Meat Labeling Industry In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

In Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Sinclair illuminates the horrors of the meat packing industry during the early 1900’s. This caused a push for change in the food industry. In 1906 the Food and Drugs Act was signed. For drugs there had to be a label that stated what was in the drug. It prevented the interstate transport of unlawful food and drugs. This law was formed in order to regulate product labeling. It made sure that the food or drug label was not false or misleading. It also prevented food from having any hazardous ingredients in it, such as food or drugs being produced in dirty working conditions. In 1938, the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was passed. This included “cosmetics and medical devices under control, required that drugs be labeled

Yet they are only funded $2 billion a year. This sounds like a lot of money for one agency to have, but once you begin thinking of all the things the FDA is supposed to do, this amount is just not enough. The FDA is supposed to review every drug before it goes on the market. They are supposed to check and make sure that the drug does what it is supposed to and does not have any severe side effects, and that any side effect it does have is disclosed. Yet sometimes products go on the market with dangerous side effects, and it takes the FDA years to reveal it to the public. They are also supposed to inspect the factories at which these drugs are made to make sure that they are safe and clean factories. Yet last year there was only enough inspectors to inspect “13 of the 713 Chinese factories that produce medicine for U.S consumers”, despite the rising concern about Chinese drugs and their safety. So there is no way to know how safe and clean the working conditions are of these other seven hundred Chinese factories that these drugs were made in. But with only $2 billion there is no way to employee enough employees to conduct these inspections and investigate every drug thoroughly. Some believe that it is not a lack of funding that prevents the FDA from doing their job, it is

Many believe that the FDA has financial reasons for allowing a drug to be on the market. In 2006, a study found that” in 22% of advisory board meetings, more than half the members had direct financial in the companies whose medial products they evaluated or their rivals”. The FDA’s advisory boards should not be able to vote on companies that they have financial ties to. The FDA says they do the best they can to create an unbiased board, but it is difficult to find “top medical experts with no ties” to pharmaceutical companies. Since a number of people have complained about this, Congress decided to make the FDA cut twenty-five percent of the advisory board that has financial ties with the pharmaceutical company being evaluated over the next five years. But what about the other seventy five percent of the board? If a person has a financial tie with a company, they should not be able to vote on it, and if more than fifty percent of the board has a financial tie with a company the drug will get passed just for their financial gain. This causes corruption in the FDA and drugs to get passed to be put on the market with not much research being done on the