Upton Sinclair & Meat Inspection

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THE Pure Food and Drug Act was, and still is an important factor in life today. People are constantly cautious about what’s in their food, or how it’s made. The book, The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, had a huge impact on the start of Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. The book exploited the true happenings in food factories, which scared many Americans. Upton Sinclair was an author who wrote more than 90 books, but his most famous, The Jungle, was written in 1906. In the book, he reported on a meat packing industry he had visited. Not only was the meat processed repulsively, but the conditions for the workers were unbelievably abominable. The book sold more than 150,000 books in the first year. Americans were appalled by the truth in their meat products, including how dead rats were ground together and sold as sausage, and how guts were packaged and sold as “potted ham.” When President Theodore Roosevelt read it, he was disgusted, among with other U.S citizens. This sent America into the rush to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which provided federal inspection of meat products in the United States. This also started the Meat Inspection Act, which required the United States Department of Agriculture to inspect all of the animals raised in order to be slaughtered and sold for people to eat. The book made many people in the United States convert to vegetarianism. Before The Jungle came out, .72% of Americans were vegetarian, which was about 548,726 people. After the book, about .85% of Americans had turned vegetarian, about 783,938 people. That’s about an additional two hundred, and a half thousand people turning vegetarian in that little span of time! Upton Sinclair clearly wrote a fascinating, although shocking and scary book. This book encouraged the book The Jungle Effect, by Daphne Miller, how to eat healthily and organically.

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