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

US Food and Drug Administration in history

The origins of the Food and Drug Administration can be traced back to 1862, when President Lincoln appointed chemist Charles M. Wetherill to head the Chemical Division in the new US Department of Agriculture.

In 1883, Harvey W. Wiley became the chief of the division as it grew into the Bureau of Chemistry in 1901. He focused his attention and efforts on chemically altered foods and food additives and their impact on health, which he believed was a greater public health threat than fraudulent or misbranded drugs.

The bureau modern regulatory functions began with the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act. The act was a response to revelations of false claims for adulterated and dangerous patent medicines.

In 1927 Congress authorized the formation of the Food, Drug and Insecticide Administration from the regulatory wing of the Bureau of Chemistry; the name of the agency was shortened to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1930.

Pesticide residues began to be problem in the 1920s. In 1938, the stronger Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act – still the nation’s governing statue – replaced the 1906.

In 1940 FDA moved from Department of Agriculture to the Federal Security Agency then to the Departments of Health, and Welfare and Health and Human Services.
US Food and Drug Administration in history