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All Thumbs Book Reviews

The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s to produce and distribute food across America
Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety like never before. As the migration of millions of
at the Turn of the Twentieth Century factory workers caused cities to swell, the nation
By Deborah Blum saw the rise of a new food manufacturing indus-
Penguin Books try led by companies such as Heinz, Nabisco,
Coca Cola and Campbell. By 1890, Chicago’s
This is first and foremost a story about a Union Stockyard was processing over nine mil-
chemist and his drive to expose the corrupt lion head of cattle each year as it perfected the
food industry as it knowingly profited from assembly line that later would inspire Henry
putting harmful chemicals and additives in Ford when building his automobile factories.
everyday food. Along the way, author Deborah Without refrigeration, the food industry
Blum shares the story of Harvey Wiley and the turned to chemical companies like Dow and
decades-long journey that would not have been Monsanto to provide it with chemicals to
possible without dedicated volunteers, a sym- preserve food, such as formaldehyde, sodium
pathetic media and the growing strength of the benzoate and borax—along with toxic metals
Progressive movement. such as copper sulfate to keep canned food
Throughout the 1880s, America was the colorful. But in 1881, while working in a lab at
Wild West for putting all kinds of chemicals Purdue University, Harvey Wiley discovered
in food. When chemist Harvey Wiley and that up to 90 percent of all honey and maple
his group of volunteers known as the Poison syrup was fake. Wiley immediately faced an
Squad began to prove how food manufacturers industry backlash and smear campaign and
were literally killing thousands of people by was dismissed from Purdue for scientifically
fraudulently adulterating their processed foods proving that these commercially-produced food
with all types of chemicals and toxic metals to products were mostly corn syrup pumped up
maximize profits, Wiley’s and the Squad’s col- with artificial additives to deceive consumers.
lective efforts eventually led to passage of the (Does this sound familiar?)
first consumer protection law in 1906 (the Pure Wiley went on to work at the Department of
Food and Drugs Act). Agriculture, where he began to investigate how
Until the 1906 act’s passage, the United the dairy industry was deliberately adulterat-
States was the only industrialized nation without ing and poisoning milk to increase profits. For
any food safety regulations. The U.S. food lobby example, the industry added water to dilute the
was simply too powerful—with lawyers and milk; plaster and chalk to turn it white; form-
Throughout political contributions that successfully pushed aldehyde to counter the sour taste; and pureed
the 1880s, back any attempt at regulation. Meanwhile, calf brain to give the top layer a yellowish cream
Britain already had a four-decade-old law on the color. This is to say nothing of how horrendously
America was books, an 1860 law that tried to limit the chemi- malnourished and mistreated the cows were in
the Wild cal adulteration of food after twenty people in a the first place, fed mostly on swill waste from
West for single town died by eating candy with arsenic- local breweries. Other discoveries that Blum
laced food coloring. In 1881, France banned writes about in The Poison Squad focused on
putting all the use of toxic salicylic acid in its wine, and coffee (made primarily from sawdust, chicory
kinds of Germany banned chemicals in its beer. and ash); pepper (mostly charcoal and coconut
During this late nineteenth-century period, shell fillers); white bread flour (laced with
chemicals America was in the midst of an industrial revolu- aluminum); and Coca Cola (excess amounts of
in food. tion, with factories and railroads suddenly able caffeine and cocaine).

76 Wise Traditions SUMMER 2020