9781422269947

Chapter

The Roller Coaster History of Food Labeling in the United States

A country’s food supply is not safe by accident. It takes visionary people working with committed leaders to ensure food safety for an entire country. Unfortunately, throughout history, greed and the desire to make a quick buck have often jeopardized the US food supply. It seems that people usually wait until there’s a problem before they try to fix it. Thus, almost every new law and regulation follows that pattern. This chapter explains how the process unfolded. The 1850s–1860s: The Wild West of Food Safety Imagine living back in the 1850s, the pioneer days, when people didn’t know whether their next meal might kill them. Although Robert Hooke and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek had used primitive microscopes to identify molds and bacteria (in 1665 and 1676, respectively), there were still no US laws prohibiting the sale

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