The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

by Deborah Blum Narrated by Kirsten Potter

Overview

From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story of how food was made safe in the United States and the heroes, led by the inimitable Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, who fought for change

By the end of nineteenth century, food was dangerous. Lethal, even. "Milk" might contain formaldehyde, most often used to embalm corpses. Decaying meat was preserved with both salicylic acid, a pharmaceutical chemical, and borax, a compound first identified as a cleaning product. This was not by accident; food manufacturers had rushed to embrace the rise of industrial chemistry, and were knowingly selling harmful products. Unchecked by government regulation, basic safety, or even labelling requirements, they put profit before the health of their customers. By some estimates, in New York City alone, thousands of children were killed by "embalmed milk" every year. Citizens—activists, journalists, scientists, and women's groups—began agitating for change. But even as protective measures were enacted in Europe, American corporations blocked even modest regulations. Then, in 1883, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemistry professor from Purdue University, was named chief chemist of the agriculture department, and the agency began methodically investigating food and drink fraud, even conducting shocking human tests on groups of young men who came to be known as, "The Poison Squad."

Over the next thirty years, a titanic struggle took place, with the courageous and fascinating Dr. Wiley campaigning indefatigably for food safety and consumer protection. Together with a gallant cast, including the muckraking reporter Upton Sinclair, whose fiction revealed the horrific truth about the Chicago stockyards; Fannie Farmer, then the most famous cookbook author in the country; and Henry J. Heinz, one of the few food producers who actively advocated for pure food, Dr. Wiley changed history. When the landmark 1906 Food and Drug Act was finally passed, it was known across the land, as "Dr. Wiley's Law."

Blum brings to life this timeless and hugely satisfying "David and Goliath" tale with righteous verve and style, driving home the moral imperative of confronting corporate greed and government corruption with a bracing clarity, which speaks resoundingly to the enormous social and political challenges we face today.

Editorial Reviews

NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

"I Wonder What's in It," an 1899 poem by Harvey Washington Wiley, read in Dr. Seuss-style by Kirsten Potter, raises questions about the food listeners eat. Wiley, long the Agriculture Department's chief chemist, devoted his life to answering that question. Listeners may become uneasy about the borax, chalk, and other substances that were common before the 1906 Food & Drug Act. Potter adds humor, shock, and an indignant tone with her inflections and voices. An emphatic defense of "embalmed meat" seems ridiculous, while editorials defending Wiley take on a solemn air. Potter demonstrates the place Wiley's most famous study—dubbed the Poison Squad, for its tests on human subjects—had in U.S. culture with her entertaining reading of period articles and songs. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Eric Schlosser

Blum cares passionately about her subject. Her prose is graceful and her book is full of vivid, unsettling detail…The Poison Squad offers a powerful reminder that truth can defeat lies, that government can protect consumers and that an honest public servant can overcome the greed of private interests.
—The New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly

05/28/2018
America’s nauseating industrial food supply of yesteryear sparks political turmoil in this engrossing study of a pure-foods pioneer. Pulitzer-winning science journalist and Undark magazine publisher Blum (The Poisoner’s Handbook) looks back to the end of the 19th century, when unregulated manufacturers routinely added noxious substances to the nation’s foodstuffs: cakes were colored with lead and arsenic; milk was preserved with formaldehyde; brown sugar was padded out with ground-up insects; processed meats contained every variety of flesh and filth. Blum centers the book on Harvey Wiley, crusading head of the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Chemistry, who fed a “poison squad” of human volunteers common food adulterants like borax to see if they got sick—and they usually did; his reports helped pass the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. Blum’s well-informed narrative—complete with intricate battles between industry lobbyists and a coalition of scientists, food activists, and women’s groups—illuminates the birth of the modern regulatory state and its tangle of reformist zeal, policy dog-fights, and occasional overreach (Wiley wanted to restrict the artificial sweetener saccharin, which nowadays is considered safe, and wasted much time trying to get corn syrup relabeled as glucose). The result is a stomach churner and a page-turner. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

Full of fascinating detail . . . a valuable contribution to understanding the politics of food.”—Nature
 
