PURE FOOD ACTS. Pure food legisla tion has been rendered necessary by the will ingness of producers to flood the markets with food products, drinks and drugs which are adulterated. These adulterations were induced by the desire of manufacturers to increase their profits. The practice resulted in wholesale frauds upon the public which unwittingly bought inferior articles labeled as goods of standard quality. It also involved a serious menace to public health, inasmuch as food prod ucts and drugs, particularly meat, were com monly sold which were impure, diseased or otherwise wholly unfit for human consumption. The grossness of the abuses which developed resulted in the enactment of laws both by the national government and the States.
Federal Pure Food and Drug Acts.— In legislating upon this subject Congress was con fronted by certain constitutional obstacles. Under our Federal system of government Con gress has only such powers as are conferred upon it by the express words of the Constitu tion or which may be reasonably implied from the powers thus expressly granted. The Con stitution gives Congress no authority to legis late upon the subject of food and drugs nor to regulate the processes of manufacturing. Obvi ously, therefore, it was impossible to pass a Federal law dealing in a direct and straight forward manner with the evils of adulteration and misbranding. Congress does, however, have full power to regulate interstate com merce and this authority was used as the con stitutional basis of the national Pure Food and Drug Act. This act, signed by President Roose velt 30 June 1906, does not forbid the production of adulterated and misbranded food products and drugs, except in the Territories and the District of Columbia where the authority of Congress is supreme, but merely forbids the distribution in interstate trade of such products as are fraudulent or unhealthful according to standards provided for in the law.
The principal provisions of the law are as follows: (1) It is unlawful to ship• or receive in interstate or foreign commerce any adul terated or misbranded food or drugs. (2) The Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of Commerce and Labor shall make regulations for putting the act into effect, including the collection and examination of specimens of food and drugs.
(3) Examinations of such specimens shall be made in the Bureau of Chemistry of the De partment of Agriculture to determine viola tions of the act. (4) Drugs are to be regarded as adulterated if they are sold under a name recognized by the United States Pharmacopoeia and differ from the standards of strength, purity or quality therein laid down, except in cases in which the standards of strength, quality and purity are plainly marked. Drugs are also adulterated if their strength or purity is less than the professed standard under which they are sold. (5) Food is adulterated, first, if anything has been mixed or packed with it which reduces its quality or strength; second, if any substance has been substituted for it in whole or in part ; third, if any valuable ingre dient has been wholly or partially removed; fourth, if it has been mixed, colored, powdered, coated or stained so as to conceal damage or inferiority; fifth, if it contains any added poisonous or injurious ingredient which may render it harmful to health; sixth, if it consists in whole or in part of filthy, decomposed or putrid animal or vegetable substance or any part of an animal unfit for food, or if it is the product of a diseased animal, or one that has died otherwise than by slaughter. (6) Drugs are regarded as misbranded if the packages or labels contain false or misleading statements regarding the contents or place of production, if they are imitations of or offered for sale under the name of another article, if the origi nal contents of the packages have been changed since they were labelel, if the label does not indicate the quantity or proportion of alcohol, morphine, cocaine and other narcotics, and finally, by an amendment passed in 1912, if the label contains false statements regarding the curative or therapeutic effects of the contents. (7) Similar provisions cover the misbranding of food which must also, under an act of 1913, be marked with the measure, weight or numer ical count save in the case of very small pack ages, and must not be labeled or branded in such a way as to deceive or mislead the pur chaser.