It’s hard to believe there was a time before the United States could regulate the safety of its food and drugs. The history of the Food and Drug Administration feels like the story of a country coming to its senses. When the FDA was first developed, it was a revolutionary, creative leap forward for a nation that desperately needed a way to cut through a market full of hucksters.
Before the Food and Drug Administration
From 1879 to 1906, there were many attempts to pass legislation that would regulate food and drugs in the United States. There already existed some state laws that provided degrees of protection for consumers, but the federal government was unable to oversee all the food in the U.S.
In the late 19th century, the U.S. didn’t have a full picture of how many people were being harmed by faulty food and drug products, which impeded any regulatory progress. In 1883, Harvey Washington Wiley led the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Division of Chemistry in a research effort on the misbranding of food and drugs in the U.S. His findings, and the support behind them, were used to lobby the government for the creation a governing body dedicated to regulating food and drugs. Thus began the history of the Food and Drug Administration.
The 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act
In June 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt passed into law the Food and Drug Act, sometimes nicknamed the “Wiley Act” after its lead advocate. Under penalty of seizure of goods, the act prohibited the transport of “adulterated” goods, meaning food or drugs that caused harm due to misleading promises.
Under the act, Wiley’s USDA Bureau of Chemistry was given the responsibility of examining food for “adulteration” or “misbranding.” In 1927, the Bureau of Chemistry’s regulatory powers were reshaped under a new USDA body: the Food, Drug, and Insecticide Organization, which was shortened to the Food and Drug Administration three years later.
The 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act
After a series of high-profile poisonings from consumer goods in the 1930s, it was clear the FDA lacked the power and reach to effectively do their work. On June 24, 1938, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the new Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which mandated a review of all drugs before they went to market. It also banned claims made on drug labels that did not have FDA approval, as well as authorized factory inspection and expanded enforcement powers. This law is the central foundation of the FDA.
Now coding and marking printers across the country are programmed to print the specifications required by the FDA. Though people who work in food production or packaging may sometimes feel like the FDA is just another bureaucratic hurdle, this organization works to keeps Americans safe every day.
