Sinclair worked undercover in a meatpacking plant to gather information firsthand, before he began writing the book. Its influence on the labor practices and regulations governing the food industry cannot be understated. It tackles subjects as varied as the poor living conditions of the immigrants, exploitation of cheap labor by industrialists, and the unsanitary conditions of the meatpacking plants and stockyards of Chicago. The descriptions of the disgusting processes that were conducted in the meatpacking plants made for shocking reading and turned the book into a bestseller. The President Teddy Roosevelt ordered an investigation into the lack of sanitation in meatpacking plants and caused the creation of legislation governing the food industry in the form of the Food and Drugs Act of 1906.
Although there had to have been an obligation before to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act. Professor Harvey Washington Wiley wanted to take action and stop the production of the misinterpretation of real medicine. He lead a campaign wanting to end this dilemma, by using propaganda and research he wanted to influence others to take action and react to the lies that were being filled and distributed in bottles of medicine. Even though Wiley presented all of his information, Sinclairs profounding novel was what finally brought the Food and Drug Act to a realization. The Pure Food and Drug Act was a law set up to stop the marketing of ambiguous medicine or medicine that was deteriorated, became hazardous to the people.
February 26, 1906, Upton Sinclair published his novel titled “The Jungle”, which informed its readers about the unsanitary practices and health violations that occurred in the meatpacking industry in America. Due to the information that Americans were receiving about what went into their packaged meat, citizens demanded that something must change. The FDA, or Food and Drug Administration, was almost a direct result of Upton’s novel. They made sure that the events going on in the factories would not continue, so the FDA passed various laws and regulations regarding the meatpacking industry.
Sinclair also sent President Theodore Roosevelt a copy of the novel, and he was outraged by the atrocities that were happening within the meatpacking industry. The impact that this book had on society, as well as Roosevelt, eventually led to the passing of the first regulations within this industry. Progressives pushed the federal government to pass The Meat Inspection Act and The Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. The Meat Inspection Act mandated government enforcement of sanitary and health standards in meatpacking plants. The Pure Food and Drug Act prohibited false advertising and harmful additives in food.
The 1906 book, The Jungle, caused an uproar that completely shifted focus to these issues of these workers and the safety of their conditions. This work should be considered a milestone in itself because of how wide-reaching and accessible it was. It also sparked the need for the government to get involved, which happened almost immediately after Sinclair’s book was published. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 paved the way for health inspections of both facilities and meat, even though the bar was set extremely low and inspectors were often still disgusted. Both this act and the Meat Inspection Act of 1907 resulted in much higher quality ingredients in the United States.
As briefly mentioned earlier, Upton Sinclair’s work forced the government to look into and act on the situation. The government was rather bare, pressed, and exposed. To mediate public worry, the government sent officials to survey the situation in the meatpacking facilities, to decide whether the situation was really as drastic as the book described. When word was sent back sharing news of how the situation was indeed dire, the decisive solution was to put a new act in place— the Pure Food and Drug act of 1906. As stated by U.S. Capitol - Visitor Center, “The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 prohibited the sale of misbranded or adulterated food and drugs in interstate commerce and laid a foundation for the nation's first consumer protection agency, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)”.
The Pure Food and Drug Act passed in 1906. The Pure Food and Drug Act became an important piece of legislation that revolutionized America because of how it affected everyone living in the United States. It changed how food products and drugs were labeled as this law prevented companies from deceiving the public by making false claims or mislabeling their products. This improved food quality and the labeling of medications and food products benefitted the public by informing them of what their products were made of and by improving their health with better food quality. Any medications or food with chemicals harmful to consumers were made illegal by this law (“Results/Impact.”).
The President at the time, Roosevelt, summoned a meeting with Sinclair, in which they discussed what he had written about. A few months later, after inspections of meat producing companies had been done, President Roosevelt established the Meat Inspection Act Of 1906. This prevented any bad meat from making its way into stores or other places the public could buy it. He also signed a law regulating food and drugs called the Pure Food and Drug Act which prohibited mislabeling of food and drugs. The Jungle saved many lives and ensured confidence in many people after laws for food safety were
For my book report I chose to read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. This book focused on the malicious traits of capitalism. These flawed features are displayed throughout the book through events that the characters go through. The book later turns to show that the solution to all the capitalist problems happening in the book is socialism. I believe the overall purpose of this book was for Sinclair to express his beliefs of a better system and to expose the dangerous things that come with capitalism.
Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 The main purpose of the Food and Drug Act of 1906 was to ban foreign and intersate traffic in aldutered or mislabeled food and drug products, and it directed the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry to inspect products and refer offenders to prosecutors. It required that active ingredients bve be placed on the label of a drugs packaging and that drugs could not fall below purity levels established by the United States Pharmacopeia or the National Formulary. In 1906 the Pure Food and Drug Act paved the way for the eventual creation of the FDA. Upton Sinclair wrote a book titled The Jungle to expose the appalling working conditions in the meat packing industry.
Ever since the 1900s the Federal Government has had several growths of expansion, some good and some bad, in this article the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 as well as the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 will be discussed and how it expanded government, and whether this growth of government was beneficial or not. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which can be labeled as the founding date of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had the purpose to essentially “ban foreign and interstate traffic in adulterated or mislabeled food and drug products… (and) It required that active ingredients be placed on the label of a drug’s packaging and that drugs could not fall below purity levels established by the United States Pharmacopeia or the National Formulary” [1]. This meant that food and drug products couldn’t be lined with “mysterious” substances and everything had to be labelled according to what it contained.
After winning this case, the Act became an important devise for “government regulation of corporations.” Although it was not named the FDA until 1930, Roosevelt began the “Pure Food and Drug Act” and the “Meat Inspection Act,” which were both passed in 1906. The first act banned the sale of “adulterated or inaccurately” labeled foods and medicines, and the second established federal regulations for meatpackers and a system of
The Pure Food and Drug act of 1906 was the 1st consumer protection law by the Federal Government, this act was passed by President Theodore Roosevelt. The main purpose of the Pure Food and Drug act was to prohibit transportation of contaminated, poisonous, and misbranded foods, drugs, medicines and liquors. Without the pure food and drug act our food, medication, and other product would be filled with dangerous chemicals that would have harm in our health and potentially cause death. Before the 20th century, there were no laws or regulations that protected Americans from hazardous foods and medicines. This meant that there were no restrictions of what chemicals could be put in one’s food or medicine, leaving the open to mass deaths of contaminated or poisonous products.
The Food and Drug Administration founded in 1848 by the work of Lewis Caleb Beck, the FDA has grown in stature and responsibility to take charge of research, development, and regulation of food and drugs. Men, like Harvey Wiley, helped to oversee the administration of effective consumer protection policies, which led to the enacting of the Pure Food and Drug Act. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was the first legislation in the country that sought to regulate pharmaceuticals and food products by requiring truth-in-labeling on products, creating inspectors of the drug and food manufacturing process, and creating a list of 10 dangerous drugs that had to be labeled at all times. It ultimately came about during the
Pure Food and Drug Act According to Upton Sinclair, a novelist,“ I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach” (“The Jungle”). In the United States during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, food was becoming highly industrialized, with dubious chemicals used to preserve food and to ameliorate its taste ( “Pure Food and Drug Act...”). Urbanization and the modernization of conveyance were resulting in impersonal national markets without the personal contact between consumer and producer that was prevalent in an earlier age (“Pure Food and Drug Act...”). In replication to these contemporary conditions, an emerging consumer movement called for the federal government to regulate the purity and quality of food
