Phoebe Judge

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In 1904, the writer Upton Sinclair traveled to Chicago.

He was planning to start work on a novel that would later be called The Jungle.

Upton Sinclair's publisher thought the descriptions of how the meat was processed were so disgusting that they canceled his contract.

When he finally found a new publisher, they decided to send two fact-checkers to Chicago to make sure that what he was describing in the book was real.

One part of the published section of the report describes sick people spitting on the, quote, spongy wooden floors of the dark workrooms from which falling scraps of meat are later shoveled up to be later converted into food products.

It was called the Pure Food and Drug Act, but it was known as Dr. Wiley's Law.

Under the Pure Food and Drug Act, foods couldn't be labeled or branded to mislead the customer, or contain added ingredients which were poisonous or harmful, or have substances mixed in them that reduce their quality or strength, or be colored or mixed or coated to disguise damage or inferiority.

or consist in whole or in part of a filthy, decomposed, or putrid animal or vegetable substance.

Harvey Wiley continued to publish the results of Poison Squad tests after the Pure Food and Drug Act passed.

They found that sulfurous acid and sodium benzoate, a substance used in ketchup, both made the volunteers so sick that some of them had to drop out of the study

The last chemical they tested was formaldehyde.

After the Poison Squad's studies ended, Wiley spent a lot of his time trying to figure out how to implement the Food and Drug Act.

He was offered a job in his own laboratory and food safety column by Good Housekeeping magazine.

The seal still exists today.

His contract with the magazine stated that they wouldn't advertise any food, drug, or cosmetic products that Wiley didn't approve.

When he discovered that a product was potentially dangerous or fraudulent, they pulled the ad.