The Poison Squad

by Deborah Blum

  Wilson, however, saw the decision—especially the way it came about—as proof that his chief chemist could not be trusted. Making his own visit to the White House, he asked Roosevelt for permission to appoint another, more objective scientific expert to provide guidance on the pure-food law. He needed someone “level headed,” he said, someone less eager for public attention, a scientist who could be “implicitly trusted in a confidential capacity.” Roosevelt had sided with Wiley in the instance, but he valued his agriculture secretary and he was politically astute enough to recognize that the chief chemist had become difficult for Wilson to manage.

  As if to underscore this difficulty, another labeling question had arisen. Wiley wanted the government to require the fully detailed listing of all ingredients in food and drink on labels, even those ingredients considered benign. He argued, for example, that sugar should be included on lists of ingredients. Wilson hated the idea. He wrote demanding that his chief chemist back down on the requirement: “It seems to me to be monstrous that we should require mention of salt or sugar or any of these things when we know them to be harmless. If we require mention of one of them we might as well require mention of all.” Wiley countered that consumers deserved an all-inclusive listing of what was in their food and drink—he urged the secretary to side with them over industry.

  But Wilson instead told the president that the law would place too many unnecessary burdens on manufacturers, and that they would resist it at every turn, stifling progress on the law. Roosevelt decided to give Wilson some additional departmental support and privately agreed to bring another chemist into the Department of Agriculture.

  Seeking a scientist with the political savvy that he considered essential for the new job, Roosevelt personally chose Frederick L. Dunlap, a young assistant professor of chemistry from the University of Michigan, recommended by Roosevelt’s friend James Burrill Angell, the university’s president. Angell said that Dunlap could hold his own in Washington. He put forward a poised and polished presence—well groomed and impeccably dressed, with perfect manners that served his political ambitions. And most important for his new job, Dunlap knew how to keep a secret. Barely two weeks after the whiskey confrontation, on April 24, 1907, Wilson formally appointed Dunlap as “associate chemist,” skipping over the normal requirement of a civil service examination. As a demonstration of his own authority, the secretary neither consulted nor warned Wiley in advance.

  As Wiley would later tell it, Wilson simply “walked into my office one morning in company with a young man whom I had never before seen, and introduced him as ‘Professor F.L. Dunlap, your associate.’ I said: ‘Mr. Secretary, my what?’ He said: ‘Your associate. I have appointed an associate in the Bureau of Chemistry who will be entirely independent of the Chief [Wiley] and who will report directly to me. During the absence of the Chief he will be acting chief of the Bureau.’ I was astounded and dumbfounded at this action.”

  After the secretary ordered him to make Dunlap welcome, Wiley gave the newcomer an unsmiling tour of the bureau offices, offering him the smallest and shabbiest quarters available. The bureau staff, intensely loyal to their longtime chief, barely spoke to their new colleague. Even the secretaries were unfriendly. Dunlap, perceiving that he was in hostile territory, decided to rely on McCabe’s clerical staff instead. The new associate chemist recognized quickly that McCabe and Wilson would be his friends in the department. They had the real power anyway, so they were more worth cultivating.

  Dunlap had no experience as a food chemist. Wiley took the appointment as a “direct insult” to him and to Bigelow, who had always served as acting director in his absence; he fumed that it was poor management to put a man “who knew nothing” of the bureau or its food-law activities in charge of the program. Making matters worse, Wilson at the same time announced the creation of a new entity, the Board of Food and Drug Inspection, within the USDA. There would be three members: Wiley, Dunlap, and George McCabe, the department’s solicitor. Wiley would technically be the board’s chief, but all decisions were to be made by a simple majority vote. The board would report directly to the secretary and, as Wilson wrote to Wiley, he expected the board to complete its work expeditiously, as “a matter of fairness to the manufacturers of foods and drugs.”

  To Wiley the new board clearly appeared designed “to take away from the bureau all its power and activities under the food law.” Wilson made no effort to disabuse him of that idea.

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  —

  On June 19, on Wilson’s orders, Wiley embarked on a trip to Bordeaux, France, to join a panel of food judges at the International Maritime Exposition, a world’s fair designed to celebrate the range of products carried around the world’s oceans by the shipping industry. The U.S. government—which had proudly built a model of the White House to house its exhibits—planned to be well represented. But the State Department also saw in this exposition an opportunity for practical diplomacy. French food and wine exporters were eager to consult with the influential chief chemist on the new U.S. regulations and perhaps even get his help in modifying their own.

  Wilson’s initial response to France’s invitation had reflected his growing dissatisfaction with Wiley. He tabled the request and didn’t tell Wiley about it. But several weeks later, Wiley attended a party that also included the French ambassador to the United States, who said to him, “I do not think you are very polite in your country.” The ambassador had been waiting three weeks for a response to the consul’s invitation. When he heard that Wiley had never received it, the ambassador called the State Department—which insisted Wilson had been sent the invitation immediately—and then called Wilson directly. “In a short time, I received a summons to the Secretary’s office and he gave me the invitation and said of course it must be accepted.” At this moment, though, Wiley himself hesitated. He wasn’t comfortable, he explained, leaving Dunlap as acting head of the Bureau of Chemistry in his absence. In the face of a flat refusal, the secretary agreed to name Bigelow as acting head for the duration of the trip—at least this time.

