Consumer Protection Act Of 1906 Essay

When the United States federal government began to intervene in the food and drug businesses, the history of early food regulation in the United States started with the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. This was the first of significant consumer protection laws that were enacted by the federal government in the 20th century which also led to the creation of the food and drug administration. The main purpose was to ban foreign and interstate traffic in the adulterated or the mislabeled food and drug products. It is directed by the US Bureau of chemistry to inspect products and to refer offenders to prosecutors. It is required to have active ingredients be placed on the labels of a drug’s packaging and that the drugs could not fall below any of

The law itself was replaced by the more comprehensive federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was a key piece to the progressive era legislation, which was signed by the president at the time Theodore Roosevelt on the same day as the Federal Meat Inspection Act. The enforcement of the Pure Food and Drug Act was assigned to the Bureau of Chemistry in the US department of agriculture which was renamed the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1930. The Meat Inspection Act was assigned to what is now known as The Food Safety and Inspection Service that remains in the US Department of

To heighten color, modify flavor, soften texture, deter spoilage, and to even transform apple scraps, glucose, coal-tar dye, and timothy seed chemical additives were used. Products were often labeled and packaged to appear larger than they were; or packaged to appear to have a higher concentration of food. Farmers felt threatened by unfair competition as shady producers adulterated fertilizers, deodorized rotten eggs, revived rancid butter, and substituted glucose for honey. This began to worry high-quality producers who worried that their products might be undermined by deceitful goods. Real strawberry jam producers felt threatened by the bad strawberry “spread” substitutes, since consumers could not tell the difference while they were purchasing. Adulterated products often used chemicals or additives to mask poor quality wheat, sour milk, o meat gone bad. These “unethical” companies asserted that it was a consumer’s duty to protect themselves from shoddy