A New York Times Well known Book

From Pulitzer Award winner and NY Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story of how food was produced safe in the United States as well as the heroes, led with the inimitable Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, who fought for modification

By the finish of nineteenth century, food was dangerous. Lethal, also. ‘Milk’ might contain formaldehyde, frequently used to embalm corpses. Decaying meats was preserved with both salicylic acidity, a pharmaceutical chemical, and about The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Meals Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century borax, a substance first defined as a washing product. This is not unintentionally; food manufacturers got rushed to accept the rise of commercial chemistry, and were knowingly selling dangerous products. Unchecked by federal government regulation, basic safety, and even labelling requirements, they put profit prior to the wellness of their clients. By some quotes, in NEW YORK alone, a large number of kids were killed by ’embalmed dairy’ each year. Citizens–activists, journalists, researchers, and women’s groups–began agitating for modification. But even while protective measures were enacted in European countries, American corporations obstructed even modest regulations. Then, in 1883, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemistry teacher from Purdue School, was named chief chemist from the agriculture department, and the company began methodically investigating drink and food fraud, even conducting shocking human exams on sets of young men who came to be known as, ‘The Poison Squad.’

Over the next thirty years, a titanic struggle took place, using the courageous and fascinating Dr. Wiley campaigning indefatigably for meals safety and customer protection. Together with a gallant solid, including the muckraking reporter Upton Sinclair, whose fiction exposed the horrific truth about the Chicago stockyards; Fannie Farmer, then your most well-known cookbook author in the country; and Henry J. Heinz, mostly of the food producers who actively advocated for genuine meals, Dr. Wiley transformed history. When the landmark 1906 Meals and Drug Work was finally exceeded, it had been known across the land, as ‘Dr. Wiley’s Legislation.’

Blum brings to life this timeless and hugely satisfying ‘David and Goliath’ story with righteous verve and design, driving house the moral imperative of confronting corporate greed and government corruption having a bracing clearness, which speaks resoundingly to the enormous social and political issues we encounter today.