The poison squad
Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley set out to ensure food safety. He selected food tasters to test various food additives and preservatives, letting them know that the substances could be harmful or deadly. The tasters were recognized for their courage, and became known as the poison squad.
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What Hacker News says
- If you’re interested, The Poison Squad by Deborah Blum is both horrifying and fascinating read about the food industry in late 1800s - early 1900s, and the foundation of the FDA.
At the time, it was common to put formaldehyde in meat and dairy, borax in butter, salicylic acid into wine, and to sell products such as “pepper dust”, which was literal dust with no real pepper in it.
- Since its beginnings the FDA has always genuflected to business. Many people in the department worked hard to document toxins that the American public were being exposed to (e.g. arsenic and coal tar used as food coloring, formaldehyde and borax used to preserve milk and meat). However the department's leadership, and in a few cases the U.S. President, intervened to protect business interests. If you're interested check out The Poison Squad[1].
[1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/312067/the-poison-s...
- So, I'm outing myself as a book nerd (read a lot during quarantine), but I also recently enjoyed The Poison Squad by Deborah Blum which covered the creation of the FDA during the end of the 19th century and a few of their first BIG wins were getting formaldehyde, borax, arsenic and lead out of milk, canned meats and other products on the market.
I was surprised in that book of how much the F in the "Food and Drug Administration" was initially involved in enforcement. Nowadays we mostly think of them for regulating drugs and medical devices (or, at least, that's what I think of them as doing!) however initially a lot of their enforcement powers were to prevent fraudulent labeling and unsafe additives in supermarket foods.
The part in the book where the US Army was feeding the troops fighting the Spanish American War canned beef embalmed with formaldehyde was rather disgusting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_beef_scanda...
Also, if you don't like reading here's a PBS documentary covering the same info in the book: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poison-squ...
- In absence of good, hard, scientific evidence of effects above and beyond placebo, I’m gonna go with “Cos it’s easy to bottle and it’s easy to sell”.
And profitable too, I have no doubt. Thanks to Orrin Hatch, US supplement peddlers don’t even have to prove their products are safe, never mind effective:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_...
I bet the oft-reviled Big Pharma (who, amusingly enough, are some of the biggest manufactures of supplements too) just wish all their products could enjoy such lax standards of regulation. Meanwhile, to everyone else, I wholeheartedly recommend The Poison Squad:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poison-squ...
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/312067/the-poison-s...
- "Costco does independent testing and their olive oil is unadulterated"
One of the interesting things I learned from the honey article was that fraudsters have figured out how to work their way around tests, at least for honey. I wouldn't be surprised if they could do the same for olive oil and other food products. It seems like a cat and mouse game.
Something not mentioned in the article is that testing labs themselves need to be tested, certified, and audited. There have been some scandals in forensic labs where techs have repeatedly falsified test results for decades. This is probably especially a problem when organized crime is involved.
If you are at all interested in food safety, I highly recommend "The Poison Squad", about the foundation of the FDA.[1][2]
- I don't think so. The article openly says it's adapted from the book. It's just marketing. Submarines were hidden.
This was in the article:
"ESSAY DRAWN FROM THE POISON SQUAD BY DEBORAH BLUM, PUBLISHED BY PENGUIN PRESS, AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN PUBLISHING GROUP, A DIVISION OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE, LLC. COPYRIGHT © 2018 BY DEBORAH BLUM."
