1. 1906. The writing and publishing of Upton Sinclair’s novel about industrial corruption, The Jungle.

Sinclair set out to describe the unhealthy, inhumane working conditions encountered in the Chicago meatpacking district in 1906. The novel is the story of a Lithuanian immigrant struggling to live in a foreign land in an industry dominated by capitalists. But in describing the working conditions, he also described the sausage making industry in blunt terms, such as:

“There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust…There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it….packers would put out poisoned bread for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together.”

Our international export markets dried up when other nations read this story, gathered by Sinclair as he lived in the meatpacking district of Chicago and interviewed dozens of workers, foremen and bosses and toured the plants. The red meat industry was in crisis, and the federal government responded with the Pure Food and Drug Act, making America’s food supply immeasurably safer.

This Act resulted in what is still practiced in red meat slaughter plants today throughout the US: daily, continuous inspection by USDA federal inspectors paid with tax dollars, not industry dollars. It also resulted in daily USDA inspection in further processing plants. The Act eventually became the iron clad Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA).

I say iron clad because when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and surrounding areas, Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) were flown into the US from countries not on our list of approved exporters, and some contained meats not approved for import from any country. Our best lawyers at the USDA said there was no way around the FMIA, and despite the severity of the situation, those meals could not be fed to displaced, homeless persons.

And that hurricane response included Mexico sending chicken meat in Army trucks across the border, uninspected, with the intent of setting up a soup kitchen at the historic, symbolic Alamo to feed the displaced persons living across I-37 in the Alamo Dome in San Antonio. Did not happen.

That is how far reaching can be the effect of one book. If you are in the meat business, and have not read “The Jungle”, you really should.

Of course, USDA eventually had the Poultry Products Inspection Act added to its list in the 1950s, the Egg Products Inspection Act in the 70s and yes, eventually, in the 2008 Farm Bill was the Catfish (Siluriformes) Inspection Act. All inspection done as a direct or indirect result of Upton Sinclair’s book.

Upton Sinclair wanted to spark a social revolution; instead he sparked the Pure Food and Drug Act, or, as he himself is quoted as saying:

“I wished to frighten the country by a picture of what its industrial masters were doing to their victims; entirely by chance I stumbled on what they were doing to the meat-supply of the civilized world.”

“I aimed at the public’s heart, but by accident I hit it in the stomach.”

Three Seminal Moments in Food Safety in the U.S., Part 1

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