ABSTRACT
Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle was the impetus that stimulated the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.6 The book stressed the important issue of the unsanitary meat processing plants. This Act was the forerunner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The main purpose of the Act was to ban foreign and interstate traffic in adulterated or mislabeled food and drug products, and it directed the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry in the Department of Agriculture to inspect products and refer offenders to prosecutors. It required that active ingredients be placed on the label of the drug’s packaging and that drugs could not be below purity levels established by the United States Pharmacopeia or the National Formulary. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was signed by President Theodore Roosevelt on the same day that he signed the Federal Meat Inspection Act. The Bureau of Chemistry was renamed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1930.
