Listen to this episode here.

It’s been a while since Theresa tortured Angie and the listeners. This episode is another opportunity to remind yourself that she gets off of curdling stomachs. 

Join us and give Angie moral support, and Theresa forces her to learn about Dr. Harvey Wiley and his volunteers who formed the Poison Squad and built the foundations of the FDA.

This episode pairs well with:
Tarrare’s Terrible No Good Appetite  

Transcript

Theresa: Hi, and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast. The podcast where two compulsive history downers, destroyers, consumers of memes, research history that we’ve only recently learned about or might have been on our list to learn about, and then come forth and tell each other the story we’ve only recently learned. I’m host one. I’m Teresa. And that, I’m Angie. 

She’s host two. And he decided to join us. All right. Last week, Angie took the entire story to give me a time off so I could just sit back, relax, and do some needle point. And this week, I’ve decided to do the whole thing. 

Angie: Angie, I am not going to do needle point. 

Theresa: I would tell you to take your headphones off, but I did provide a hell of a sizzle in the, in the beginning to kind of hook you because it’ll, it’ll get real dry and then it’ll come back. 

It won’t be dry. All right. My sources, PBS documentary, The Poison Squad. Eater, we owe food regulation to a 19th century chemist who poisoned his colleagues by Jaya, Saxinia podcast, Milk Street, The Poison Squad in 1902. 

Why 12 volunteers eat poison with every meal podcast, taste of the past, the poison squad founding the FDA. You are the worst. Just you wait and read again. Okay. So here’s the sizzle reel to kind of introduce us at the turn of the 20th century. 

Angie: You mean. The sources weren’t the sizzle reel. No, that was enough. No. Okay, go. 

Theresa: At the turn of the 20th century, American food producers, they’re getting away with the equivalent of highway robbery because they’re putting just about anything in the food. And they do. Milk alone is full of chalk and formaldehyde. 

Angie: Oh, no, for your bones. 

Theresa: It’s good for something. Chalk. So gross. Can food has salicylic acid, borax, copper sulfide, you know, food, the things you want in your food. Right. I mean, don’t just keep that in your medicine cabinet just to sprinkle over your toothpaste. Oh, I do. You don’t. 

I’m using arsenic. Oh, okay. I think that’s great too. 

Yeah. Producers sold corn syrup and they kind of dressed it up as honey. They also sell colored lard as butter. And the great news, there’s no laws or consequences for this false advertising. 

Angie: And do the consumers not have it figured out? Like, do they let it happen? They have no idea. I feel like butter that’s not butter doesn’t taste like butter. 

Theresa: You would say that, but I mean, I feel like I’ll get into it. I’ll get into it. Okay. Now. Consum- okay. So first off, there’s a man named Dr. Harvey Wiley. Now he’s a chemist at the USDA. He spent years researching mislabeled food and he realizes that consumers have zero idea of what they are putting in their body and nobody, nobody understands the long-term effects of these additives. So he would later create what he called, or what was called the poison squad, which is a group of young men who voluntarily, voluntarily consume these additives so that he can examine all of the side effects, right? They become a pop culture sensation. 

They’re inspiring poems, mistral shows, because there’s nothing else going on in the time. I love this for us. Eventually this would get us to the 1906. 

It’s the 1906 pure food and drug act, which would lead to the creation of the FDA. Now, okay. Again, this is still the lead up. As we’re here, the preservatives that we have in food are literally lethal. 

Angie: There’s, oh, I was unaware. 

Theresa: I mean, because here’s the thing. We think about like the whole, take America great again. We idealize the past. We idealize what our grandparents were eating. 

Angie: I don’t because I like food the way it is. 

Theresa: I mean, we just assume farm to fork was the shorter distance back then. 

Angie: I don’t think it was. 

Theresa: I think because you might understand this, because we have what was referred to as the swill milk scandal. And this is where thousands of people, mostly children are poisoned. Now, from a business standpoint, it seems like this would be a bad idea and probably pretty bad for milk producers. Because you’re wondering like, well, if it’s bad for milk producers, just why would you be adding so many dangerous additives? Now, they’re adding milk or additives to milk because it’s profitable. 

