By Harvey W. Wiley, MD
Summary: An illuminating peek at the early—and fateful—politics of food adulteration. From 1906–1912, Dr. Wiley was the head of the USDA's Bureau of Chemistry (later renamed Food and Drug Administration), the department charged with enforcing the country's first food purity law, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. In this excerpt from his 1929 autobiography, Wiley details how the Bureau's authority was illegally usurped by higher-ranking officials within the USDA under the influence of industrial food manufacturers. In one famous case, the solicitor of the USDA forbade Dr. Wiley and other workers of his Bureau from testifying in a federal case in which their testimony would have supported a ban of the food additive sodium benzoate, a compound Wiley and his fellow chemists had determined to be injurious to health yet, sadly, remains one of the most common food preservatives used today. Includes an introduction by Dr. Royal Lee. Special Reprint No. 1-60.
View PDF: Harvey W. Wiley’s Autobiography: Chemicals in Food (excerpt)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
