Federal Meat Inspection Act & Pure Food and Drug Act

Muckraking abounded in the Progressive Era, a good example of which is Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle. The Jungle documented all the dirty little secrets of the meatpacking industry and made them for public view, who met these detailed descriptions with universal disgust and outrage. Though the novel was intended to stir outrage at the deplorable conditions the meatpacking workers labored in, the public was more focused on the deplorable conditions their meat was subject to, and because of this, people bought less meat and demanded more reform. The Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 attacked poorly labelled meat goods as well as the spread of food-borne illnesses, and the act answered the public's demand for government inspection and sanitation standards for meat and meatpacking industries.

Further cry for government-backed food and drug safety stemmed from Samuel Hopkins Adams exposé of fraudulent patent medicines in the muckraking magazine Collier's. The now public knowledge that most medications contained alcohol and other poisons caused the Department of Agriculture to push for reform. The Roosevelt administration backed this movement and passed the Pure Food and Drug Act on June 30, 1906. This act created the Food and Drug Administration, required licenses for physicians to prescribe certain medications, and required that drug manufacturers list ingredients on labels.


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