1906 - Consumer Protection

Consumer Protection

A Pure Food and Drug bill introduced by Sen. Weldon B. Heyburn, 54, (D. Idaho) encounters Republican opposition. Sen. Nelson W. (Wilmarth) Aldrich, 64, (R. R.I.) asks, "Is there anything in the existing condition that makes it the duty of Congress to put the liberty of the United States in jeopardy? . . . Are we going to take up the question as to what a man shall eat and what a man shall drink, and put him under severe penalties if he is eating or drinking something different from what the chemists of the Agricultural Department think desirable?" But the Heyburn Bill regulates producers and sellers, not consumers, and its prohibitions are only against selling diseased meat, decomposed foods, or dangerously adulterated food, and it requires only that labels give truthful descriptions of contents (see Wiley, 1902; Sinclair, 1905).

A meat inspection amendment to the Agricultural Appropriation Bill introduced by Sen. Albert Jeremiah Beveridge, 43, (R. Ind.) passes without dissent, but the measure does not provide for federal funding of meat inspection.

The Neill-Reynolds report made public by President Roosevelt June 24 inspires Rep. James Wolcott Wadsworth, 59, (R. N.Y.) to introduce a meat inspection amendment that provides for federal funding of meat inspection. Settlement-house workers Charles P. Neill and James Bronson Reynolds, 45, prepared the report; the Wadsworth measure passes both houses of Congress and Roosevelt signs it into law.

Germany imposes a limit of 0.125 percent of sulfurous acids in foods, including dried cut fruits. The dried fruit industry has exposed freshly-cut fruits to the fumes of burning sulfur for years to promote rapid drying, kill yeasts and molds, kill enzymes in the fruit that cause quick browning and deterioration, repel insects, and enable the cured fruit to be stored for months with minimum loss in nutritive values and eating qualities (see 1907).