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By Root 1143 0

Act limited the bureau’s authority to regulate meat safety in other ways that make it difficult to deal with today’s microbial pathogens. For one thing, the law specified that the department’s authority began at the slaughterhouse. USDA inspectors had no right to examine animals on the farm, in transport, or at any other time before they arrived for slaughter. The law created a second serious impediment: the USDA had no right to recall meat once it left the plant. If USDA inspectors believed that a packing plant was producing tainted meat, their only recourse was to deny further inspection, in effect forcing the plant to close. Finally, the law placed the burden of guaranteeing meat as safe on government inspectors—whose inspection stamp implied wholesomeness—rather than on producers or processors. Whether the effects of its intentions were deliberate or not, the 1906 Congress established an oversight system that permitted the industry to rely on (and, therefore, blame) USDA inspectors for the most fundamental decisions about plant operations. Slaughterhouses and processing plants were to open when the inspector said they could and close when the inspector left for the day. If the inspector said that meat was safe, it was—and the producers and packers did not need to do anything else to ensure the safety of their products. As we will see, the modern consequences of these century-old congressional decisions continue to act as barriers to food safety reforms.

In sharp contrast, the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act did not require the USDA’s Bureau of Chemistry to conduct continuous inspections. Instead, it instructed the Bureau to collect samples of foods and food products and determine whether they were “adulterated” or misleadingly labeled. If the bureau found a product to be unsafe or mislabeled, however, it could not block sales. Instead, it had to notify the manufacturer and request voluntary recall or hold hearings and take the company to court. Congress must have sensed that the differences in functions and procedures spelled out in the two laws would cause conflict because it also required the secretaries of the departments of Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor to “make uniform rules and regulations for carrying out the provisions of this Act.” The House wanted the Food and Drugs law to establish food standards that could serve as a basis for enforcement, but the more business-oriented Senate was “unalterably opposed” to this idea and agreed to pass the bill only if that provision were dropped.45 As I discussed in my book Food Politics, the issue of food standards also has caused endless controversy during the intervening century.

Despite these limitations (and in contrast to the results of the Meat Inspection Act), the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act made food producers responsible for the safety of their products, and assigned government the role of enforcement. Food producers immediately objected to the enforcement aspects of the legislation and initiated lawsuits, thereby establishing a pattern that continues to this day. Dr. Wiley, who demanded much of the credit for enactment of the Pure Food and Drugs law, viewed his bureau’s enforcement role as nothing less than a battle of the forces of righteousness against evil:

For a third of a century, the fight for pure food has been waged and the end is not yet. . . . It was and is a struggle for human rights as much as for the Revolution or the Civil War. A battle for the privilege of going free of robbery and with a guaranty of health, it has been and is a fight for the individual right against the vested interest, of the man against the dollar. . . . The defeated squadrons . . . went to court, demanded executive action, resulting in an order that the Bureau bring no action. . . . It was a complete triumph for the hosts of Satan. . . . Inspired by a questionable zeal, I held on, hoping that . . . the spirit of service to the people might again enter into the heart of our high rulers.46

In subsequent years, amendments to both laws expanded the USDA’s inspection