From the wiki: “By the 1930s, muckraking journalists, consumer protection organizations, and federal regulators began mounting a campaign for stronger regulatory authority by publicizing a list of injurious products which had been ruled permissible under the 1906 law, including radioactive beverages, the mascara Lash lure, which caused blindness, and worthless “cures” for diabetes and tuberculosis. The resulting proposed law was unable to get through Congress for five years, but was rapidly enacted into law following the public outcry over the 1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide tragedy, in which over 100 people died after using a drug formulated with a toxic, untested solvent.”
I believe I’ve heard that the FDA was actually beneficial for capitalism as consumers would entirely avoid certain products out of fear, making it difficult to sell even legitimate goods.
Welcome to The Jungle, we play dirty games.
Food safety costs a lot, so fuck the FDA
-Food companies, basically.
Fun fact:
The precursor to the FDA was created during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration. After the book was published, Roosevelt sent federal investigators to the Chicago slaughterhouses to validate the conditions detailed in the story.
The investigators reported that the conditions were worse than described in the book. And that was after the slaughterhouse owners got wind that the feds were coming and had everything cleaned from top to bottom.
Hard to imagine what “worse” looks like because the conditions detailed in the book are truly appalling.
Additional fun fact, The Jungle was meant to highlight the poor working conditions in slaughter houses, but the outrage was related entirely to the poor consideration for the meat that the public was eating.
Love the cover:
[Incidentally and entirely off-topic, it reminds me of the book(s) I’m reading right now: Josiah Bancroft’s Tower of Babel tetralogy - urban steampunk jungle, vertically]
The book cover has the same vibe as the album cover for Pink Floyd’s “Animals”, which also happens to be a scathing critique of capitalism.
I loved that series, enjoy!
if Upton Sinclair was alive today he would flip his lid
such a good read. should be required by all.
Good ole Bubbly creek https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubbly_Creek
Someone somewhere recently pointed out that fascism tends to rear its ugly head every 100 years because everyone that experienced it last time has to be dead before it can happen again.
Americans specifically have had it generally good for so long that anyone incapable of picking up and absorbing information from a history book, which is most Americans, simply don’t know how bad it used to be. So they fucking sleepwalk into fascism or allowing regulations to be rolled back.
You’d think that having a written language to chronicle all our mistakes would ensure that we moved forward without repeatedly making those mistakes, but the catch is the majority of people have to read the fucking words for that to matter.
Hence, the defunding of education, and specifically critical thinking. That is by design. You can’t easily control the population when they can read and think for themselves.
Exactly. Critical Thinking is the literally the most imoportant skill you cn learn. Critical Thinking is what allows people to recognize nonsensical propaganda immediately upon hearing it, and reject it.
It worked for me back in the late 80s, when Rush Limbaugh got started. He had a very entertaining delivery, but I was easily rejecting his unsourced bullshit and blatant lies, while people were calling in praising him for “opening their eyes.” Dude, he’s entertaining, I get that, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t lying to you.
I was 12 or so when my dad started listening to Limbaugh. I had zero clue about politics, but I could tell the guy was a scumbag. So glad he’s dead. I danced a jig in my cubicle when I found out.
He used to support tobacco companies, was a tobacco cancer denier, and wanted to end the embargo with Cuba so he could get their cigars cheaper. His cigar habit ended up killing him prematurely.
He deserved the cancer that killed him, but I wish his death had been so much worse.
I think it would help to have history-oriented comics and manga in schools. I learned to enjoy history, in no small part on account of Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe series. Making things approachable is how people progress from knowing nothing to being a college graduate.
When I told my parents how we got things like the 40 hour work week they were fucking mortified. Something seemingly so inconsequential, many people died for.
Yup.
People died to give workers rights and now we’re electing anti-worker presidents and giving those rights away. It’s sickening.
but the catch is the majority of people have to read the fucking words for that to matter.
Hell, I’d even settle for more people watching classic movies and TV shows. People need to maintain some link to the past to see the mindset of those who lived through fascism, wars, etc. and absorb what a society that rejects those ideas looks like.
Culture is a big part of our collective memory, and a society that can’t look back will just reinvent the same problems.
It would be cool if someone made a “transported through time” miniseries that showed exactly what living in that period with those problems was like. I think it could be very popular.
Watch the show Connections. It was made by the BBC in 1978 and does exactly this, but more science focused. The show holds up really well.
I can see that being an isekai manga. Say, by the person who did Spice & Wolf?
Oh, by the way, check out Barefoot Gen. It was written by a person who was a boy when the atomic bombs hit Japan. It covers the post-war period, including the corruption and day-to-day life of a shattered Japan.
Safety regulations are written in the blood of those who died from unsafe practices.
Look up Harvey Washington Wileyand and his poison squad for the fun story.
It wasn’t chalk, it was borax. And that was because it neutralised the sour taste of turned milk.
they used to put brick dust in chocolate bars, and sawdust in bread
edit: heck, they just caught someone recently intentionally putting lead in
applesaucecinnamon that was used in applesauce, which has been used off and on as a sweetener since at least ancient rome, where a bunch of people went crazy and died from consuming a sweetener made by boiling grapes in lead potsI mean if you think about it, cinnamon is essentially sawdust right?
Not wrong…
Very wrong. Cinnamon is king.
I just mean because cinnamon (the spice) is the bark of the cinnamon tree, which when ground up is a form of sawdust. Delicious sawdust, but sawdust, nonetheless.
Ha, I did not know that.
Fun fact: Cinnamon (Cinnamomum) is the genus not the species. There are Ceylon trees and Cassia trees and a bunch of others but no specifically Cinnamon trees.
TIL. Fascinating!
