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Example research essay topic: Food And Drug Department Of Agriculture - 1,681 words

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Upton Sinclair's The Jungle Moves the Government To Clean Up the Food Supply Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, gave the most in-depth description of the horrid truths about the way Americas food companies, the only source of food for people living in the citys, are preparing the food they sell. The Jungle describes the terrible conditions of a Lithuanian family that moved to the US, and had to work, live, and die for the food companies in Chicago. The Jungle spurred a movement in the American people to do something about the problems facing the American food supply. Because of the growing concern about the quality of food in America the government took action to prevent further problems. Thus the Food and Drug Act of 1906 was passed to fix the problems. The Food and Drug Act was a true example of how the people of our nation influenced the government to take action, to solve a growing problem effecting the American people.

The Jungle talks about a couple who move to an area of Chicago, known as Packtown, from Lithuania. Packtown is the center of Chicago's meat packing industry. It is a hard, dangerous, and filthy place where it is difficult to find a job. Some relatives of the couple and themselves get a house, but find out it is a swindle. Expenses increase and forces the children of the family to find work like the adults. Jobs in Packtown are back-breaking, unsafe, and have no regard for individual workers.

The oldest of the family gets a job, but it is to difficult for the old man and he quickly dies. The man of the couple, Jurgis, is forced to work in an unheated packing house during the winter. Jurgis is injured and cant work for three months receiving no pay. One of the children dies of food poisoning.

Jurgis joins a union and slowly begins to understand the way politics and bribery that control Packingtown. After attacking the boss of his wife for making her sleep with him, Jurgis is put in jail for a month. While in Jail the family has been evicted from there home and is living in a run-down boardinghouse. When Jurgis returns home he finds his wife in premature labor, and in the process of giving birth the child and her.

Jurgis disappears on a drinking binge. With the help of a wealthy woman who takes and interest in the family, Jurgis finds a job at a steel mill. He is renewed in hope dedicating himself to Antanas, his son. But Jurgis is destroyed when he discovers that Antanas has drown in the mud-logged street. Jurgis then abandons the rest of the family and disappears. After years of wondering from job to job, being injured, and being put back in jail for a month, Jurgis wonders into a socialist political rally.

The speech the orator delivers inspires Jurgis, and he joins the socialist party. He gets a job in a socialist-run hotel and is reunited with a member of is family. The book ends with Jurgis having lost almost all of his family and life to the terrible conditions of life in Chicago, but gains new beliefs in socialism. This is just a very shortened up summery of The Jungle.

In many parts of the book it describes the rotten and diseased meat. The cans have shiny, attractive surfaces but contains a mass of putrid meat unfit for Human consumption. (Sparknotes, Quotations) In one part of the book it talks about a man who would be shoveling the meat into carts, and would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one. There were many things that went into the meat that made the poisoned rat as a tidbit. Men would have no place to wash their hands before eating, and so they washed them in the water tat was ladled into the sausage. Ends of meat, scraps of corned beef, and all odds and ends of the waste of the plants, would be dumped into old barrels to set until the spring.

In the spring the barrels of rotten, and diseased scraps would be dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat to be sent out to the public for sale. (Sparknotes) Though it was not Upton Sinclair's original intentions to raise such an outcry about the way the food was processed, it did very precisely describe the revolting conditions during that time period. When Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle reached the American public it did not bring the movement of socialist reforms that Sinclair wished the book to bring. Instead it brought the entire nation to its feet, when they found out just what they and there children were eating. A single chapter in the novel brought the image of all kinds of wastes being dumped in with the meat. It infuriated the nation that wastes were being dumped in without any regard for the people by greedy capitalists. (Sparknotes) With the knowledge of floor sweepings, rats, and parts of an occasional workman went into the grinders, the people looked to the government for answers. (Weisberger) With the enormous outcry from the people led to an investigation by the federal government.

When the governmental inquiry came in assuring the nations worst fears the meat sales in the US were cut in half, and angered President Roosevelt. Now that the facts were in, and the people knew about them, there was a gigantic force pushing for immediate legislation of the Food and Drug industries. (Mikula, Mabunda) Though it was not Upton Sinclair's primary goal, his book The Jungle was the source of the biggest outcry for meat inspection aimed at protecting the American public. One crusader that stood above for food regulation was Harvey Wiley. He had campaigned for years against what he called and outrageous and lethal frauds of the meat-packing, canning, and many other food- processing corporations. In 1883 he became the chief chemist for the Department of Agriculture. He was one of the prime leaders that took the movement created by The Jungle and used it to push his bill to congress.

He gave speeches, and testified before committees considering legislation on the subject. (Weisberger) On June 30, 1906 Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act or otherwise known as The Wiley Act. The act outlawed the manufacture or adulterated or misbrand ed food or drugs and prohibited their introduction into interstate or foreign commerce. (Levy, Karst; pg. 2083 - 2084) The act gave full authority to make rules and regulations to the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the Secretary of Commerce and Labor. The examinations of specimens of foods and drugs were to be made in the Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agriculture, for determining from examinations whether such articles are adulterated or misbrand ed within the limits of the Act. Offending products could be seized and condemned; offending persons could be fined and jailed.

Drugs had to either abide by standards of purity and quality set forth by the United States Pharmacopoeia, or they had to meet individual standards made by the manufacturers and stated on their labels. Making false or misleading label statements regarding a food or a drug constituted misbrand ing. This law sought to product the consumer from being deceived or harmed, by following assumptions that the average man was prudent enough to plot his one course. The act went to great lengths to make sure that every part of the act was understood. They defined Adulterations as any substance that has been mixed with to reduce or lower or injuriously affect its quality or strength. Also if the product was mixed, colored, powdered, coated, or stained in a manner where by damage or inferiority is concealed.

Finally it defended it as consists in whole or in part of a filthy, decomposed, or putrid animal or vegetable substance, or any portion of and animal unfit for food, whether manufactured or not, or if it is the product of a diseased anima. or one that has died otherwise that by slaughter. (FDA, pg. 4) The government wanted to show just how serious it took the matter of food and drug regulation. In the act it said, any person who shall violate any of the provisions of the section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and for each offense shall, upon conviction thereof, be fined not to exceed five hundred dollars or shall be sentenced to one years imprisonment, both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court, and for each subsequent offense and conviction thereof shall be fined not less than one thousand dollars or sentenced to one years imprisonment, or both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court. (FDA, pg. 2) At this point in time the act showed that the government did not take lightly to violating its new laws. From respectable authorities on the subject, and the 1906 Food and Drugs Act itself, gave paticca understanding of the events effecting that time period, a understanding of certain points in the novel The Jungle, and how the government went about solving the nations going problem, has lead myself to agree that Upton Sinclairs The Jungle had a major role in moving the government to clean up the food supply.

Which by the approval of the 1906 Food and Drugs Act, the government succeeded in solving the problem. The Jungle showed to the nation the scam of biblical antiquity, that was effecting there very lives. It rallied the people to make the government find a solution to prevent further sicknesses and deaths because of greedy capitalists. The government set forth the Food and Drugs Act of 1906 in response which regulated and examined products developed by food and drug companies. Upton Sinclair provided the motive, and the government supplied the solution. Because of the these two forces we, in our day in time, can rest assured that our food and drugs are of the very top quality, and purity for human consumption.


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Research essay sample on Food And Drug Department Of Agriculture

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