The Poison Squad: Harvey Wiley

In the 1880s, when Wiley began his 50-year crusade for pure foods, America's marketplace was flooded with poor, often harmful products. With almost no government controls, unscrupulous manufacturers tampered with products, substituting cheap ingredients for those represented on labels: Honey was diluted with glucose syrup; olive oil was made with cottonseed; and "soothing syrups" given to babies were laced with morphine. The country was ready for reform.

            Wiley became chief chemist in what is now the Department of Agriculture. His main task was to support the new agricultural industries, but he was also able to continue his private passion, developing tests for food purity. All through the 1880s and 1890s, pure-food bills were introduced into Congress--largely through his work--and all were killed. Powerful lobbies had established themselves.

http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/CentennialofFDA/HarveyW.Wiley/

Harvey Wiley is known as the "father of the FDA. Wiley designed the table trials -- and convinced Congress to give him $5,000 to fund them." He was the leader of the Poison Squad, whose goal was to show the physical costs of food additives. Officially, the goal was to “investigate the character of food preservatives, coloring matters, and other substances added to foods, to determine their relation to digestion and to health, and to establish the principles which should guide their use."

 Wiley’s first target was borax. One of the most common food preservatives in 1902, it tightened up animal proteins, giving the impression of freshness; consequently, packers often used it to doctor decomposing meat. From October 1902 to July 1903, Wiley’s squad ate it with every meal.  Before long, the group determined that borax did, indeed, cause headaches, stomachaches, and other digestive pains…in addition to imparting an unpleasant flavor to food.

Wiley’s efforts eventually paid off. On 1906, Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act – the first federal laws aimed at food regulation. In the process, Wiley also had to cede his bully pulpit to the biggest bully of them all: Teddy Roosevelt. Although the Pure Food and Drug Act was originally known as “the Wiley Act,” Roosevelt took full credit for its passage, leaving Wiley in the cold. Even so, Wiley’s power grew: the Bureau of Chemistry was charged with enforcing the new law. The Poison Squad closed up shop in 1907

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/food-for-men/poison-squad

            Wiley left his governmental post in 1912. Before he left the government, Wiley had been sought to set up and direct the Bureau of Foods, Sanitation, and Health for Good Housekeeping. The magazine, begun in 1885, had already created the Good Housekeeping Institute laboratories to ensure the reliability of its editorial pages. Once Wiley was on staff, with his own chemistry laboratories in Washington, D.C., where he could monitor government activities, he continued his fight for pure foods from the pages of the magazine. In his 19 years as director of the bureau at Good Housekeeping, he led the fight for tougher government inspection of meat; for pure butter unadulterated with water; and for whole wheat flour, which growers were mixing with other grains. The bureau analyzed food products and published the findings; its "Tested and Approved" seal became the coveted symbol of responsible industry, and the Good Housekeeping Seal remains the pre-eminent consumer emblem today.