Review by Choice Review
The Poison Squad offers readers a compelling account of shocking adulterations of food and beverages that took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the US. Blum, a Pulitzer Prize--winning science journalist, traces the evolution of food safety regulation that came as a result of these abuses. A central character in her story is Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemistry professor at Purdue University who became chief chemist of the US Department of Agriculture and subsequently undertook a long and laborious campaign to get food safety legislation passed. As part of his research, Wiley recruited a panel of young men who acted as his tasters and were dubbed "The Poison Squad." The passage of the first US Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906 was in large measure due to Dr. Wiley's efforts. The book includes a number of excellent illustrations, detailed chapter notes and bibliographies, and a thorough index. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Harold Goldwhite, emeritus, California State University, Los Angeles
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
IN APRIL 1906, a Republican president of the United States met privately with a notorious socialist at the White House. The president was Theodore Roosevelt; the socialist was Upton Sinclair; and the two set aside their political differences to discuss an issue of great mutual concern: food safety. A few months earlier, Sinclair's novel "The Jungle" had created public outrage about the sanitary conditions at America's slaughterhouses. Roosevelt had distrusted the meatpacking industry for years, angered by the putrid meat sold to the Army and served to his troops during the Spanish-American War. In 1906 the United States was the only major industrialized nation without strict laws forbidding the sale of contaminated and adulterated food. In their absence, the free market made it profitable to supply a wide range of unappetizing fare. Ground-up insects were sold as brown sugar. Children's candy was routinely colored with lead and other heavy metals. Beef hearts and other organ meats were processed, canned and labeled as chicken. Perhaps one-third of the butter for sale wasn't really butter but rather all sorts of other things - beef tallow, pork fat, the ground-up stomachs of cows and sheep - transformed into a yellowish substance that looked like butter. Historians have long credited the unlikely alliance of Roosevelt and Sinclair for passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. In "The Poison Squad," Deborah Blum makes a convincing case that a now forgotten chemist at the Department of Agriculture, Harvey Washington Wiley, played a more important role - not only in ensuring the passage of those bills but also in changing popular attitudes toward government intervention on behalf of consumers. The origins of today's food safety laws, drug safety laws, labeling requirements and environmental regulations can be found in the arguments of the Progressive movement at the turn of the last century. As the Trump administration proudly weakens or eliminates those measures, the life work of a 19th-century U.S.D.A. chemist has an unfortunate significance. Harvey Washington Wiley was born in a log cabin on April 16, 1844, a fitting entrance for an American hero. His father was a farmer and a lay preacher in southern Indiana who sheltered escaped slaves as part of the Underground Railroad. Wiley served briefly in the Civil War, studied medicine in Indiana and chemistry at Harvard, and became the first chemistry professor at Purdue University in 1874. The deliberate adulteration of food had been a problem for millenniums, inspiring government regulations in ancient Egypt, Sumeria and Rome. By the late 1870s, the Industrial Revolution, applied to food processing, provided a variety of new techniques and ingredients useful for committing fraud - artificial flavors, artificial colorings, chemical preservatives. But simultaneous advances in chemistry also facilitated the detection of such fakery. At the request of the Indiana State Board of Health in 1881, Wiley began to study the authenticity of the honey and maple syrup for sale in that state. According to Blum, he used laboratory instruments like the polariscope to uncover that "a full 90 percent of his syrup samples were fakes ... and there were 'beekeepers' who had not, of late, been bothering to keep bees." Wiley's findings soon appeared in Popular Science magazine, and his career as a public crusader was launched. After being named the U.S.D.A.'s chief chemist in 1882, Wiley A1906 spent the next 30 years at the department campaigning for safe food and proper labeling. He supervised a series of investigative reports that gained much public attention, warning about "pepper" made from sawdust, "cocoa powder" containing iron oxides and tin, "flour" laced with clay and powdered white rocks, "whiskey" that was actually watereddown ethyl alcohol tinted brown with prune juice, "coffee" that featured ingredients like sand, tree bark, ground acorns, charcoal and a black powder composed of charred bone. To test the health impact of various additives, he recruited young men to serve as guinea pigs in "hygienic table trials," serving them questionable ingredients during meals in the basement of U.S.D.A. headquarters - and then observing