The Poison Squad

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By the end of the nineteenth century, food in America had become increasingly dangerous. Milk and meat were preserved with formaldehyde, beer and wine with salicylic acid, canned vegetables with copper sulphate, and rancid butter with borax. Food manufacturers, eager to profit, embraced industrial chemistry, knowingly selling harmful products without government regulation or safety standards. In New York City, thousands of children reportedly died from adulterated milk. Activists, journalists, scientists, and women's groups began demanding change, but American corporations resisted even modest regulations, unlike their European counterparts. In 1883, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley became chief chemist of the United States Department of Agriculture and initiated investigations into food fraud, conducting shocking human tests on young men known as the Poison Squad. Over the next thirty years, Dr. Wiley campaigned tirelessly for food safety alongside notable figures like muckraker Upton Sinclair, cookbook author Fannie Farmer, and food producer Henry Heinz. Their efforts culminated in the landmark 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, known as 'Dr. Wiley's Law.' Deborah Blum vividly recounts this compelling struggle, highlighting the moral imperative to confront corporate greed and government corruption, resonating with contemporary social and political challenges.