Food Law: Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act 1938

Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act 1938 would provide for the establishment of 3 kinds of food standards
*Standard of identity
*Standards of quality
*Standards regulating the fill in container

In 1933, Rexford G. Tugwell, with help of Professors Milton Handler of Columbia and David Cavers of Duke, drafted new regulation. The bill greatly expanded government control over the drug and food processing industry.

A major push for the enactment of the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act of 1938 was the sulfanilamide elixir tragedy of 1937, which caused 107 deaths. Sulfanilamide was one of the first of the miracle anti-infective sulfa drugs marketed, but a manufacturer mistakenly used diethylene glycol as an agent in its preparation of sulfanilamide elixir.

The incident made the limits of the 1906 law quite clear. Because there were provision against dangerous drugs, the FDA could move only on the technically of misbranding. The new law required that no new drug could be marketed until proven safe for use when used according to directions on the label.

Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act 1938 simply eliminated the ‘distinctive name proviso’ and required instead that the label of a food ‘bear its common or usual name’.

The food would be illegal (misbranded under the law) if ti represented itself as a standardized food unless it conformed to that standard.
Food Law: Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act 1938

Food labeling history

Labels have a long history. Surviving labels from the Bronze Age typically associate wines and oils with a well known producer, such as a temple or a palace.

One of the early and best known food purity labels is the German Reinheitsgebot (1516), which stipulates that beer should be brewed only from barley, hops and water.

Because they presumably carried assurances of quality and consistency in an impersonal market brand names substituted to some degree for the lack of face-face contact in modern retailing and by 1900 fables showing band names were well established in the industrialized Western nations.

In the United States, major brands dating from the late nineteenth century include those created by Joseph Campbell, H.J Heinz and P.D Amour.

Pure Food and Drug Act 1906 was introduced which prohibited misbranded and adulterated food and drinks. It marked a major step toward labeling regulation. The Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 required that food labels use the standard of common name for the food. This legislation required packaging labels to list the food’s name and weight as well as some information about the company that produced the food.

Manufacturers could include any other information that they thought might persuade shoppers to buy their products.

As the world leader in the regulation of nutritional labeling United States moved from partial controls in the 1970s and 1980s on voluntary provision of nutrition labeling in the 1990s.
Food labeling history

History of Food Safety

History of Food Safety
Before manufacturing traditional, farming practices and preserving techniques were used to ensure safe food.

During industrial revolution, food began to be processed and packaged. Lacking regulation, manufacturers were free to add whatever they liked to their products. Sweeping from the floor were included in pepper, lead salts were added to candy and cheese, textile inks were used as coloring agents, bricks dust was added to cocoa, and copper salts were added to peas and pickles.

In the 1880s, women started organizing groups to protest the conditions at slaughterhouses in New York City and adulterated foods in other parts of the country.

In 1883, Harvey W. Wiley, chief chemist of the U.S Agricultural Department’s Bureau of Chemistry, began experimenting with food and drug adulteration.

Meanwhile, Upton Sinclair spent several weeks in a meat packing plant investigating labor conditions and turned his discoveries into a book, The Jungle, published in 1906. Although the focus of that book was the conditions immigrants experienced in the early twentieth century, there were graphic descriptions of the filth and poor hygiene in packing plants. It caught the public attention.

People began complaining to Congress and to President Theodore Roosevelt. Pressure was also mounting from foreign governments that wanted some assures that food imported from United States was pure and wholesome.

Two acts were passed in 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Beef Inspection Act, to improve food safety conditions.

In 1927, U.S Food, Drug and Insecticide Administration (shortened to Food and Drug Administration) or FDA was created to enforce the Pure Food and Drug act.


The Pure food Act was later superseded in 1938 by Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act. This act prohibited any food or drug that is dangerous to health to be sold in interstate commerce.

In 1958, concern over cancer led to the adoption of the Delaney Amendments, which expanded the FDA’s regulatory powers to set limits on pesticides and additives. Manufacturers had to prove that additives and pesticides were safe before they could be used.

The Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1966 standardized the labels of products and required that labels provide honest information.

The next major act was the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996. It set new regulations requiring implementation of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control points (HACCPs) for most food processor.

The Food quality Protection Act also changed the way acceptable pesticide levels are calculated. Now total exposure for all sources must be calculated.
History of Food Safety