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Return to the Jungle? Cutting the FDA’s Food Safety Inspections [1]

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Date: 2025-05-01

“They use everything about the hog except the squeal.”

― Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

Most Americans have at least a general idea of what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is, and of its role in guarding consumer safety. But because we have lived under the watchdog’s protections for more than a century, few know how and why it came into existence, and how losing it could threaten our health and even our lives.

In the early 1900s, America had a big problem. People were getting sick, and frequently dying, from eating products sold by the nation’s meat-packing industry, which was centered in Chicago. The problem had grown to the point where some attempts to impose federal regulations were made, but that legislation was defeated in Congress, largely due to lobbying by meat cartels guarding their profits.

But at that time, which historians now call the “Progressive Era,” certain American journalists, known as “muckrackers,” worked to expose the malfeasance of corporate monopolies and corruption in government. One such journalist was Upton Sinclair who in 1906 published a novel, The Jungle, that changed the course of American history. The story’s protagonist was a Lithuanian immigrant who was lured to America with the promise of getting rich, but instead was exploited, Sinclair wrote, “as a wage slave of the Beef Trust,” and lost his home, family and health, while being forced to work in filthy, unheated and unsafe conditions, while being forced to work in filthy, unheated and unsafe conditions.

To research The Jungle, Sinclair infiltrated the slaughter houses and meat-packing plants of Chicago’s vast “Packingtown” complex. There, according to Christopher Klein, writing for History magazine, he witnessed “walls painted with animal blood and plastered with flesh, rotten beef doctored with chemicals and dead rats and sawdust swept into sausage meat. Workers infected with tuberculosis coughed and spat blood onto floors and used open latrines next to processed meat.”

The results were predictable. During the Spanish-American War, more American soldiers died from eating tainted beef than from combat. Related conditions in other food industries had similar outcomes. By one estimate, food and milk contaminated with formaldehyde killed 400,000 American infants each year.

So when The Jungle, which documented the industry’s abuses, was published in early 1906 and became an instant bestseller, millions of Americans were revolted…and afraid of losing their lives or those of loved ones. Meat sales dropped, many American meat exports were banned in Europe, public pressure on Congress grew exponentially and industry resistance melted away. In June of that year, Theodore Roosevelt’s administration created the FDA which, using science-based rules and targeted inspections of processing plants, has effectively protected Americans against everything from tainted meat to adulterated drugs ever since.

Until now, that is.

On March 30, 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services, headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr, cut 3,500 FDA jobs, thus ending most of the Agency’s routine food inspection programs — as a “cost saving” measure.

Faced with a public outcry, a new FDA spokesperson reassured the public that there’s no need to worry — the states can conduct their own inspections. The problem with that, however, is that approximately 70% of all food is shipped across state lines, and safety standards can vary considerably from state to state. An inadequately inspected plant in, say, Missouri, could ship unsafe food to the East Coast, only to be discovered after that food made people sick. Additionally, about 17% of our food is imported, and inspections at points of entry are under federal control — which is soon to be loosened.

The FDA spokesperson also said that we shouldn’t worry because the government can hire private contractors to replace the ousted federal inspectors, although it’s unclear how much money this would save.

Thanks to the FDA, news of food-poisoning outbreaks is now rare. But that could soon change.

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