Now, I had to look this up. Milk at this time was already being pasteurized. So we have that going for us. But we lack standard refrigeration, right? We don’t have the refrigeration trucks. We don’t. Okay. 

So we’re having some issues there. Now, in the case of milk, there’s one of the ways that both dairymen and breweries could partner together and make extra product was to take the spit mash from the swill, from fermenting for making alcohol. And then they would give it to the cows as food because, I mean, it has grain in it. 

Oh. Now, of course, this was awful because it’s horrible grain, but it’s cheap. And so the dairymen buy it. Now, this puts a little bit extra gold in the breweries’ pockets. So they’re excited. But you end up with this non-nutritive milk. 

Angie: Non-nutritive is the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the sort I’m looking for is an understatement, I think. Yep. 

Theresa: Um, it also destroys the health of the cows as it produces this horrific milk. Now, not only do they take this milk, they also water it down and then they’d rewiten it with chalk and plaster of paradise. And they don’t care about cleanliness. So the milk’s teeming with bacteria. So they kill the bacteria with formaldehyde. 

Angie: Oh. Oh, so they care a little bit. Okay. 

Theresa: I mean, they’re doing what they can. Now formaldehyde ended up becoming famous after the civil war. It’s cheap. It’s synthetic. It tastes kind of sweet like. 

Angie: Now, I never, I never needed to know what formaldehyde tastes like. Mm hmm. 

Theresa: Um, yeah. Now, now with the formaldehyde, your milk lasts a long time and the formaldehyde disguises the taste of the rot even as it’s rotting. So profit. 

Angie: Okay. I just, I need you to know, I don’t know if you knew this before you started this. I hate milk. I don’t, it grosses me out to no end. If I drink milk, it’s chocolate milk and that’s pretty much it. 

Theresa: But wait, there’s more. Of course there is. So at this point in history, there’s no public health service. So we have these thousands of kids dying. But the problem is you can’t prove anything that you can’t directly say, oh, it was this. And how would you know? You wouldn’t because everybody is poisoning all of the food. So everything errors on the side of the corrupt manufacturer, the 19th century, because there’s no safety regulations and there’s no powerful advocate to say, hey, it was the rotted meat in the tend can that killed your kid. So, yeah, there’s no requirement for labeling. The labels. 

Angie: How come mom, okay, I’m sorry. When you said rotted meat in the 10 cam, how you’re opening the 10 can, you’re getting ready to make the sandwich or whatever. I know food was different. I don’t mind. Be a sandwich in a 10 cam, but whatever. And the mom doesn’t like, I don’t know, notice that it’s gross. 

Theresa: Well, okay. So first off, all of the food is gross has always been gross. How do you know it’s bad? This is Tuesday for you. I hate this. Okay, go. And besides, like I said, if you’re putting formaldehyde in it, it tastes sweet-ish and then you don’t, it holds certain things like boric acid or borax will firm up the meat or firm up the milk and get kind of reconstituted to where even though it’s decomposing, it doesn’t look like it. Oh, thanks. 

Angie: You’re welcome. You’re welcome. 

Theresa: Now, our labels today are kind of inaccurate, but we do have something. We have something, right? But now you compare what was happening at the same time period in Europe. The European system was precautionary. Like it’s like, oh, this appears to be dangerous. X-nay on the whatever A is an A of bad at food. Now the American. 

Angie: So they’ve always been above this. Like they happen. Good for them. 

Theresa: America, we’re more, but did you die? Yeah, we are. Now, if you, if you’re not actively dying and able to prove cause and effect, we’re going to let it go. We’re going to let it slide. Let it ride. 

Roll the dice. Yeah. Now we have a lot of food additives that we don’t understand, but we, we were buying them and we buy them because they’re inexpensive and we’re on a limited budget. 

Okay. And at the time people were kind of like, well, you can’t get a holy roller about processed food because that’s all that some people can afford. Like you and your privilege and your white ivory tower. 

