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

This is first and foremost a story about a chemist and hisdrive to expose the corrupt food industry as it knowingly profited from including harmful chemicals and additives in every day food.  Along the way, the reader also learns about Harvey Wiley and the decadeslong journey that would not have been possible without dedicated volunteers, a sympathetic media, and growingstrength of the Progressive movement.Throughout the 1880’s America was the Wild West for putting all kinds of chemicals in fooduntil Harvey Wiley, a chemist and his group of volunteers known as the PoisonSquad, began to prove how food manufacturers were literally killing thousandsof people by fraudulently adultering their processed foods with all types ofchemicals and toxic metals in order to maximize profits. Theircollective efforts eventually led to passing the first consumer protection lawin 1902 (Pure Food Act).  Up until then, the United States was alone amongstindustrialized nations without food regulations as the food lobby was simplytoo powerful with all their lawyers and political contributions thatsuccessfully pushed back any regulation.By 1860, Britain had already passed a law trying to limit the chemicaladulteration of food.  This was after in just one town alone, 20 peopledied by eating arsenic laced food coloring candy.  By 1881, France hadbanned the use of toxic salicylic acid in their wine and Germany also bannedchemicals in their beer.During this period, America was in the midst of an industrial revolution withfactories and railroads now able to produce and distribute food across Americanlike never before.  Cities swelled with the migration of millions offactory workers that also saw the rise of a new food manufacturing industrywith companies such as Heinz, Nabisco, Coca Cola, and Campbell.  In fact,by 1890, Chicago’s Union Stockyard was already processing over nine millionhead of cattle each year as they perfected the assembly line (this would laterinspire Henry Ford when building automobile factory).  So, withoutrefrigeration, the industry turned to chemical companies like Dow and Monsantoto provide them chemicals such as formaldehyde, sodium benzoate, and borax topreserve food as well as toxic metals such as copper sulfate to keep cannedfood colorful.Asearly as 1881 while working in the lab at Purdue University, Wiley discoveredthat up to 90% of all honey and maple syrup being sold was fake. Wileyimmediately faced an industry backlash and smear campaign and was dismissedfrom Purdue for scientifically proving that these commercially produced food productswere mostly corn syrup with artificial additives to deceive consumer (soundfamiliar)!Wiley then went onto the Department of Agriculture and began to investigate how dairy wasbeing deliberately adulterated and poisoned to increase industry profits aswell.  For example, water was added to dilute the milk; plaster and chalkadded to turn it white; formaldehyde to counter the sour taste; and pureed calfbrain give the top layer a yellow like cream color. This is to say nothing ofhow horrendously malnourished and mistreated the cows were in the first placefeeding mostly on swill waste from local breweries.  Other discoverieswritten about included how coffee was found to be made primarily from sawdust,chicory, and ash;  Pepper was found to contain mostly fillers of charcoal and coconut shells; white bread flour lacedwith aluminum; and the excess amount of caffeine and cocaine found in CocaCola.After the powerful dairy industry was able to significantly weaken the Butter Act of1886, Wiley soon realized that the only way to fight the corruption between bigfood and Congress was to broaden his message beyond fellow scientists and alertand educate the public to call for action.  Shrewdly, Wiley hired aprofessional writer that would translate his science into stories that began toresonate with the public.  Not surprisingly, this was soon met withresistance from his politically connected superiors at the Department ofAgriculture that began stifled his findings. Ironically, it was during the Spanish American War in 1898 and the reporting of the Army’s cover up “embalmed” meat being consumed by the soldiers that the broader publicstarted to take more notice.  Soon thereafter, the public would not look back as the newspapers began followingWiley with his human experiments on his volunteer “Poison Squad”.  Eventhough the chemical and food industries tried to smear Wiley with theircampaign of personal public attacks, women’s groups and trade unions during the Progressive movement ultimately turned the tide and became the forceto pressure vote conscious politicians to finally take food safety seriously.By 1906, these forces as well as below actions helped passing the landmark Food and Drug Act, as well as  the Meat Inspection Act-Wiley eventually pressured President Rooseveltdirectly by leveraging the new women voting block.-The publication of Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle further outraged the public-Henry J. Heinz decided to capitalize on the public’s growing food safety awareness bydesigning a “pure food” catsup and lobbied his support for pure food labeling As it turns out, passing this historic bill was entirely different than enforcing the new regulations.  Within just two years, industry lobbyists were able to create a new group of industry-friendly scientists that began to craftdoubt on Wiley and the Poison Squad.  When that failed, he was isolated within the administration andeffectively forced out.   Wiley’s next move though turned out to be with the extremely popular Good Housekeeping Magazine where he was able to create their Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval to educate and encourage its readers to keep the pressure on politicians and industry. In the end Wiley’s legacy is not just one man’s determination for food safety, ingredient labeling, and theultimate creation of the Food and Drug Administration, but the primary reason one can go buy a gallon of milk today and not die!

