USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Image courtesy of the Library of Congress The Pure Food and Drug Act was a centerpiece of progressive reforms in the early 20th century. On this date, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 (PL 59-384) passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, 240 to 17.

Detailed explanation-2: -The uproar over The Jungle revived Wiley’s lobbying efforts in Congress for federal food and drug regulation. Roosevelt signed a law regulating foods and drugs on June 30, 1906, the same day he signed the Meat Inspection Act.

Detailed explanation-3: -In fact, the nauseating condition of the meat-packing industry that Upton Sinclair captured in The Jungle was the final precipitating force behind both a meat inspection law and a comprehensive food and drug law.

Detailed explanation-4: -When Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle revealed food adulteration and unsanitary practices in meat production, public outrage prompted Congress to establish federal responsibility for public health and welfare.

Detailed explanation-5: -About a month after “The Jungle” was published, the White House started receiving “100 letters a day demanding a Federal cleanup of the meat industry, ” Alden Whitman wrote in Sinclair’s obituary. (He died on Nov. 25, 1968.) Roosevelt invited Sinclair to the White House, then ordered a federal investigation.