Angie: How dare I want wonder bread. 

Theresa: Exactly. So now interstage last Harley Wiley is born October in 1844. Now he grows up in a log cabin in Kent, Indiana, Kent, Indiana, in Rashford called Indiana. He’s about a hundred miles away from where Abe Lincoln was born. Abe Lincoln a couple of decades older, but these were things. Now age six, Wiley was milking cows to. 

Nope. Age six, Wiley would lead the milk cows from the barn for the daily milking. And then at 10 he was driving a plow. So he grows up on this small family farm and he got to intimately know all of the food and where it came from. 

Angie: I feel like he had the best bed. Right. Yeah. Okay. 

Theresa: He ended up with a very, we’ll see this later on that he comes up with a very binary view. There’s real food and then there’s fake food. There’s no in between. 

Agreed. Now Harvey’s father Preston Wiley, he’s a farmer. He’s an itinerant evangelical preacher and that’s going to be important later. 

Okay. He was also a conductor on the underground railroad. And this causes Harvey to grow up with this passion for social justice. Yes. Love this. 1871 Harvey earns a medical degree from Indiana Medical College and then he receives a degree in chemistry from Harvard. 

Angie: Dang girl. Love this for him. He’s doing, he’s doing good. 

Theresa: Then 1874 he gets accepted to Purdue to be their first chemistry professor. 

Angie: Wow. Okay. Okay. He’s doing the thing. 

Theresa: He is, but he hated it in the classroom and he preferred the lab. He’s kind of a nerd. He’s kind of a nerd. He’s kind of an introvert when I’m honest, you know, boy just wants to do his thing. So 1878 he takes a sabbatical in Europe and he finds himself on the cutting edge of food chemistry. Now in Europe they are obsessed with ferreting out the chemical additives in food because Europe as a whole is pushing back on this entire process. Good. 

Now this is, you kind of zip back a little bit. 1860 Britain had passed a law to limit the chemical adulteration of food after a series of deaths was caused by chemical additives and the stirrer is that public outrage. The worst case of this was when 20 people in a small town died from arsenic laced food coloring in candy. 

Angie: Oh, because so that’s the thing. 

Theresa: Arsenic in candy coated. So red dye number 27. Well, I mean, but this is a little worse because they’re using arsenic because it like would make the candy coating a little bit shinier. Okay. So there’s that. And so Britain’s like, you know, maybe we should fix this. 

And all of Europe goes, Oh, I like what you’re doing over there. Now 1881 France banned salicylic wine or some of France buying salicylic acid in wine and this was after French chemists sounded the alarm about toxicity. But salicylic wine was where salicylic acid in wine was being used to kind of preserve it, keep it fresh. But now they’re like, Oh, you know, we could do. We could ship the wine with salicylic acid to the States because they drink it and the wine will be technically fresh, but we won’t give it to our people. 

Angie: Okay. I mean, honestly, we probably deserved it. I mean, this is capitalism at its finest. 

Theresa: This whole story is capitalism, capitalism. Now when it’s saying in Europe, there’s tons of restrictions on food coming in from America because they don’t trust it. And why would they? Honestly. Now in this capitalistic marketplace that we’ve got, it’s basically buyers beware and companies are lying about what is in their products. And like advertisements are just full blown scams. 

Okay. It’s 1881 still and Harvey Wiley is back to being in relative obscurity in his lab at Purdue. He’s fixated on testing food products. It was earlier that year that the Indiana Board of Health asked him or tasked him with testing the purity of honey and maple syrup. And he collects samples from all across the state. 90% of them are fake. 

Most of the honey is just tinted corn syrup with a little hunk of honeycomb and center. Hmm. Okay. Now he realizes that if this is happening in Indiana, it’s happening nationwide. 

Right. This is all occurring during what is considered the second industrial revolution. There’s advancements in coal mining, steel manufacturing, trains are moving goods and people from one end of the country to the other faster than ever. The cities are growing and producers are trying to figure out how to feed all of the workers in these cities. So it seems fair. There’s a lot happening in this whole thing. It by 1890s, the Chicago stockyards are processing 9 million heads cattle a year. 