An incredible read. It will blow your mind on what companies used to put in our food products. Regulations can be onerous or counterproductive at times, but this book paints a terrible picture of what life was like, not all that long ago, when regulations were virtually non existent.

I gobbled this book up like candy, even if the descriptions of adulterated and poisoned food should have spoiled my reading appetite!The story of Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, chief chemist of the US Department of Agriculture in the early 20th c, is inspirational. He was determined that Americans should know what is in the food they were buying, and be assured that the food was safe.In a time when ice was the only way to keep food fresh, food producers turned to untested chemicals to preserve food and to turn rotten food saleable. For instance, Formaldehyde was used to preserve beef! To keep costs down, they turned to chemicals to replace more expensive, natural food products.The battle was waged within Wiley’s own governmental department, his boss changing with the president in office. Big businesses claimed that they needed to cut costs to stay solvent. So what if they watered down milk, with who knows what added to make it thicker and whiter, and topped it with pureed calf brains to look like cream on top? And if kids were overdosing on saccharine, or sweets filled with chemical colors, or snacking on pickles treated with copper… It wouldn’t really hurt them.Hooray for Heinz, supporter of pure foods! A few business leaders understood that if you don’t use rotten foods, you don’t need preservatives.To this very day, the fight continues for pure food in a never-ending battle.Oddly, I can say the book is entertaining and informative– and will make you check your food labels and food sources.

According to the author, well over a century ago, the food eaten by our ancestors was not as healthy and wholesome as we have been led to believe. In order to give a longer shelf life to such foods as milk, canned goods, breads, etc., preservatives, often of dubious gastronomic characteristics were mixed in. And in addition, very often, the food was rotting before being preserved/canned and the overall health effects on the consumers were appalling. Enter Dr. Harvey Wiley, a physician-turned-chemist, employed by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, to the rescue. This book outlines Dr. Wiley’s relentless campaign in trying to improve the quality of food eaten by consumers.I found the book interesting. There is much political wrangling and efforts at government legislating in light of scientific evidence in order to pass laws to control/limit dangerous contaminants in foods – despite powerful business corporations who were fighting against this. The so-called “Poison Squad” was a group of individuals hired to eat specific foods in a controlled manner in order to observe any ill health effects upon them by specific contaminants. The Poison Squad is mentioned a few times in the book but is not the main focus despite the book’s title.

Von Deborah Blum habe ich vorher das Poisoners Handbook gelesen, dass sich mit der Gründung des ersten forensischen Labors in New York befasst. Da chemische Analsen auch in Europa noch nicht viel weiter waren, war dies eine Geschichte, über die Anfangszeiten, zudem garbiert mit True Crime - Geschichten.In diesem Buch widmet sie sich jetzt der Geschichte von Harvey Wiley, der sich Ende des 19. / Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts dem Kampf gegen Lebensmittelzusätze verschrieben hatte und mit dessen Hilfe in den USA die ersten Gesetze gegen Lebensmittelzusätze geschrieben wurden. Dabei ist die Geschichte vollständig, aber sehr US-zentriert. Das fällt hier mehr auf, denn Europa war da doch z.T. sehr viel weiter als die USA. Zudem bestehen größere Teile des Buches aus Fehden innerhalb des Ministeriums und um juristische Auseinandersetzungen. Das ,liegt in der Natur der Sache, ermüdet aber stellenweise. Natürlich ist es schon interessant zu sehen, wie groß die Probleme der USA schon damals waren (und wieder sind), die Interessen des Verbrauchers über die der Industrie zu setzen. So muss man schon über statements den Kopf schütteln, wie das (giftige) Kupfersalze nicht verboten werden können, weil sonst die Erbsenindustrie pleite geht. Oder das auch gefärbter Industriealkohol aus Whiskey verkauft werden dürfte, da Whiskey ja selbst gar kein Naturprodukt ist. Manches erkennt man aus heutigen Diskussionen wieder und tatsächlich wird im Epilog auch ein Bezug zu gewissen Aussagen von Trump gezogen.Dennoch sind diese Parallelen doch etwas wenig um den Fokus auf eine Person zu rechtfertigen, wenn man sich nicht gerade besonders für diesen speziellen Anteil der Geschichte interessiert.Wer sich umfassender über die Geschichte der Lebensmittelzusätze und -skandale interessiert, dürfte das sehr viel umfassendere (aber immer noch populärwissenschaftliche) "Swindled" von Bee Wilson bevorzugen.

This is not the book to read before dinner. However it is a fascinating account of mass adulteration of food and drink in the USA and the emergence of scientific testing, laws and regulations designed to protect the public and insure certain minimum standards of purity and public safety. Well written, well paced and detailed without ever becoming mired in chemistry or obscure science. You don't need to be a lab technician to understand and enjoy this compelling history. If you thought the cow stepping in the milk bucket was bad, let me assure you, back in the day that was nothing. Read this book and you will never complain about FDA regulations again.

Excelente título!