Harvey Washington Wiley: The Glory and Dream of a Food Safety Pioneer
Keywords: food safety, pioneer, "Father of the Pure Food and Drug Act"
Summary of content: The United States is now almost the country with the strictest supervision of food and drugs in the world. It has more than 100 branches of the FDA and thousands of scientists working for it, protecting people's dining tables and healthy. However, more than a hundred years ago, the U.S. federal government had almost no supervision over food and drugs. Their safety situation was even more worrying than that of China today...
A stone from another mountain can be used to attack jade.
As food safety arouses national concern today, the story of an American may be worthy of our attention.
This man is known as "a high mountain among people, a combative lion." It was he who directly promoted the legislation of food and drugs in the United States, and is therefore known as the "Father of the Pure Food and Drug Act."
Twenty-six years after this man’s death, the U.S. government issued a stamp to commemorate him.
Of course, until now, the American Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC International), which he founded, still awards awards in his name.
Many Americans say their dining tables are much safer because of this man’s efforts.
The organization he founded later evolved into the world-famous U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
His name is Harvey W. Wiley (hereinafter referred to as "Wiley"), a person worthy of our commemoration today.
An Angry Era
The United States is now almost the country with the strictest supervision of food and drugs in the world. The FDA has more than 100 branches and thousands of Scientists are working on it, protecting people's dining tables and health.
However, more than a hundred years ago, the U.S. federal government had almost no supervision over food and drugs, and their safety situation was even more worrying than that of China today:
Profit-driven businessmen Inject sodium benzoate into spoiled tomatoes to prevent them from continuing to rot, and splash copper sulfate to make vegetables look more tender; meat processing companies use borax to remove the smell of rotten ham; and the so-called strawberry jam is apple peel without any pulp. Made with glucose...
In order to save flour, bakers added chalk powder, dust and molten gypsum to the raw materials; some people mixed brown sugar with crushed lice (seemingly) (very much like brown sugar); as for canned turkey not having turkey in it, olive oil actually being cottonseed oil, the list goes on and on.
In 1905, journalist Upton Sinclair sneaked into a large Chicago meat factory and worked with the workers for seven weeks. What he saw was shocking: "It's broken. The pork was rubbed with soda ash to remove the sour smell; the poisoned rats were shoveled into the sausage mixer; the water used to wash hands was mixed into seasoning; workers walked around on the meat, spitting, and sowing seeds. billions of sclerotiorum bacteria..."
In the United States at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, urbanization accelerated, and a large number of rural people poured into cities. The scene of witnessing the food production process in rural markets was no longer available. Nowadays, in order to earn higher profits, business owners unscrupulously add various additives and substitutes to food.
An example that illustrates the situation at that time is that during the Spanish-American War in 1898, the U.S. government organized a cavalry team to go to Cuba. As a result, not many soldiers died during the war, and the spoiled canned meat supplied domestically. But it "successfully" made thousands of American soldiers sick!
In 1899, General Nelson Appleton Miles, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Army, protested to the federal government, claiming that these canned beef killed more soldiers than enemy bullets!
Similar to food safety being out of control, drug safety at that time also embarrassed Americans today.
For example, Lydia Pinkham, an accomplished pharmaceutical patent owner in the United States, claimed that her plant mixture could cure any female ailment from neurasthenia to uterine prolapse. . But in fact, her vegetable mixture 20 is alcohol, and thousands of women who have sworn to give up alcohol are drinking it.
There is also a panacea called "Liquozone", which is actually 99% water, with a little sulfuric acid added to increase the smell, but it claims to be able to treat 37 diseases.
At the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Medical Association, a physician said: I firmly believe that if all the drugs we use today were dumped into the sea, it would be more beneficial to human health, but it would destroy the contents of the sea. All the fish were killed.
At this time, Willy appeared. At that time, he was the chief scientist of the Bureau of Chemistry of the Ministry of Agriculture.
The persistent efforts of a fighter
More than a hundred years later, we have regarded "Willy" as a pioneer who successfully promoted food and drug legislation, but at that time, his work was difficult It’s hard to tell outsiders.
“My promotion of pure food and drug legislation was considered a job for eccentric people, and many people thought I lacked basic business sense.” Sometimes, Willy would whisper to the people around him.
As an expert in both pharmacy and medicine, Willie, who was born in 1844, studied at Indiana Medical College and Harvard University, and later taught at Purdue University. He noticed early on that canned food was Extending the shelf life and adding various chemical additives are very harmful to the human body.
After being invited to serve as chief scientist of the Bureau of Chemistry of the Ministry of Agriculture in 1883, he began to wage war on the infuriating food safety situation. Under his chairmanship, the Bureau of Chemistry published an eight-part report on Food and Food Adulteration, which revealed widespread adulteration in many foods.