Angie: Oh my God. That’s insane. This is this is where hippos for dinner. Yeah. Yeah. 

Theresa: Now they’re using the railroads that they would grow cattle in the Midwest process in Chicago and then use trains to transport it to New York. New York City, but they needed to keep it fresh without significant refrigeration for long periods of time. Oh, here we are. Now, so companies are using their turn to the chemical industry to try to find preservatives like copper sulfate and formaldehyde, anything they can to keep the meat good, good and quotation marks. So Wiley returns from Europe. He’s bought the state of the art food testing equipment that he gets there and he starts to go to work with a passion. Thank him. 

Now, Wiley had zero quants with companies putting borax in food, but he did believe that, you know, maybe put it on the label, maybe just tell people what they’re reading. 

Angie: Yeah. At worst, it wouldn’t hurt. 

Theresa: Right. Now, he’s like, look, this is tasteless. This is odorless. You can’t see it. So people have no way of knowing if their food’s been perverted. There. Yeah. So he starts doing this public outreach. He starts speaking in churches and saying that people are being cheated and he’s demanding that companies use labels. This pisses off the food manufacturers. Shocking. The makers of fake syrup and fake honey, they want their secrets safe because capitalism. Honestly. So try to true handbook, cue the smear campaigns in the public press. Of course. When it comes to the honey, even the beekeepers are pissed off at Harvey. 

Angie: Why? They’re not getting to sell their honey to them anyway. You would think that, but 

Theresa: the ads in the paper claimed that they’ve been lied to by Wiley. Now you think that they’d be thrilled because it’s like, Hey, look, don’t buy the fake stuff, buy the more expensive stuff that’s actually real. But yeah, any news is bad news for them. And they I’m like, what? But they’re exposing the charlatans. 

You know, like this should be a good thing. Meanwhile, at Pardue, Harvey Wiley’s actions make the faculty uncomfortable. And 1882, just a year later, after coming back, he realizes that he’s worn out as welcome at the university, which is just like, okay, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture was established under Lincoln in 1862. And this is when America was still a very largely agrarian nation. 

And its primary mission at the time was to support the farmers. Now, so that’s kind of a little bit of background. It’s 1883, when Wiley accepts a role at the Department of Ag’s Chemistry Department, it’s this tiny little lab in the basement. 

Speaker 4: He likes to be exactly as I imagined it. 

Angie: I was like, it could be this like little corner in the basement. Yeah. 

Theresa: Now, prior to Wiley coming, they didn’t investigate a whole lot. And a lot of the investigations they had done had been really small ones around food and Wiley wants to do this large scale study around the state of America’s food. Good for him. Now, by the time he gets to D.C., people are already pissed off at him. Now he ends up with a little bit more money than he’d had previously. He’s got a wider reach. 

And so he starts targeting the dairy industry. Good. Now, remember the swill milks candle? Yeah. 

Okay. So diving a little bit deeper, we have these city dwellers that can’t afford fresh milk. There’s no widespread refrigeration. So even though we started pasteurizing milk in the 1960s, they’re doing what they can’t. 1860s? 1860s. Thank you. 

Angie: They’re doing what they can. I’m imagining the 50s milk man and thinking that milk wasn’t pasteurized. 

Theresa: No, thanks Wiley. Louis Pasteur was a bit ahead of that. I ended up learning that the standard formula for milk was to add a pint of warm water to the court of every milk. And then to get rid of that bluish tense, you’d add the whitening agents. Now, people are used to having a little bit of cream at the top. 

And so you would need to add something yellowish, like a dollop of pureed calf brain. Oh. Thank you. 

You’re welcome. It was at this point in the documentary, my daughter paused, looked at me and said, Bob, can we watch something, anything else? I kind of never want to drink milk again. She’s not wrong. 

Angie: Now. You’re like, but you and I were Sally Forth. 