  In addition to attending the exposition, Wiley did work diligently with the French government on updating its food laws. For his help—and for his dedication to the issue—he was elected a chevalier (knight) of the nation’s Légion d’honneur. (As an officer of the American government, he was not allowed to take home the medal until after his retirement.)

  During the visit, though, Wiley remained uneasy about his status at home. Before leaving Washington, he had given Bigelow very specific instructions to protect the bureau and the law. He asked that Bigelow keep him updated, especially if things started going wrong, which didn’t take long. First Dunlap told Bigelow to hand over all correspondence relating to enforcement of the food and drug law. Bigelow replied angrily that the Chemistry Bureau by law had full authority to analyze food and drink and the authority to freely relay those results. Wilson agreed to put the matter on hold until Wiley returned, but Bigelow wrote to the chief chemist that the secretary appeared prepared to support Dunlap’s power play. He warned his boss that the two men were meeting in confidence on food-law regulations and he doubted that boded well for the Chemistry Bureau.

  It was while Wiley was away that the Agriculture Department issued a major package of rules on food safety. Known as Food Inspection Decision (FID) 76—and announced as a unanimous decision of Wiley, McCabe, and Dunlap—the rules were intended to provide overall guidance on chemical additives in foods. FID 76 reaffirmed that “no drug, chemical or harmful or deleterious dye or preservative” could be used in food. It stated that common salt, sugar, wood smoke, potable distilled liquors, vinegar, and condiments were considered reasonable additives. It barred dyes that were used to conceal damaged, inferior, or faked goods. Wiley had mostly supported those provisions. FID 76 also let it be known that the government would move slowly on additives still under study. Specifically, no prosecutions would be brought against two c
ontroversial additives—the greening agent copper sulfate and the preservative sodium benzoate—pending scientific investigation. Wiley had also somewhat reluctantly accepted these delays, but he had recommended a precautionary limit on copper sulfate. This was used mostly cosmetically to deepen the green of canned peas and beans but had a long history of known human health effects. When he’d left for Bordeaux, the ruling had included the precaution: a temporary safe limit for copper sulfate of 11 milligrams per 100 grams of the vegetable contents, an amount equivalent to about 110 parts per million. He considered this a compromise number, suspecting that further research would lead to a lower limit. And Wilson had agreed that it was a reasonable approach.

  But in his absence, food manufacturers had put new pressure on the Agriculture Department, arguing the limit was just Wiley’s backhanded way of forcing them to take copper out of their products. In response, Dunlap and McCabe had changed the decision’s wording without notifying Wiley. The guidelines now merely banned an undefined “excessive” amount. Wiley wired a blistering memo to Dunlap, saying that FID 76 could no longer be considered a unanimous decision from the board. His signature should have been removed from the document if the board was going to make changes that he had not approved. Still steaming when he arrived back in Washington, he discovered his colleagues had quietly made other accommodations to satisfy business complaints.

  The original FID 76 had also set a safety limit on sulfites. The department had agreed that Wiley’s Poison Squad experiment raised troubling questions about those compounds but also believed that more research was needed. Pending further study, the board had agreed that the government would not act against manufacturers using sulfurous acid or sulfur dioxide in dried fruit, sugar, syrup, molasses, and wine if the produce did not exceed 35 milligrams per gram (about 350 parts per million) and provided the presence of sulfites was cited on the label. But that fairly modest proposal—including the idea of sharing sulfite information with the public—produced an exceptionally bitter outcry from wine and fruit producers in California.

  “Telegrams began to come all around me, and it finally reached me that something was seriously the matter,” Wilson said. He’d learned that the White House was reporting a similar deluge of complaints. The secretary met with fruit and wine industry representatives, a session that he would later describe as filled with “a very great commotion.” The assembled group, as they reminded Wilson, represented a $15 million–a–year (nearly $400 million today) industry that might be damaged by the department’s decision. Aside from the labeling requirement, which might scare off consumers, the California coalition said that limiting sulfur use posed potentially devastating problems. East Coast buyers were threatening to cancel contracts for fear that the goods would spoil without the preservative.

  “After listening to these good people all day I said, ‘I see the condition you are in, gentlemen. I do not think the American Congress in making this law intended to stop your business,’” Wilson related in a speech later that year. He assured them that the Agriculture Department did not want to harm American businessmen in the process of protecting food safety. He went on to reassure the concerned Californians: “I will tell you what to do. Just go on as you used to go on and I will not take any action to seize your goods or let them be seized or take any order into court until we know more about the milligrams to the kilo and all that.”

  Wiley again protested an action taken while he was away, without his consent, one that yet bore his signature. He reminded Wilson of his own findings and recommendations regarding sulfites. It was better, he insisted, to be overprotective of consumers in the absence of good information. Again he was overruled. The department, Wilson reminded him, had a duty to balance multiple interests, and consumer protection was only one of them. It was “not only that the provisions of the law should be fully executed, but also that there should be no unnecessary burden or annoyance placed on the trade.”

