108 Years Later: How “The Jungle” influenced U.S. food safety policy

In 1905, Upton Sinclair penned the novel “The Jungle.” Although the book was originally designed to expose horrific working conditions and employee exploitation at a Chicago meat packing plant, most readers were more concerned with his stomach-churning descriptions on the production of unsafe food products, filthy working environments and the corruption of the American meatpacking industry at the turn of the century. The book quickly became a best seller and threw U.S. food safety into the limelight. The American public demanded change. Within weeks of the book’s release, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Mr. Sinclair to the White House for lunch and promised to investigate the allegations. Six months later, the President pushed major initiatives such as the Meat Inspection Act and Food and Drug Act through Congress, altering U.S. food safety policy almost overnight.

This presentation will describe how this novel has influenced U.S. food safety policy for over 100 years, and led to landmark federal food safety regulations and the formation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Food and Drug Administration (FDA).