ABSTRACT
Although discussed for 25 years and proposed in hundreds of prior bills (FDA, 2009a), the history of food safety regulation in the United States finally started with a book by Upton Sinclair titled The Jungle that was published in 1906. Although it was a fictional account of the lives of its characters, it accurately and graphically depicted the unsanitary conditions in the Chicago meat packing industry. Sinclair’s book states “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. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them, they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together.”
