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Perspective
prepared by: Justin Kastner, 785-532-4820, jkastner@k-state.edu
Note to editors: This op-ed is timed for release before June
30, 2006, which marks the 100-year anniversary of the adoption of
the U.S. Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug
Act.
Perspective:
FOOD SAFETY AND SECURITY -- FROM 'THE JUNGLE' TO THE PLAINS
MANHATTAN
-- Upton Sinclair's book, "The Jungle," is widely credited
for the introduction of U.S. food protection laws.
But
that is only part of the story. Before "The Jungle," Kansas
figured prominently in U.S. efforts to protect the safety and security
of the food supply.
June
30, 2006, marks the 100-year anniversary of the adoption of the
U.S. Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act.
Beltway-area celebrations will likely credit Upton Sinclair's "The
Jungle" for awakening the U.S. to food safety and agricultural
biosecurity.
First
in 1904 as part of a weekly serial and later as the book "The
Jungle," socialist activist Upton Sinclair unveiled working-condition
and food-safety atrocities in Chicago beef packing plants. Sinclair's
expose provided political room for President Teddy Roosevelt to
sign food safety legislation in 1906. Sinclair gave the U.S. food
protection, some conclude.
However,
the annals of U.S. food protection also include events and institutions
elsewhere -- on the plains, not just in "The Jungle."
Forty
years before Sinclair's report, Texas longhorn cattle were being
driven across Kansas, trampling crops and spreading a disease--Texas
Fever--to Kansas livestock. Kansas cattle, unlike their southern
counterparts, were extremely susceptible; four out of five infected
with Texas Fever died.
Mindful
of the biosecurity threat posed by Texas Fever, the governor of
Kansas signed in 1865 a law prohibiting, with few exceptions, the
driving of Texas cattle into Kansas. The law--the seriousness of
which was underscored by its provision for $1,000 fines and one-year
prison sentences--was later loosened and, in 1867, followed by a
plea to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for disease-control advice.
Texas
Fever was "seriously affecting the interests" of America's
livestock industry, the Kansas Legislature stressed. Kansas was
fast becoming a major trading center for cattle being sent by rail
to markets in Kansas City, St. Louis and Chicago. Train depots in
places like Abilene, Kan., became the means by which livestock farmers
could secure access to eastern markets.
The
USDA responded to Kansas' cry for help, and in 1868 Dr. John Gamgee,
a British veterinary consultant, was hired to investigate. Typical
of the serendipity of scientific investigations, Gamgee's study
overturned stones concealing other threats--in Kansas and elsewhere--to
agricultural biosecurity and food safety.
Agricultural
biosecurity concerns (e.g., rumors, later dispelled, about foot
and mouth disease in Neosho Falls, Kan., in March 1884) and food
safety problems surfaced. As reports and rumors surfaced, European
countries restricted imports of U.S. livestock and meat.
To
ensure the continuation of profitable trade flows of livestock and
meat through Kansas and Chicago, the U.S. adopted a series of animal
disease and food safety laws. Meat inspection acts in the 1890s
provided for the inspection of animals for disease prior to slaughter,
examination of carcasses for visible signs of disease, and even
the microscopic inspection of pork.
This
all happened before Sinclair and the 1906 Federal Meat Inspection
Act.
Prior
to 1906, then, the international food trade and its economic stakeholders
in Kansas had already awakened the U.S. government to issues of
food protection.
U.S.
food safety and security progress has its roots in both the plains
and "The Jungle."
Dr.
Justin Kastner is an assistant professor of food safety and security
in the department of diagnostic medicine/pathobiology at Kansas
State University.
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