The Food and Drug Administration is the oldest “consumer protection agency in the federal government”. The purpose of the FDA is to protect consumers by assuring that all food supplies,medical devices,cosmetics,human and veterinary drugs,and products that emit radiation are safe and secure for our use. Although the official label for the FDA was not created until the 1930’s it’s beginnings can date all the way back to the year of 1848.
It all started with a man named Lewis Beck. Lewis Beck was called to carry out chemical analyses on agricultural products such as soil,foods,and fertilizers. The analyses of these products was one of the small stepping stones into a whirlwind of events that have lead up to our product standards known today. Although small movements were created such as what Lewis Beck had done;the first step into creating the official title known as the FDA was the
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With major trial and error experimentations on foods and their characteristics. Experimenting on how to keep foods from spoiling and even trying to preserve foods for longer and safer periods of time. With these experiments, the FDA eliminated many preservatives that were harmful to the health of the consumer. Also the FDA has contributed to national health immensely with evidence based medicine.
Congress established the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in 1938. The Act explained that all manufacturers were required to show that a product was safe before it could be shipped off to be marketed. Before the 1938 (FD&C) Act many accidents were happening in products that had foreign chemicals and toxic fumes. In 1933 a bill was introduced to overhaul the 1906 drug law, but it was ignored until the death of 107 people from a poisonous ingredient in Elixir Sulfanilamide. Elixir Sulfanilamide was a drug that was marketed in 1937 to treat many things from gonorrhea to a sore