106: The History of Food Safety Part 3: The Poison Squad, The Worlds Fair, and Upton Sinclair

Hello! In This weeks Episode we are going to be continuing our look at the history of food safety. This week we are looking at the Poison Squad experiments themselves, Harvey's continued work in making the Public Aware of the state of food, and a trail on canned beef.

In the two previous parts of this series we discussed the state of food safety when it came to milk and dairy products. We also took a look at the changing landscape of commercially processed foods and their increasing use of untested preservatives.

We also met Harvey Wiley, the chief chemist at the department of agriculture who is an integral part of this story. Where we left off, Harvey was just starting to think that maybe we should be testing these preservatives in a controlled environment with human test subjects. So just know that that is circulating in his mind while he continues to test and bring awareness to the effects of preservatives in the food supply, as well as other additives that were added to make the food go further, such as crushed coconut shells, crushed charcoal, and chalk.

The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Deborah Blum

You can Find Part 1 Here: https://www.itsahistorypodcast.com/the-history-of-food-safety-part-1-historic-methods-of-food-safety-germ-theory-and-pasteurization/

You can find Part 2 Here: https://www.itsahistorypodcast.com/the-history-of-food-safety-part-2-fraud-food-adulteration-and-harvey-washington-wiley/

Bonus 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair: https://www.itsahistorypodcast.com/025-the-1893-chicago-worlds-fair-how-a-fair-goes-from-concept-to-reality-in-just-three-years/

If you would like to send me any questions, comments, or ideas for future podcast episodes please email me at itsahistorypodcast@gmail.com.

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Thank you for listening!