The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

In July of 1906, Wilson charged Dr. Wiley, in collaboration with other government departments, with the task of defining the parameters through which the new pure food laws would be enforced. Wiley correctly anticipated that any opportunity for lenient interpretation of the guidelines would be seized upon and exploited by manufacturers seeking to circumvent pending regulations. The verbiage Dr. Wiley and his collaborators composed explicitly defined manufacturing practices which were to be considered adulteration, including the dilution of principal ingredients with additives, the chemical manipulation of food products to make them appear fresher or unspoiled, the false representation of one food item for another, any inclusion of substances which could be harmful for human consumption, and any animal products which were rotten, processed in unsanitary conditions, or derived from sickened animals. The law which Roosevelt signed bore little resemblance to the initial parameters pure food advocates and activists fought for. It was vague and made enforcement a tedious and arbitrary process for local courts. It had not specified any chemicals to be prohibited, and it absolved any grocer from liability so long as they could furnish a note from the food manufacturer stating that their products were pure. Congressperson James Tawney moved to prevent food scientists working across the United States at the state level from receiving federal funds, a tremendous hindrance to the integral collaboration that the Chemistry Bureau incorporated into their work at the national level.