It all began in 1906 with a book called The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair.
Sinclair was a known “progressive” in those days and wrote his book, “The Jungle” to expose the appalling working conditions and plight of the immigrant workers in the meat-packing plants and stockyards in Chicago. At the age of 26, he travelled to Chicago and interviewed line workers, and their families, doctors, and social workers…and of course spent time in the packing facilities.
Although his intention was to highlight implorable working conditions, he had no idea at the time that his book would have an immediate and lasting effect on food safety in America.
Plant Conditions in the Early 20th Century: In 1905 there were four major meat-packing corporations in the U.S. – Armour, Swift, Morris and National Packing. These four giants controlled the industry and had little regard for the safety of the workers or the animals that they processed.
Inside a meat packing company in 1906
The killing work was dangerous; men worked in dark and unventilated rooms that were hot in the summer and cold in the winter, often standing for hours on floors soaked in blood and urine and covered with meat scraps. Workers suffered skin disease, lost fingers, and hauled 100-pound hunks of meat on their backs. “Killing gangs” were responsible for “rippers, leg-breakers and gutters” as the animal carcasses moved continually on hooks through the production lines until further processed. The left-over organs, bones, fat, and other scraps became lard, soap, or fertilizer. Women and children (over 14 years) trimmed meat, made sausages, and took care of the canning.
Although his effort was to focus on the working conditions and suffering of the immigrant workers, he decided, almost by chance, to include a chapter on how diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat products were processed, chemically treated, and mislabeled for sale to the public. He described how meat was canned and sausages made and that both regularly included ingredients like human spit, urine, rat poison and even dead rats.
Book Publication Brings New Federal Food Laws: When The Jungle came out in 1906, it immediately became an international best-seller, published in 17 languages. The public was outraged about filthy and mislabeled meat and the White House received thousands of letters that called for the reform of the meat-packing industry. Roosevelt was President at the time and after reading Sinclair’s book appointed a special commission to investigate just what went on in the slaughterhouses of Chicago.
The findings of this special commission were published in a report in May 1906 and confirmed much of what had been written in The Jungle. The commission called for change in the existing meat-inspection laws and more frequent inspections at various stages of the processing procedure. They called for the Secretary of Agriculture to institute rules requiring “the cleanliness and wholesomeness of animal products.” Although Congress had attempted for decades to institute laws to regulate the food industry, they had not been successful. The tipping point came with the publication of The Jungle and the massive public outcry that ensued.
New Federal Laws were enacted. Roosevelt called for a law to enable “the inspectors from federal government to supervise and inspect from the hoof to the can the preparation of the meat food product.” The result was the passage of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 which authorized inspectors from the USDA to stop bad and mislabeled meat from entering any sales channels.
This law opened the way for the regulation of the sale of most other foods and drugs. On the same day that Roosevelt signed the Meat Inspection Act into law in 1906, he also signed the Pure Food and Drug Act which led eventually to the formation of the FDA (Federal Food & Drug Administration).
We have come a long way since 1906 in Food Safety. The laws and controls that are in place today throughout America and the world exemplify our sophistication and never-ending improvement in this area. The food we produce and eat today is much safer and we owe a debt of thanks to Upton Sinclair for writing his book, “The Jungle” – a novel that was the catalyst for some of the first food safety laws of the United States.
