It sounds like the stuff of fiction, but according to Deborah Blum’s The Poison Squad, a detailed, highly readable history of food and drink regulation in the United States, adulterated foods proliferated in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th ... The Poison Squad is a granular look at the evolution of a particular set of regulations in the history of United States ... It’s helpful to remember that what seems obviously criminal today—like adding formaldehyde to milk—was disputed in the past. It’s also helpful to remember that the techniques used to push back against regulation 80 years ago are pretty much the same as today: the suppression of science and the unfortunate influence of lobbyists and money on politicians.
The devil has got hold of the food supply in this country.' This was the conclusion of Nebraska Senator Algernon Paddock, chairman of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, in 1891. That year, he sponsored a bill that would become just one more failed legislative attempt to require food producers to label their products truthfully. Among the transgressions he was trying to stop were common practices like whitening milk with chalk, 'embalming' corned beef with formaldehyde, lacing fake whiskey with soap, and creating ground 'pepper' made of 'common floor sweepings.' It was not until 1906, after nearly two decades of testing, research, and political combat, that the country’s first Pure Food and Drug Act was signed into law, by President Theodore Roosevelt. As Deborah Blum writes in The Poison Squad if not for the perseverance of Harvey Wiley, a government chemist who’d grown up on an Indiana farm that served as a stop on the Underground Railroad, it never would have happened.
After signing America’s first food-and-drug law in 1906, Teddy Roosevelt was quick to claim paternity. But in this compellingly detailed chronicle, Blum identifies Harvey Washington Wiley as the true father of the much-needed legislation. Readers follow this Purdue chemist, named the Department of Agriculture’s lead scientist, as he painstakingly documents the harmful effects of contaminants and toxins in the food supply and then fearlessly crusades for legal measures to protect the public ... Citing worrisome recent attacks on consumer-protection laws, Blum reminds readers of the twenty-first-century relevance of Wiley’s cause.
... a splendid account of Dr. Wiley’s crusade for consumer safety and the forces arrayed against him. Intended as an antidote for our nation’s current 'regulatory memory failure,' her book is a powerful and persuasive reminder that caveat emptor affords precious little protection to purchasers of manufactured products.
The phrase 'celebrity chemist' sounds like an oxymoron, but at the turn of the 20th century, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley was just that, a crusading chemist who fought for safe food and accurate food labeling. In The Poison Squad, Deborah Blum, director of MIT’s Knight Science Journalism Program, tells Wiley’s story, as well as the larger story of what happened to our food supply in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ... The Poison Squad offers a well-researched portrait of Wiley, rather unappealing food facts and an era of rapid American growth, with a government scrambling to catch up.
The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 ended a century of scandal and bitter political maneuvering, with major impetus from Harvey Washington Wiley (1844-1930), a genuinely unknown American hero. Journalist Blum offers less a biography than a vivid account of Wiley’s achievements. As she writes, 19th-century industrial chemistry 'brought a host of new chemical additives and synthetic compounds into the food supply. Still unchecked by government regulation, basic safety testing, or even labeling requirements, food and drink manufacturers embraced the new materials with enthusiasm.' Throughout the book, the author clearly busts the myth of 'a romantic glow over the foods of our forefathers.' ... An expert life of an undeservedly obscure American.
America’s nauseating industrial food supply of yesteryear sparks political turmoil in this engrossing study of a pure-foods pioneer. Pulitzer-winning science journalist and Undark magazine publisher Blum looks back to the end of the 19th century, when unregulated manufacturers routinely added noxious substances to the nation’s foodstuffs: cakes were colored with lead and arsenic; milk was preserved with formaldehyde; brown sugar was padded out with ground-up insects; processed meats contained every variety of flesh and filth ... Blum’s well-informed narrative—complete with intricate battles between industry lobbyists and a coalition of scientists, food activists, and women’s groups—illuminates the birth of the modern regulatory state and its tangle of reformist zeal, policy dog-fights, and occasional overreach ... The result is a stomach churner and a page-turner.