what happened. Soon known as the Poison Squad, these idealistic volunteers embraced the motto on a sign in their special dining room: "ONLY THE BRAVE DARE EAT THE FARE." By 1902, Wiley had become a national celebrity, and "Song of the Poison Squad" was performed at minstrel shows. The National Food Processors Association and other industry groups were not pleased, to say the least. The adulteration of food had become so brazen that manufacturers openly advertised products like "mineraline," "fluorine" and Freezine that either substituted for real ingredients or disguised the presence of spoilage. Freezine contained formaldehyde, an ingredient in embalming fluid, that was toxic and commonly mixed with rancid milk. For his efforts on behalf of food safety and integrity, Wiley was described in one trade journal as "the man who is doing all he can to destroy American business." Misleading articles by nonexistent journalists were circulated to harm his reputation. The newly formed Monsanto Chemical Company became one of his most persistent foes, after U.S.D.A. chemists questioned the safety of saccharine and caffeine, two additives that it manufactured. Wiley's honesty, charisma, dedication to science, political acumen and flair for publicity helped him survive attacks by trade groups and adversaries within the U.S.D.A. He formed alliances with women's organizations, consumer advocates, muckraking journalists and Fannie Farmer, the leading celebrity chef of the era. "The Poison Squad" chronicles years of bureaucratic battles, the cowardice of elected officials, the triumph of food safety bills in 1906 and the legislative compromises that greatly disappointed Wiley. He later found comfort in family life at the age of 66, marrying Anna Kelton, a suffragist 32 years younger than him, and fathering two children. Wiley retired from the U.S.D.A. in 1912 and ended his career as an outspoken columnist for Good Housekeeping. Blum cares passionately about her subject. Her prose is graceful and her book is full of vivid, unsettling detail. But "The Poison Squad" suffers from a lack of historical context. Wiley's crusade for pure food was part of a larger Progressive movement challenging monopoly power and government corruption. Blum provides little sense of how Wiley's reforms fit with Progressive demands for scientific management, domestic purity and the rule of experts. More surprisingly, Blum never addresses the scientific validity of the double-blind experiments that Wiley conducted with his human subjects. Members of the Poison Squad may have experienced "fullness in the head and distress in the stomach" after consuming certain substances. But were Wiley's tests of additives like saccharine and sodium benzoate - whose health effects still remain controversial - sound science or pseudoscience? We never learn the answer. More than a century after the heyday of Harvey Washington Wiley, the deceptions continue. A 2012 study by Oceana, an environmental nonprofit, found that one-third of the seafood purchased in the United States had been mislabeled. Tilefish - a species known to contain high levels of mercury - was frequently sold as halibut and red snapper. At sushi restaurants, three-quarters of the fish wasn't what the menu said it was. Today there are still remarkably few legal restrictions on the sale of meat contaminated with dangerous pathogens. A large proportion of the poultry for sale at supermarkets is tainted with antibiotic-resistant salmonella. And the U.S.D.A. lacks the authority to demand a recall of that meat. A report published by the American Academy of Pediatrics in July warned that food additives may endanger the health of children. Of the nearly 4,000 food additives evaluated, almost two-thirds have never been tested for their toxicity after being eaten. Only 7 percent have been tested for their effect on reproduction. And only two of the additives have been tested for developmental harms. Nevertheless, Donald Trump has criticized the "inspection overkill" of the "F.D.A. food police." "The Poison Squad" offers a powerful reminder that truth can defeat lies, that government can protect consumers and that an honest public servant can overcome the greed of private interests. ERIC SCHLOSSER is the author of "Command and Control" and "Fast Food Nation."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
After signing America's first food-and-drug law in 1906, Teddy Roosevelt was quick to claim paternity. But in this compellingly detailed chronicle, Blum identifies Harvey Washington Wiley as the true father of the much-needed legislation. Readers follow this Purdue chemist, named the Department of Agriculture's lead scientist, as he painstakingly documents the harmful effects of contaminants and toxins in the food supply and then fearlessly crusades for legal measures to protect the public. Roosevelt does give Wiley timely (albeit inconsistent) support for his legislative agenda. But perhaps more important is the political momentum generated by Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, exposing the horrifically unsanitary practices of Chicago's meat-packers. Outspoken cookbook maven Fannie Farmer and progressive food-processing titan Henry Heinz also join the fight. But readers see how powerful industry executives connive with myopic bureaucrats to deny Wiley and his allies full enforcement of the new food-and-drug law, finally sending a frustrated Wiley into early retirement. Citing worrisome recent attacks on consumer-protection laws, Blum reminds readers of the twenty-first-century relevance of Wiley's cause.--Bryce Christensen Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
