Readers of Meatingplace are no strangers to the complexity and necessity of government regulation in the meat industry. But our knowledge of the origins of meat inspection is usually reduced down to the common historical narrative: President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), influenced by his personal experience with “embalmed beef” during the Spanish-American War (1898) and the poor sanitation and labor conditions in Chicago’s packinghouses exposed by muckraker Upton Sinclair in The Jungle (1904), urged lawmakers to pass legislation regulating the meat industry or he would release the government’s report confirming what Sinclair had found. Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act (FMIA), and Roosevelt signed it on June 30, 1906, codifying meat inspection which is still in operation today.

This oft-repeated story of meat inspection, however, ignores the origins and institutional history of food safety in the United States in the late-nineteenth century. At that time, the United States was undergoing profound change economically, especially in the agricultural sector. With the subsequent opening of the American West, after the American Civil War (1861-1865), to cattle production, the growth of railroads, and the expansion of the packing industry, producers and packers needed to find new markets beyond regional markets and outside of the United States to sell livestock and meat products. However, most trading partners with the United States were concerned about foreign diseases such as trichinae carried by American hogs and sows, so the majority of those animals were condemned at the port of entry in France and Great Britain. Concerns about animals infected with so-called Texas cattle fever related to Longhorn cattle, hoof and mouth disease, and pleuro-pneumonia crossing state borders became a concern for many state governments, and important cattle states such as Kansas passed laws limiting interstate commerce in the form of cattle drives.

The damaging economic effects of animal disease, as we all know too well today with HPAI affecting so many chicken, egg, and turkey producers, became so detrimental that the federal government recognized the need to analyze animal disease from a scientific perspective and ensure that meat products remained wholesome for the consumer. These activities were investigated by the Veterinary Division within the US Department of Agriculture and were enforced by the Treasury Cattle Commission with the US Department of Treasury from 1881 to 1884. (The Treasury often was the repository for federal enforcement activity in the late-nineteenth century.)

Despite the early successes of both agencies, the division of investigation and enforcement by two separate agencies in two separate departments did little to suppress the transmission of animal disease or persuade foreign governments to purchase American livestock and meat products. In 1884, Congress combined the respective authorities of the Treasury Cattle Commission and the Veterinary Division into the Bureau of Animal Industry within the USDA, which was charged with stamping out animal disease and “protect[ing] the animal industry of the nation.” Within five years of the agency’s inception, they did just that. The Bureau, using science and deduction, helped eradicate pleuro-pneumonia among cattle in the United States and discovered a crude method to vaccinate, or in nineteenth-century parlance, “hyperimmunize” hogs to prevent cholera bacillus. Most importantly, Bureau inspectors and scientists found the root cause of Texas cattle fever transference, ticks. I should note, too, if it wasn’t for the Bureau’s groundbreaking research on Texas cattle fever, Sir Ronald Ross, in 1897, might not have made the important connection that mosquitoes transferred malaria to humans.

Since the Bureau proved effective at preventing or eliminating animal disease and providing a path to open interstate agricultural trade, especially after the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887, Congress expanded the agency’s regulatory authority and established a meat inspection service within the Bureau in 1890. At first, the Bureau inspected salted pork and bacon for the export market, and one year later, Congress charged the agency with the inspection of all cattle, sheep, horses, and hogs before harvest. The Bureau experienced meteoric growth, which was likely the direct result of increased domestic and export demand. To provide perspective, in 1891, the agency inspected 83,891 animals, mostly cattle. By 1900, the Bureau’s inspected nearly 35 million animals before harvest, conducted over 100 million “microscopic inspections” per year, and inspected animals in 45 cities and 148 processors. The Bureau also consulted on the construction of humane-handling ships to safely convey cattle across the Atlantic to Great Britain.

After the passage of the FMIA, the Bureau was reorganized, including the Inspection Division which was responsible for inspecting all meat products in the United States. In 1953, the Bureau of Animal Industry was completely overhauled during President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration, making it one of America’s longest-lasting federal agencies and most consequential since its early activities formed the basis of modern meat inspection in the United States.

*This blog post is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Ronald Nida (1948-2022), with whom I held many conversations about the Bureau of Animal Industry while he was Deputy District Manager for the USDA-FSIS, Lawrence (Kan.) District.

The Origins of Meat Inspection in the United States

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