An interview with author Deborah Blum on “The Poison Squad,” a new PBS documentary based on her book about the men who forced the government into consumer protections
, gave me a bad case of deja vu. It’s all about greedy corporations that have secret partnerships with greedy politicians; rich people having access to healthier, cleaner food than poor people; an American public fighting for the right to eat, the most basic thing anyone needs to do, safely. It’s eerily familiar as President TrumpI spoke to Blum about her research on Dr. Wiley, the ongoing fight to keep our food safe, and the question of who has the luxury of knowing what’s in their food.
There was no public health service. So even if your kids are dying, you can’t prove what it is. Everything errs on the side of the corrupt manufacturer in the 19th century, because not only are there no safety regulations and no powerful advocate to say “this killed your kid.” The information wasn’t out there. There was no requirement for labeling. Our labels are inaccurate today, but at least we have them.
While I was deep into looking at things that are dangerous to us, I’d occasionally see references to this experiment called the Poison Squad. Just the word “poison” was magic to me, like a magnet. And what got me interested in it wasn’t Wiley, although he’s fascinating, but the actual motive behind the experiment.
Part of it was the progressive movement itself. In the late 19th and early 20th century, you start seeing people push back against the Gilded Age, its big corporations and the horrible treatment of workers — which also plays into today. So the progressive movement was pushing that forward, and food safety was part of that. Upton Sinclair’s main point was to treat workers like they’re human beings, which led him intoe.
Originally he wanted to keep this really low-key because he was afraid that if it became too much of a public spectacle, the science wouldn’t be taken seriously. He initially called it hygenic table trials, and he was trying to control the flood of information, but that just didn’t work. It’s really interesting when you look at these arguments that are going on about the federal role in consumer protections. States had accepted that this is their role, and the federal government was hugely resistant to it, partially because people were actively advocating for states’ rights: it’s post-Civil War, a lot of the opposition comes from the South; they don’t want the feds telling them what to do, and Wiley is an example of a federal policeman.
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