have again been passing through, in our own ways, a kind of latter-day Nineteen Twenties: a post-War era with characteristics of the last great post-War era. Students do not have parties of the Nineteen Thirties. If they decided to have a pre-World War I party, it would be based, not on Progressivism, but on barber-shop quartets, handle-bar moustaches, floor-length skirts, beer-parlor dancing, and other decor of the period. The philosophy of Progressivism is not reflected in its popular tunes in the sense that Come to Me, My Melancholy Baby, says something obvious about post-World War I disillusionment. There is not so direct a relationship between the fight for Pure Food Laws and the battle against Frenzied Finance, on the one hand, and East Side, West Side and After the Ball, on the other. Some years back, there was a vogue which magnified Andrew Jackson and his era. It was an obvious effort to link the New Deal with the policies and deeds of the old Tennessee Indian-killer. We have had no comparable effort to link the events of Progressivism with those of our own times. I will go further. In my recollection, Progressivism has seemed, in point of interest, less near to us than perhaps any other era in American history. I recall an odd problem I had with a book of my own which dealt with Progressivism. It was handled by a variety of the publishing firm's editors: clever men with wide interests, very contemporaneous in their outlook, but willing to take anything into account which might make them money. Here was my book, largely centered on Pro-

The pure food and drug law as it applies to the oil and fat industry

The pure food and drug law as it applies to the oil and fat industry

The problem of arsenic in American cigarette tobacco.

OFFICIAL declassification of tobacco as a drug, by its removal from the United States Pharma-copoeia, definitively exempted all tobacco products from control under the Pure Food and Drug Law of 1906, and so established a legal obstacle to protection of the consumer from poisonous impurities in cigarette smoke. Thus were planted, fifty years ago, the seeds of a public-health problem that took root and developed so gradually that it was unnoticed until the report of Remington1 in 1927. Since then, its progress has been noted at intervals,2 3 4 but it has received little attention and no effective effort toward solution has . . .

The Federal Government and the Peanut Industry

Until 1932, the federal government limited its activities in behalf of peanuts, as it did in behalf of all agricultural commodities, to those extending aid and protection. Under the dominant laissez-faire concept of the day, agriculture in general and peanuts in particular remained free and unhindered by governmental direction or control. Like many other crops, however, peanuts did receive the benefits of a tariff1 and the protection the Interstate Commerce Commission extended to all agricultural products shipped in interstate commerce.2 In addition, the Department of Agriculture gave them occasional attention in its research, informational, educational and analytical activities, especially after the turn of the century, when peanuts became for the first time a significant commercial crop. Thus peanuts were included in the Department's outlook reporting service, and with the establishment of grades for peanuts, the services of inspection were made available to the peanut industry as well. Later on, specifications for peanut products sold to the federal government were laid down by the Federal Standard Stock Catalogue Board, and the manner in which peanut products were made was included in the purview of the various pure food laws passed by Congress before 1932. Likewise, the manner in which peanuts and peanut products were sold was made subject to the regulation of the Federal Trade Commission, and liberal credit facilities were made available to peanut farmers, as to all producers of agricultural commodities, under the terms of the Farm Credit Act of 1916 and the Agricultural Act of 1923. Although peanuts benefited from services available and protection offered to all agricultural enterprises, they received no special attention except during World War I. Then peanut production was pushed by the government, both to provide a substitute for wheat flour and to increase the amount of oil available for domestic use. To that end, peanut dealers, brokers, importers and refiners were brought under special licensing regulations. In no other way, however, were peanuts regulated by governmental action prior to the early thirties.

Historical aspects of the pure food laws.

Historical aspects of the pure food laws.

PURE food laws in Great Britain.

PURE food laws in Great Britain.

Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetic Laws

Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetic Laws

Objectives of Federal Regulation of the Commodity Exchanges

Other speakers have presented the economic and utility aspects of the future trading system. They have laid a broad foundation of understanding concerning the theory and practice of exchange trading. 'This enables me to approach the subject of commodityexchange regulation without much preliminary discussion. By way of brief introduction, I may say that I like to think of a futures market as a large and fine-balanced automatic scale, one fed by a constant stream of buying and selling orders and registering clearly and correctly the weight of mass opinion concerning price. Obviously, producers and consumers, as well as distributors, have a vital interest in the kind and character of the price-weighing service rendered by the commodity exchanges. Granting that the exchange system provides a proper kind of price-weighing instrument, we need something more. We need supervision and we need occasional inspections of the weighing mechanism. There is nothing startling or new in this idea. For centuries the state has interested itself in weights and measures. Government has long assumed authority over standards and methods of measuring distance and quantity. In more recent times, it has taken the same course in respect to standards for measuring quality, as seen in various grades and standards acts and in the pure food laws. For exactly the same basic reasons, Government may properly interest itself in regulating the central market places and the instrumentalities through which price is being measured. This applies with particular force to a futures market, which in a large measure fixes the general price standard for important farm crops. It may be pointed out, I suppose, that in this justification for regulation there are lacking specific instances and cases. If time permitted, we could examine some of the records in actual cases arising under the old Grain Futures Act. The Cutten case is outstanding, but there were others of equal or greater importance from the standpoint of market integrity. In one case, for example, we found that out of a reported total of 2,330,000 bushels of Chicago May rye futures traded in on one day, 1,800,000 bushels, or 77 per cent, represented purely

The Balance of Social Forces in the Administration of the Pure Food and Drug Act

T HE failure of the 74th Congress to pass an amendatory pure food and drug bill was a major omission of the session. With the merits of the particular legislation proposed we are not concerned. Remedial legislation is essential now but this need for statutory reform must not distract attention from the great influence of social and economic forces lying beyond the legal realm. Our purpose here is to analize the proper conditions for free administrative action in terms of the social, economic, and political forces that make this possible. If a regulatory bureau is to execute the law in the interest, those forces impinging upon the bureau from without must tend to counter-balance one another. It is only in an environment of this sort that the civil servant can freely perform his official duties. The experience of the officials enforcing the federal pure food and drug act for nearly three decades shows the effect of environmental conditions in changing the very character and purpose of a statute. This becomes clear if the execution of the law is reviewed in relation of the social forces and economic influences touching the administrators themselves. The Food and Drug Administration must be considered in its context. The situation can be clarified if this federal agency is viewed objectively against the economic, legal, political, and technical forces that touch the bureau in its day to day operations. What is the bureaucratic environment within which these government officials carry on their work? In the Food and Drug Administration we find a personnel of about 500 scientists and specialists: chemists, bacteriologists, physicians, veterinarians, entomologists, plant pathologists, microscopists, pharmacologists, and the like. About half of this force man the executive supervisory offices and technical control laboratories in Washington. The rest are scattered over the country in the various branch stations. Sixty-one inspectors are designated to watch for infractions of the law. These officials are responsible for enforcing not only the pure food and drug law but also five other acts regulating insecticides, caustic poisons, naval stores, and importations of milk and tea. They unquestionably have plenty to do. An idea of the enormity of the task is shown by the fact that the total value of the year's output of canned goods alone amounted to about $745,000,000 in I93Z while drug products exceeded $400,000,000. With an appropriation of about one and a quarter million dollars a small corps of officials are charged with regulating a vast number of products in a great variety of industries. These bureaucratic specialists confront a highly specialized public composed of the manufacturers, the producers, the shippers, and the distributors engaged in the collossal work of supplying the nation with nourishment through the arteries of interstate commerce. Officials come into daily contact with dairymen, patent medicine men, canners, fruit growers and shippers, retail grocers and wholesalers. The variety of interests is kaleidoscopic and their number is legion. Under the best of conditions one cannot

THE FEDERAL FOOD AND DRUGS ACT AND THE PHYSICIAN

In 1906 I was an errand boy and soda dispenser in a drug store in Kokomo, Ind. I was assigned the added task of invoicing all patent and proprietary medicines on the shelves of the store, and of writing manufacturers stating the number of bottles or packages of their medicines we had in stock. The manufacturers then furnished me with small stickers to paste on each package, stating the content of alcoholic, narcotic or other drugs required by the new national pure food and drug law to be declared on the labels—also stickers stating, Guaranteed under the Food and Drugs Act of 1906. These I attached to all packages. That was about the extent of my knowledge of the Food and Drugs Act before becoming associated with the federal Food and Drug Administration, in 1929. Since that date I have questioned numerous physicians and dentists and I find that their

Congressional Opposition to Pure Food Legislation, 1879-1906

The general pure food law was passed only after a long evolutionary process in which the education of public opinion was the prime moving force. Between January 20, 1879, when the first bill designed primarily to prevent the adulteration of food was introduced in the House of Representatives, and June 30, 1906, when the Pure Food Law was signed, 190 measures relating to specific foods were introduced. These met with various kinds of opposition. The opponents may be classified into three classes: those who objected on the grounds of constitutional interpretation, those who were not aware of the seriousness of the problem and believed there were more pressing questions, and those who were personally interested in the perpetuation of frauds that would be illegal under a pure food statute.