By R. W. Dunlap, Assistant Secretary of the USDA
Summary: If you're looking for a smoking gun regarding the adulteration of food in America, this is it. In this letter to President Calvin Coolidge, USDA Assistant Secretary R.W. Dunlap explains that the USDA cannot legally prevent the inclusion of additives such as flour bleach, saccharin, and sulfur dioxide to America's food because of previous rulings made by federal courts, including the Supreme Court, in which such chemicals were pronounced acceptable in small amounts—even if shown to be harmful in and of themselves—as long as no evidence of harm is shown in people who consume the products containing them. These decisions put the onus of proving long-term ill effects of these suspected poisons squarely on the government. With such evidence difficult to show conclusively and requiring years of study (the technology for which not even existing at the time), the basic policy of food adulteration in America came into being: to err on the side of commerce, not public health. As the secretary points out, the opposing, "better safe than sorry" policy of Dr. Harvey Wiley—the former head of the USDA's Bureau of Chemistry (forerunner of the FDA)—would simply not stand up in court, where the decision to allow deleterious additives into the food supply had been stamped firmly into law. 1925.
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