1. Pure Food and Drug Act 1906 Yuval Mor Period 3

2. Important dates leading to the act 1898-1899, Soldiers in the Spanish-American War die from eating badly-preserved meat. 1901, Children in St. Louis and Camden die from tainted vaccines. 1902-1906, Dr. Harvey Wiley (known as the father of this act) administers a study on twelve volunteers that agree to eat food laced common preservatives. February 1906, Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle which exposes the meatpacking industry.

3. Three political forces that pushed this act onto congressional agenda 1. Consumer movements dominated by organized women activists. 2. Rise of Journalism, such as Sinclair’s The Jungle that sold 1 million copies in its first year. Also, Samuel Adams articles in Collier’s magazine on patent medicines and advertising fraud. 3. Harvey Washington Wiley, leader of the Bureau of Chemistry in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

4. Excerpt from the Act/Purpose “For preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors…”

5. Relationship with other laws The Pure Food and Drug Act was passed on the same day as the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. Mandated examination of livestock before slaughter, analysis of carcasses, and required ongoing USDA inspection of slaughterhouses and processing plants. Enforcement of the Pure Food and Drug Act was assigned to the Bureau of Chemistry in the USDA, which in 1930 was renamed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The Meat Inspection Act was assigned to what is now known as the Food Safety and Inspection Service, which remains within the Agriculture Department.

6. Controversy/Impact of the Pure Food and Drug Act The act not only gave unprecedented new regulatory powers to the federal government, it also empowered a bureau that evolved into today's Food and Drug Administration. Other statutes have received more study, but the Pure Food and Drug Act has had the longest-lasting and most widespread economic, political, and institutional impact.

7. Political Cartoons

8. Political Cartoons Contd.

9. Journalism that pushed this act onto congressional agenda

10. An example of dangerous drugs marketed to U.S. Citizens is Coca-Cola originally containing excessive amounts of cocaine. Government pressure forced the change from cocaine to caffeine.