Theresa: Meanwhile, Angie, here’s the next paragraph. So in New York City, because you couldn’t really transport milk in and they have very limited space, they put a cow barn immediately next to the brewery. They would shackle the cow to a spot, kind of suspend it from like kind of a hammock from the ceiling to where it really couldn’t move and give it the swill. The swill from the brewery being so bad for the cows that it’s really bad. It’s just really bad. Their teeth would fall out, like rot out of their mouths and it’s at this point we need to remember that New York City is packed with tenement houses. 

It’s jam-packed with people. There’s no milk refrigeration. The milk is sold warm in buckets. In buckets? In buckets. With like a lid? I cannot confirm or deny. I don’t know. 

Angie: I’m not imagining there’s a lid. I’m going to be honest. There’s no lid. Right. Because why would there be? 

Theresa: I mean, lids are expensive. We can’t pay for lids. 

Angie: No, we can’t. That’s gross. I’m gross. I’m so grossed out right now. 

Theresa: Lids would keep the formaldehyde out. We can’t have lids. 

Angie: The formaldehyde out. 

Theresa: Now, this is all happening. Thousands of kids are dying every year just because of milk. Without regulation, there’s no laws that are broken. So this is a win-win for companies. And if there’s no laws that are broken, then no one is held responsible for the death of these thousands of kids that kick off every year. Right. 

Angie: Because no law means that no crime was committed. Yeah. But milk isn’t the only problem. 

Theresa: Butter is also sometimes this thing called oleomargin, which is made up of the unprocessed scraps of meatpackers. And the only indicator that butter is butter in quotation marks is that it’s cheaper. Sometimes it might be called butterine, which really sounds like an old, piny name of somebody’s grandmother. 

Angie: I like it. 

Theresa: Butterine. I’m not eating it, but it’s cute. Yeah. Butterine and Olivette went down to the store. They got their hair done afterward. Got the hair dead. But the problem is that government seems to think butterine is egregious. So meatpackers struck back saying that this is a smear campaign and it’s based off of farmers’ panic and the accused Congress of stifling the process forward in food manufacturing. Either way, the Butter Act passes in 1886, but this doesn’t do a damn thing for milk production. 

Angie: Right. I’m just over here imagining that this is the point when the Irish were like, our butter is real. Yeah. And Irish butter becomes the best butter on the planet. Yeah. 

Theresa: That’s when Cury Gold came out. I just took the market by force. Yep. So meanwhile, back in Wiley’s lab, he’s testing everything. Coffee ends up being a mixture of mud, chicory, and ash. 

Angie: So like almost no coffee in there at all. Basically. 

Theresa: Can beans have dangerous preservatives that end up making the beans like a fluorescent green because they’re trying to make the beans look fresher? And Wiley realizes that his published papers are only being read by other scientists. So he takes his reports and he kind of gets them translated for the common man. And the person who translates them goes hard. He calls them evil practices and quote, reckless disregard of food practices. 

Angie: You know what? I’m laughing because he’s right. And here’s the thing. The amount of money that they spent trying to figure out how to make things stay looking better, they could have spent, I don’t know, trying to just make healthy food. They could. They could. Yeah. 

Theresa: And once you start calling, like once he uses a lot of his inflammatory language, the news takes off. Good. Now his bosses get a little irked. They threaten to cancel his next study. 

Oh no. They don’t, but his budget gets cut. And then his requests for additional supplies get ignored or delayed. 

Now this same year, his parents pass away and he starts falling into a depression. He’s single. He’s having a rough go. 

Work isn’t going so well. He walks into the library at the USDA and he sees this librarian who’s 30 years younger than him and he falls immediately in love. Okay. He courts her, he reposes and she turns them down. Oh, devastating. Now he keeps her photo in his watch and doubles down on his work. Okay. And here’s- Oh, I can so far. He’s honestly, he’s a good man. Now the Spanish-American war kicks off in 1898. 

Angie: That is not a sentence I thought I was going to hear this morning. No. 