“[Blum’s] prose is graceful, and her book is full of vivid, unsettling detail. . . . The Poison Squad offers a powerful reminder that truth can defeat lies, that government can protect consumers and that an honest public servant can overcome the greed of private interests.”—Eric Schlosser, New York Times Book Review

“A detailed, highly readable history of food and drink regulation in the United States. . . . [THE POISON SQUAD] shows the push and pull of competing economic, political and social interests. The journey our country has taken in establishing food, drink and drug regulation is an important one to understand because it is still going on.”—Wall Street Journal
 
“Blum draws from her meticulous research to re-create the battle between regulation in the name of consumer protection and production in the name of profits.”—Scientific American

“Riveting. . . . Blum isn’t just telling one scientist’s story but a broader one about the relationship between science and society. . . . [A] timely tale about how scientists and citizens can work together on meaningful consumer protections.”—Science magazine

“[E]ngrossing. . . .  Blum’s well-informed narrative—complete with intricate battles between industry lobbyists and a coalition of scientists, food activists, and women’s groups—illuminates the birth of the modern regulatory state and its tangle of reformist zeal, policy dog-fights, and occasional overreach. . . . [A] page-turner.”—Publishers Weekly

 “You’ve probably never heard of Harvey Washington Wiley, but he’s probably the reason you aren’t sick right now. . . . Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Blum tells [Wiley’s] whole story in this fascinating book.”—Lit Hub

“Fascinating. . . . The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 ended a century of scandal and bitter political maneuvering, with major impetus from Harvey Washington Wiley, a genuinely unknown American hero. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Blum offers less a biography than a vivid account of Wiley’s achievements. . . . An expert life of an undeservedly obscure American.”—Kirkus 
 
“[A] compellingly detailed chronicle. . . . Citing worrisome recent attacks on consumer-protection laws, Blum reminds readers of the twenty-first-century relevance of Wiley’s cause.”—Booklist

NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

"I Wonder What's in It," an 1899 poem by Harvey Washington Wiley, read in Dr. Seuss-style by Kirsten Potter, raises questions about the food listeners eat. Wiley, long the Agriculture Department's chief chemist, devoted his life to answering that question. Listeners may become uneasy about the borax, chalk, and other substances that were common before the 1906 Food & Drug Act. Potter adds humor, shock, and an indignant tone with her inflections and voices. An emphatic defense of "embalmed meat" seems ridiculous, while editorials defending Wiley take on a solemn air. Potter demonstrates the place Wiley's most famous study—dubbed the Poison Squad, for its tests on human subjects—had in U.S. culture with her entertaining reading of period articles and songs. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2018-06-18
A fascinating—and disturbing—history of the late-19th-century crusade for food safety, led by a pioneering scientist who fought hard against "chemically enhanced and deceptive food manufacturing practices," some of which we still see today.The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 ended a century of scandal and bitter political maneuvering, with major impetus from Harvey Washington Wiley (1844-1930), a genuinely unknown American hero. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Blum (Director, Knight Science Journalism Program/MIT; The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, 2010, etc.) offers less a biography than a vivid account of Wiley's achievements. As she writes, 19th-century industrial chemistry "brought a host of new chemical additives and synthetic compounds into the food supply. Still unchecked by government regulation, basic safety testing, or even labeling requirements, food and drink manufacturers embraced the new materials with enthusiasm." Throughout the book, the author clearly busts the myth of "a romantic glow over the foods of our forefathers." Adding formaldehyde to milk kept it fresh in a warm room for days. Copper sulfate restored the faded green of canned beans. Yellow lead chromate colored candy. Slaughterhouses put out poisoned bread to discourage rats, and "then the rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together." Wiley became chief chemist of the Department of Agriculture in 1883. Already alarmed at food adulteration, he delivered speeches and wrote popular articles, working closely with muckraking journalists and the burgeoning pure food movement. Congress routinely quashed reforms before President Theodore Roosevelt supported the 1906 bill, but Blum emphasizes that he showed no interest before winning the 1904 presidential election; afterward, he paid more attention to objections from the food industry. The author maintains that Wiley was the true "Father of the Pure Food and Drug Act." Never popular with superiors, he clashed with them over the act's enforcement, resigning in 1912 to take over the labs at the Good Housekeeping Institute, where he continued making waves until his death.An expert life of an undeservedly obscure American.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172082948
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	09/25/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos