What’s That You’re Eating?

January 23, 2009 at 2:17 pm | Posted in Food & Drug Administration | Leave a comment
Tags: 1906, Dr. Steven Nissen, FDA, food safety, Harvey W. Wiley, health/safety, pure food law, Theodore Roosevelt

Lester P. W. Wehle, a live-poultry inspector for the city of New York, inspects the crop of a chicken, 1951. (World Telegram & Sun photo by Al Ravenna)

(Newsday.com) “The truth be told, the FDA is a failed agency … the main problem is that it is terribly underfunded,” [Dr. Steven Nissen, chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic] said. “It needs to do more inspections, especially of foods brought in internationally. We are all very vulnerable. This has to be fixed and fixed quickly.”

One hundred and two years ago — on June 30, 1906 — President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Food and Drugs Act. The Pure Food Law was an important part of that legislation.

h/t Crooks & Liars

Harvey W. Wiley, MD (Photo: FDA History Office)

Harvey W. Wiley came to be the leader of the “pure food crusade.” A chemist and physician, State chemist of Indiana and professor at Purdue University, Wiley went to Washington in 1883 as chief chemist of the Department of Agriculture. He made the study of food adulteration his bureau’s principal business, at first merely outraged by what he deemed essentially harmless fraud. In time, sensing real threats to health, Wiley could express himself in writing, conversation, and oratory with vividness, clarity, homely wit, and moral passion. He toured the country making speeches, every rostrum a pulpit for the gospel of pure food.

How much melamine is in your cookies?