History of the Food and Drug Administration
In June 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law the Food and Drug Act, also known as the "Wiley Act" after its chief advocate. The Act prohibited, under penalty of seizure of goods, the interstate transport of food which had been "adulterated," with that term referring to the addition of fillers of reduced "quality or strength," coloring to conceal "damage or inferiority," formulation with additives "injurious to health," or the use of "filthy, decomposed, or putrid" substances. The act applied similar penalties to the interstate marketing of "adulterated" drugs, in which the "standard of strength, quality, or purity" of the active ingredient was not either stated clearly on the label or listed in the "United States Pharmacopoeia" or the "National Formulary". The act also banned "misbranding" of food and drugs. The responsibility for examining food and drugs for such "adulteration" or "misbranding" was given to Wiley's USDA Bureau of Chemistry.
Regulation of food and dietary supplements by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
The was the first of a series of significant consumer protection laws enacted by the Federal Government in the twentieth century and led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration. Its main purpose was to ban foreign and interstate traffic in adulterated or mislabeled food and drug products, and it directed the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry to inspect products and refer offenders to prosecutors. It required that active ingredients be placed on the label of a drug’s packaging and that drugs could not fall below purity levels established by The United States Pharmacopeia or The National Formulary. "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair was an inspirational piece that kept the public's attention on the important issue of unsanitary meat processing plants that later formed the Pure Food and Drug Act.