America's nauseating industrial food supply of yesteryear sparks political turmoil in this engrossing study of a pure-foods pioneer. Pulitzer-winning science journalist and Undark magazine publisher Blum (The Poisoner's Handbook) looks back to the end of the 19th century, when unregulated manufacturers routinely added noxious substances to the nation's foodstuffs: cakes were colored with lead and arsenic; milk was preserved with formaldehyde; brown sugar was padded out with ground-up insects; processed meats contained every variety of flesh and filth. Blum centers the book on Harvey Wiley, crusading head of the Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Chemistry, who fed a "poison squad" of human volunteers common food adulterants like borax to see if they got sick-and they usually did; his reports helped pass the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. Blum's well-informed narrative-complete with intricate battles between industry lobbyists and a coalition of scientists, food activists, and women's groups-illuminates the birth of the modern regulatory state and its tangle of reformist zeal, policy dog-fights, and occasional overreach (Wiley wanted to restrict the artificial sweetener saccharin, which nowadays is considered safe, and wasted much time trying to get corn syrup relabeled as glucose). The result is a stomach churner and a page-turner. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Concerns about clean food, campaign contributions from food company lobbyists, and political in-fighting halting all progress may sound familiar-but this investigation by Blum (Knight Science Journalism Program, Massachusetts Inst. of Technology; The Poisoner's Handbook) is based on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in the 1880s. The work outlines the 30-year career of Dr. Harvey Wiley, who left his position as Purdue University's first chemistry professor to become the chief chemist for the USDA in 1883. Once hired, he began systematically testing food products for mislabeling and adulteration, often on human subjects. This book not only revisits Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, the exposé of horrendous meat processing practices of the time, but also unearths lesser-known but just as stomach-turning food scandals, such as milk "preserved" with formaldehyde, eggs and cheese blended with borax, and candy containing arsenic. Illuminating the little-known history of a progressive scientist and crusader for consumers' rights, this well-written and well-researched work serves as a reminder of the necessity of regulations and regulators to hold companies accountable. VERDICT An intriguing and often horrifying saga of government policy and food regulation.-Susan Hurst, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A fascinatingand disturbinghistory of the late-19th-century crusade for food safety, led by a pioneering scientist who fought hard against "chemically enhanced and deceptive food manufacturing practices," some of which we still see today.The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 ended a century of scandal and bitter political maneuvering, with major impetus from Harvey Washington Wiley (1844-1930), a genuinely unknown American hero. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Blum (Director, Knight Science Journalism Program/MIT; The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, 2010, etc.) offers less a biography than a vivid account of Wiley's achievements. As she writes, 19th-century industrial chemistry "brought a host of new chemical additives and synthetic compounds into the food supply. Still unchecked by government regulation, basic safety testing, or even labeling requirements, food and drink manufacturers embraced the new materials with enthusiasm." Throughout the book, the author clearly busts the myth of "a romantic glow over the foods of our forefathers." Adding formaldehyde to milk kept it fresh in a warm room for days. Copper sulfate restored the faded green of canned beans. Yellow lead chromate colored candy. Slaughterhouses put out poisoned bread to discourage rats, and "then the rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together." Wiley became chief chemist of the Department of Agriculture in 1883. Already alarmed at food adulteration, he delivered speeches and wrote popular articles, working closely with muckraking journalists and the burgeoning pure food movement. Congress routinely quashed reforms before President Theodore Roosevelt supported the 1906 bill, but Blum emphasizes that he showed no interest before winning the 1904 presidential election; afterward, he paid more attention to objections from the food industry. The author maintains that Wiley was the true "Father of the Pure Food and Drug Act." Never popular with superiors, he clashed with them over the act's enforcement, resigning in 1912 to take over the labs at the Good Housekeeping Institute, where he continued making waves until his death.An expert life of an undeservedly obscure American. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