Just in case you weren’t actually aware, that wasn’t a statement about the quality of cinnamon as a spice. It’s literally made frome ground up tree bark.
TIL
Spices lose their flavor over time. Yours are too old; throw them out and replace them.
Or at least start using a fuck-ton more than the recipe calls for until you use up the old stuff.
You’re missing the point. Copying what I wrote above:
I just mean because cinnamon (the spice) is the bark of the cinnamon tree, which when ground up is a form of sawdust. Delicious sawdust, but sawdust, nonetheless.
Oh shit, I got whooshed. 😳
Ackshually, sawdust isn’t bark. It’s wood.
Wow, this is a very good point because as we all know it’s impossible for a saw to cut bark.
So, then “sawdust” just becomes anything that a saw can cut?
Anything that’s part of a log. That includes bark, I imagine.
Edit: we still cool bro
Copper sulfate used to be added to canned peas because it turns green when it oxidizes, making them look greener.
Copper sulphate is straight up poisonous, enough will kill a passion and low amounts will hurt them.
Anyone who wants to learn more about this history, there is a great episode of the “ridiculous history” podcast that goes into the story that finally got food regulations in the US. A team of people who volunteered to be poisoned to help prove that certain things are unsafe to put in food.
enough will kill a passion
Those poor, poor passions!
It’s also HEAVY, so something light sold by weight just needs a liiiiittle lead to be a lot cheaper to make
This is what caused that pet food scare back in the 00’s. Some Chinese manufacturer realized that they were being paid by weight, not volume, so they added heavy metals to their cat food and it poisoned a few cats here in the US.
China executed that guy btw.
Wasn’t there lead found in other spices, too? Like tumeric or something?
Yep!
recently
My wife loves apple sauce, who did this to her
WanaBana Apple Cinnamon Fruit Puree pouches, Schnucks cinnamon-flavored applesauce pouches and variety pack and Weis cinnamon applesauce pouches were recalled
it was actually the cinnamon in the applesauce being cut with lead to significantly increase it’s weight, thus it’s value. It was an Ecuadoran cinnamon processor called Carlos Aguilera
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/24/nx-s1-5119336/cinnamon-lead-fda-recall-what-we-know
Thank you!
That should be okay now. I totally expect no subsequent tests with results showing any contamination.
Vote with your dollar! If tainted baby formula kills your kid, simply refuse to buy that brand anymore!
3 stars. I dislike that it killed my baby, but shipping was really fast!
- review found under a pack of rechargeable batteries
there’s like four companies in america. Soon to be 1 no doubt.
This, so much this…
I tire of people saying “VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET”, when the problem is far more systemic than a “couple bad actors greedy for the green”
deleted by creator
What Conservatives would like us to forget is that many regulations are written in blood.
Good ole
Omg is this the joke? Chalk in milk? So it took me 30 years to actually understand this Simpsons joke?
The golden years writers were so genius.
I thought the R was because it was from rats, and malk because they didn’t want it to be tested like milk is (it’s just a drink not milk, aye?) but maybe I’m not remembering the episode correctly.
I always took that joke as: cheap products that don’t care will put any bullshit on their label. In my head, “Vitamin R” was just an empty lie by Big Malk.
I think they can both be correct
Vitamin R is what some call Ritalin
Eventually we Canadians won’t even have to boycott American agricultural products, they just won’t be able to sell them to us because they won’t pass our safety requirements.
I already subscribe to y’alls government emails about recalls, I suggest other Americans do too because many products are sold in both places, and hopefully it would be too expensive to set up two production lines, one for lower or nonexistant US standards and one for Canada. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en for 'muricans who are curious
This is already happening a lot. Take poultry for example.
In the USA, you can chemically rinse chicken (usually in acids, but in the past in chlorine) so that it won’t have any Salmonella or Campylobacter bateria on it.
The EU, you’re not allowed to do that, but you’re also not allowed to have those bacteria. That means you have to raise the chickens in a MUCH cleaner environment. The same goes for eggs, which you can’t wash, so they have to be clean from the farm.
As a result, you can’t export US chicken to the EU, because it doesn’t meet the safety standards. And that’s about to get worse. You can absolutely export EU chicken to the US, but it likely won’t be competitively priced.
You’ve heard of their eggs and their chickens right ?
Damn, just five minutes ago I saw this link shared in another thread:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal
🤢🤮
It took us well over a century to establish some sort of framework that makes such horrors almost impossible, but no, regulations are bad 🙄
Same for workers btw. And cows. It’s not just about food security. That’s just easier to sell to a thoroughly egoistic constituency.
Gone in <100 days
There were no regulations that couldn’t ever n made unrefrigerated raw milk safe in cities at the time. You either sold milk from cows raised in the city itself(which means cramped quarters and disease) or carted it in on a wagon (which means unrefrigerated milk sitting for hours). Adding formalin likely made it safer, it was so dangerous. The scandal thing played like it was what they were feeding cows (we feed cows high protein spent grains today and it’s considered high quality feed), but the reality was milk in cities was always insane.
safety rules and regulations are usually ‘written in blood’.
it seems they need to be rewritten in blood … because people are so contrarian and formed social relationships based on questioning the basics and not understanding the answers.
Same logic with antivax people.
1000% my first thought. These nutjobs who say “just get some fresh air” are coasting upon the millions of dead and buried who paid the price for us to have longer healthier lives. Strict stringent food safety. Mandatory vaccines without exemptions.
“Measles doesn’t kill anyone!”
No you fuck, measles doesn’t kill anyone TODAY. That can change real fast.
It was so much worse than just chalk. Additives included plaster of Paris, lead, cow brain, and fucking formaldehyde
Formaldehyde is natural, or bodies make some of it so it’s fine /s
Anthrax and asbestos are also natural!