Theresa: And this proved difficult for meat packers because they have to, they sign contracts. Like, hey, we want the lucrative government contract to ship meat to our soldiers in Cuba. But then the soldiers start complaining of the rotted can meat that reeks of formaldehyde. 

Angie: Oh, so we know what formaldehyde smells like. 

Theresa: Okay. But the army is like, no, no, it’s fine. Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine. And the public becomes outraged. Now this becomes known as the embalmed meat scandal. 

Angie: Okay. I’m here for good scandal. This is not the scandal I signed up for. 

Theresa: Yeah. Whenever you hear meat scandal, you kind of hope of a different word in front of it. Honestly. Congress ends up holding meetings on this meat. Theodore Roosevelt ends up testifying and he recalled watching a soldier throw away the meat because he couldn’t eat it. So Teddy is like, well, I’ll try it. He tries it. It’s awful. He couldn’t eat it and it was covered in green slime. 

Not a chance. So Wiley starts testing canned meat from around the country and he can’t find any formaldehyde, but it is comprised of just meat scraps and it’s encased in this watery fat and much of it had decomposed already. Oh, I’m so grossed out. And he decides, you know what? We need to hold these industries accountable. 

Now the industries, because this is, we’ve been like this for a while, they lobby Congress because they are rich and powerful and this stalls everything. So Wiley decides he’s got to get creative. He decides he’s got to test food additives on people to see slash show the effects of these chemicals. And he decides he wants to assemble a group of volunteers. He wants to feed them three meals a day, poison with the additive of his choice and track the results. And so he goes to Congress and he petitions to do the quote hygienic table trials and Congress has no idea what the hell that means. So they give them $5,000, not really paying attention to what he’s going to do with it because they’re like hygienic table trials, go for it. 

Angie: Sounds fun. I know. Can you come to dinner also? 

Theresa: So he puts out like an all call for these robust men. He wants men ideally working in government. He wants typically athletic men as well. He’s offering them free food and $5 a month. Now I think about the time the average person is making about $20. 

So he’s like, look, you make, you work in the government, you’re not earning a hell of a lot. Let me, let me give you $5 and I’ll give you all of your meals. You can eat outside of this. And you have to agree to do all of our tests. 

But we’ll take care of you. He gets 12, well, he settles on 12 volunteers. He gets an overwhelming response because they’re like a hint of danger and free food. Yes. And they all feel like, you know, when you’re young, you’re in your 20s, you’re invincible. Exactly. So they’re like, sign me up coach. 

Yeah, come in though. He builds a restaurant in the basement of the department of agriculture. He ends up bringing in a literal chef. And then he realizes, I’ve got to source real food because all the food I could just pick up at the store is tainted. So he goes through all the manufacturers and like hawkishly sources everything. 

Okay. Because he wants to be the only one put doping the food. Now, 1902, his restaurant opens with a sign over the door that says, none but the brave can eat the fare. 

Angie: Love that also will not be dining at the department of agriculture’s restaurant. Nope. 

Theresa: He decides to start with borax. Now, borax you can buy today. Right. Laundry soap. Yeah, exactly. It’s a cleaning agent. But at the time it was also a food preservative. 

Ew. Now he decides to break them in into two groups, the control group and the test subjects. And he starts lacing the food twice a week. These men are checked out by a doctor. Their stool is tested. Every stool is collected by the way. 

He’s testing everything he could. So they’re breathing through a tube for three hours through this concoction to catch their pardalates, particulates coming out of their lungs. He’s collecting their perspiration. He’s collecting urine. Everything you can think of. 

He’s taking it all because he doesn’t know what he’s going to find. Okay. Good for him. And then he’s also told them that they’re not allowed to identify themselves as part of the trial. He wants to keep this under wraps. 

Okay. Now where do the trial gets out? And reporters are trying their damnedest to get information about the men eating poison for the United States. When they can’t get information, they start making stuff up. They start publishing articles like, the men are trying borax and they’ve got healthier looking pink skin. 

Angie: This feels like the media. Good job media. 

Theresa: It’s so bad that he’s getting letters from Housewives saying, what is the formula of borax I should be using for healthy looking skin? Of course you use. Now the press eventually dubs these men the poison squad. Love this. And the tabloids refer to Harvey Wiley as old borax. Now this is the first time the country’s talking about food safety. And they slowly become the face of this movement. Right? Popular imagination. 

Angie: I love this so much and I’m so glad the poison squad isn’t a squad of people that are out poisoning people. 

Theresa: Aqua Tifanos, but I’ll tell you next week. Thanks. You’re welcome. Meanwhile, he’s slowly increasing the amount of borax in the food and men are beginning to struggle with intestinal difficulty, summer vomiting, fevers, things like they’re having, they’re losing weight. They can’t put weight on like there’s problems. Only half of the men survived to the last round of testing. I shouldn’t say survived. Nobody dies, but half of them fell out. Okay. 

Okay. Now once they finish that, he publishes his signing on borax and the public starts questioning everything about their eating. And Wiley is now incredibly against food preservatives. He thought borax was going to be mildly at, you know, mildly. 

Angie: Doesn’t say like a problem, like a small problem. Right. 

Theresa: Like, you know, we started off small. We’re not going to arson it quite yet. Right. So food manufacturers strike back at Wiley hard. And they’re in the press. They’re just doing the whole smear campaign. They’re calling him anti-business. 

Even Teddy Roosevelt, who’s now a president, he’s bowed out of pushing the legislation through. He’s a little leery of this. So Wiley drops back. He’s trying to find better allies. In 1904, he starts to rethink his approach. And he partners with the women’s rights movement. 

Okay. Because it’s the women, he realizes, who are doing a bulk of the purchasing in homes. And they’re the ones in charge of the meal prep and the meal. So this matters to them. They care about their families. So they’re the right people to team up with. 

And they don’t want to buy food that’s going to poison their loved ones. So he gets them in place in their movement. That’s awesome. They start a letter writing campaign. And they basically become his army. And they adopt his work as part of their progressive agenda. 

Angie: Yes. The right to vote and for good meat. I’m here for it. 

Theresa: Yep. Fannie Farmer, do you know her? 

Angie: The name sounds familiar, but I’m thinking it only sounds familiar from the USDA loan, the Fannie Mac. 

Theresa: Fannie Mac is different. Fannie Farmer, she was a cookbook writer. Okay. Now, this is at a time when women can’t go to school, but she’s writing cookbooks that read similar to chemistry books. Okay. Here’s why you can buy these things. Here’s how this happens. 

Here’s the science behind the food. That’s awesome. Okay. And so she starts throwing her support behind Wiley. She’s the largest cookbook writer at the time, and she’s called out the use of food additives. Meanwhile, Henry J. Heinz, he sees the tide turning on food preservatives, and so he starts innovating his ketchup recipe. 

Angie: Okay. I can get behind this. I don’t like ketchup, but that works for me. 

Theresa: Yep. He realizes that he could rely on vinegar to kill bacteria and make it shelf stable. And he advertises his product as pure, crafted by workers that were, quote, manicured, made in, clad in white. 

Angie: Oh, yeah. For ketchup. Okay. 

Theresa: So, food made in the cleanest factories and branded it pure, this is what the public wants. And so we can see how forward-looking companies can read the writing on the wall and see how regulations will lead to better profits. Okay. And so people like Heinz are like, you know what? 

We’re pure food. Got it. Yep. 

So we go back and forth with the poison squad and they’re testing. Roosevelt realizes that women are likely going to get the vote, and women are 100% behind pure food and drug regulation. So December 1905, he puts in his support for food regulation in his address to Congress. Love this. This is just in time because there’s another beef scandal. You know, up in Sinclair, he worked undercover for two months in the meat industry and he ends up publishing a book called The Jungle and this is about just chock full of health violations. 

He documents rat infestations, human appendages, finding their way into food, and inhumane practices among so, so, so many things. Cool. Sinclair is quoted and said, Ernst saying, I aim for the public’s heart, but I hit its stomach instead. 