  Not surprisingly, then, Wilson was unhappy to learn, after the fact, of a speech that Wiley had given to the congregation of the Vermont Avenue Christian Church in Washington, DC, earlier that year. In short order, the chief chemist had managed to offend the flour industry, busy mixing wheat and rye flour and “selling the mixture as rye flour” with no mention of other ingredients. Also the syrup industry: “And when you put sirup on your buckwheat cakes, are you eating maple sirup? There is a nice picture of maple trees on the can and the word ‘maple’ is very prominent but that is all the maple there is about it.” Then the dairy industry, with this appetizing description of ice cream: “I don’t want it half gelatin, made of old hides and scrapings of beef, hides that are put down in South America, shipped to Europe and this country and so vile that they have to disinfect them before they will let them into the custom house.” The secretary now informed the chief of the Bureau of Chemistry that the Agriculture Department was, in fact, dedicated to the support of agribusiness. From now on, he expected Wiley to do a better job of remembering that.

  Ten

  OF KETCHUP AND CORN SYRUP

  1907–1908

  And the salad which bears such an innocent look

  And whispers of fields that are green

  Ketchup (or catsup) was the most everyday of condiments. But its origin story was one of ancient mystery. A sauce made of fermented fish, it derived from China, where it was named kentia, according to one version. It was invented in Vietnam, according to another. British sailors first discovered it in Fiji during the 1500s, or possibly in the West Indies. A Chinese recipe, supposedly dating to 544 CE, instructed the sauce maker to “take the intestine, stomach, and bladder of the yellow fish, shark and mullet,” wash them well, mix them with salt, seal into a jar, and let “sit in the sun” for up to one hundred days.

  The version that made its way to English kitchens was a little tamer than that; the cookbooks of the late seventeenth century suggested methods to produce a golden, anchovy-based “paste of ketchup.” During the next hundred years, “ketchup” became shorthand for an array of sauces made with mushrooms or oysters or even walnuts, the latter reportedly a favorite of British novelist Jane Austen. And by the early nineteenth century, James Mease, a Philadelphia physician and amateur horticulturalist, joined those proposing that “love apples”—the popular name for tomatoes at the time—also made “a fine catsup.”

  “Love apple” ketchup caught on slowly, partly due to an enduring belief that tomatoes could be poisonous. People had noted the painful deaths of tomato-loving aristocrats in Europe. Later investigations would suggest a cause for those fatalities: Acidic juices from tomatoes had caused toxic levels of lead to leach from pewter salad plates. It would take some decades of scientific research—and many healthy years of consumption—before people became fully comfortable with raw tomatoes.

  Cooked products like ketchup were believed to be safer, and the earliest commercially bottled version was distributed in the United States in 1837. Such formulations posed challenges to the busy processor. The growing season was summer short, and it was difficult to preserve tomato pulp in containers for any length of time. Too often it provided a rich environment in which bacteria, spores, yeast, and mold thrived. In 1866 the French cookbook author Pierre Blot advised readers to stick to homemade ketchup. The varieties sold in the markets, he wrote, were “filthy, decomposed, and putrid.”

  Not that bottled ketchups were pure tomato—or pure anything. Food advocates complained that such sauces were too often made from assorted trimmings dumped into barrels after tomatoes were canned, then thickened with ground pumpkin rinds, apple pomace (the skin, pulp, seeds, and stems left after the fruit was pressed for juice), or cornstarch and dyed a deceptively fresh-looking red. Made in less-than-sterile conditions, they required a heavy dose of preservatives to keep microbes at bay. The protective compound of choice was sodium benzoate—in high enough doses to catch Wiley’s attention. He added the compound to his list of proposed
Poison Squad studies.

  Sodium benzoate is a salt of a naturally occurring compound, benzoic acid, found in a wide variety of plants ranging from tobacco to cranberries. Its name refers to the benzoin tree, a plant native to Southeast Asia. Benzoin resin, scraped from tree bark, had been used for centuries in the making of both perfume and incense. And the isolation of benzoic acid was nearly as old; the compound was noted in the records of the French apothecary Nostradamus in 1556. But it had come into wide commercial use in the nineteenth century, following two scientific developments. In 1860 German chemists learned they could make a cheap, synthetic version of benzoic acid from the coal tar–derived solvent toluene. If the acid was neutralized with soda, this caused a salt to precipitate out of the mix. This was sodium benzoate. Some fifteen years later, researchers discovered that sodium benzoate had strong antifungal properties. It was tasteless, easy to make, and inexpensive. Not surprisingly, it became a favorite of the food-processing industry.

  Recognizing its natural origins, Wiley’s best assumption before he tested the preservative on his Poison Squad diners was that sodium benzoate wasn’t especially dangerous. He worried more that the preservative was being used to disguise shoddy food production. Ketchup was a case in point. As noted in the bureau reports, his chemists had found that a sauce made with fresh tomatoes, heat-treated to kill microbes and placed into sterile containers, held up very well without chemical preservatives. It also tasted better.