Keywords: food safety, pioneer and "father of pure food and drug law"
Abstract: The United States is almost the country with the strictest supervision on food and drugs in the world, with more than 1 branches of FDA, and thousands of scientists are working for it to protect people's table and health. However, more than 1 years ago, the federal government of the United States had almost no supervision over food and drugs, and their safety situation was even more worrying than that of China today ... < P > Other stones can be used to attack jade.
Today, food safety has aroused public concern, and the story of an American may be worthy of our attention.
This man is known as "a mountain among people, a combative lion". It was he who directly promoted the legislation of food and drug in the United States, so he was known as the "father of the Pure Food and Drug Law".
Twenty-six years after his death, the US government specially issued stamps to commemorate him.
Of course, up to now, the American Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC International), which he founded, still awards prizes in his name.
Many Americans say that their dining tables are much safer because of this man's efforts.
This person, the organization he founded, later evolved into the world-famous American Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
His name is Harvey W. Wiley (hereinafter referred to as "Willie"), a person worthy of our commemoration today.
An Angry Age
Nowadays, the United States is almost the country with the strictest food and drug supervision in the world. It has more than 1 branches of the FDA, and thousands of scientists are working for it to protect people's dining tables and health.
However, more than 1 years ago, the federal government of the United States had almost no supervision over food and drugs, and their safety situation was even more worrying than that of China today:
unscrupulous businessmen injected sodium benzoate into bad tomatoes to prevent them from rotting, and spilled copper sulfate to make vegetables look more tender; Meat processing enterprises use borax to remove the odor of rotten ham; The so-called strawberry jam is made of apple peel with no pulp and glucose ...
In order to save flour, the bread merchant even added chalk powder, dust and hydrated gypsum to the raw materials. Others mixed crushed lice in brown sugar (the surface looks very like brown sugar); As there is no turkey in the canned turkey, olive oil is actually fraud such as cottonseed oil, and there are countless more.
In p>195, journalist Upton Sinclair sneaked into a large meat product factory in Chicago and worked with workers for seven weeks. What he saw was shocking: "Bad pork was rubbed with baking soda to remove the sour smell; Poisoned mice were shoveled into the sausage mixer together; The washed water is prepared into seasoning; Workers walked around the meat, spitting everywhere, sowing hundreds of millions of pulmonary tuberculosis bacteria ... "
At the end of 19th century and the beginning of 2th century, in the United States, the process of urbanization accelerated, and a large number of rural people poured into cities. The scene of witnessing the food production process in the rural market is gone forever. In order to earn higher profits, business owners unscrupulously added various additives and substitutes to food.
An example that can illustrate the situation at that time is that during the Spanish-American War in 1898, the US government organized cavalry to go to Cuba. As a result, the soldiers did not fall down much during the war, but the canned spoiled meat supplied at home "successfully" made thousands of American soldiers sick!
In p>1899, General Nelson Appleton Miles, commander-in-chief of the US Army, protested to the federal government, claiming that these canned beef killed more soldiers than enemy bullets!
Similar to food safety out of control, drug safety at that time embarrassed Americans now.
For example, Lydia Pinkham, an American patent holder with great achievements, claims that her plant mixture can cure any woman's diseases from neurasthenia to uterine prolapse. But in fact, her vegetable mixture is 2% alcohol, and thousands of women who have sworn off alcohol are drinking it.
there is also a panacea called "Liquozone", which is actually 99% water, and a little sulfuric acid can increase the smell, but it claims to cure 37 diseases.
At the annual meeting of Massachusetts Medical Association, a doctor said: I firmly believe that if all the drugs we use today are poured into the sea, it will be more beneficial to human health, but it will kill all the fish in the sea.
At this moment, Willie appeared, at that time, he was the chief scientist of the Chemical Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture.
A fighter's persistent efforts
After more than one hundred years, we have regarded "Willie" as a pioneer in successfully promoting food and drug legislation, but at that time, his hard work was difficult to be humane.
"I promote the legislation of pure food and drugs, which is regarded as the work of eccentric talents. Many people think that I lack basic business knowledge." Sometimes, Willie would whisper to the people around him like this.
As an expert in general pharmacy and medicine, Willie, born in 1844, studied at Indiana Medical College, Harvard University and then taught at Purdue University. He noticed very early that various chemical additives were added to canned food to prolong its shelf life, which was very harmful to human body.
After being invited to be the chief scientist of the Chemical Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture in 1883, he began to wage war on the infuriating food safety situation. Under his auspices, the Chemical Bureau published an eight-part report on "Food and Food Adulteration", which revealed that many foods were generally adulterated.