Angie: Sure did. Sure did, buddy. 

Theresa: Now, Roosevelt sends his team to investigate if Sinclair’s report’s correct. As they’re investigating, they see a cow fall into a latrine. It’s pulled out, not washed off, and processed. No, thank you. So his summary of the report hits the New York Times and it calls the American food industry rotten to its core. 

Angie: Fair, honestly. 

Theresa: And Roosevelt pushes for a bill for food regulation and Wiley defends the bill for two days in Congress in this dramatic testimony. And in the documentary, they talk about how Wiley was able to bring that influence from his father’s evangelical preaching and basically like lean into the showmanship side of it. 

Angie: I knew that was what it was going to be. I knew it as soon as you said that I was like, oh, he’s going to be the showman. Like this is how this is how it works. Yep. 

Theresa: This results in Roosevelt demanding legislation on his desk immediately or he’ll threaten to release the complete investigation if Congress continues to stall. Now it’s stalling because we have these industry titans lobbying Congress. 

Angie: Okay, but that’s the second time in like two weeks that you have mentioned a president that actually did something right. 

Theresa: Roosevelt sat on it for a while. I mean, he’s the one who couldn’t eat the pot of meat. 

Angie: Yeah, but he was like, listen, if you don’t actually fix this, I’m going to release all the findings out to the press like, mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, strong arm, which you got to. 

Theresa: This is what’s resulting in the Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act and getting it to pass. It’s June 30th, 1906 that Roosevelt signs them into law. Okay. These are the first consumer protection laws in American history. And this happened just four months after the jungle’s publication. Wiley had been working at this for years and years and years. 

Angie: As you say, that could have stand if happened a little earlier for Wiley’s sake. 

Theresa: Well, it could have, but I mean, I think he laid the full groundwork. It was on his reports that all of this was laid out. Yeah. It was just, that was the tipping point. Good for him. I will say that Bill and this line shocked me had complete bipartisan support. 

Angie: Wow. I bet you that’s the only one. But yeah. Wow. 

Theresa: That’s the story of Harvey Wiley and the founding of the FDA. Okay. 

Angie: So I have to ask, did you wake up earlier this week and choose violence and think, oh, it’s been a minute since I ruined her appetite? 

Theresa: I mean, honestly, what it was is like I had heard brief snippets of the poison squad and it had been on my list at the bottom of my list because a lot of things had come before it and left. And I just needed to cross it off. 

Angie: Hmm. I’m still going to eat today because I’m freaking starving. I guarantee you milk is not on the agenda. But ketchup could be. No, ketchup is not. I am a barbecue sauce connoisseur. Okay. 

Yeah. For the longest time we didn’t have ever even buy ketchup. Our kids didn’t know what ketchup was until they started school. We have it. We keep it now because our youngest son’s best friend loves ketchup and another one of our friends loves ketchup. So we make sure we always have it in case they’re here for dinner or whatever. Yeah. That’s sweet of you. You know, we try to cater to those we love. 

Theresa: Meanwhile, I try to assault those I love with the stories I tell. 

Angie: You know, I was just, that’s so funny that you say that because earlier I was thinking she only abuses the people she loves and she must love me. 

Theresa: With a passion, with a fierce unending passion. I, thank you. 

Angie: Thank you for showing it in your own special way. Yeah. 

Theresa: I’m the school bully dipping your pigtails and eagles. 

Angie: Thank you for that. I really wanted the ombre hair anyway. Yeah. I do what I can. 

Theresa: If you’ve enjoyed my onslaught against food or what I just replayed is tomorrow when you’re really thinking about that second slice of cheesecake. Great review. Subscribe. Send this to somebody else who maybe should learn about the founding of the FDA. Also email us story ideas at unhinged.historypod at gmail.com. Maybe you’ve got something that would be equally as appetizing. And on that note, goodbye. Bye. 

Theresa: Where’d you go? Sorry. I miss you so. 

Angie: I wasn’t trying to, to not make you talk. I was just. You just iris could bite me. But I came right back so it wasn’t a fool irish could bite.