4th Quarter USH Research - Issues & Perspectives 1945-2015

Mason Jennings

5/14/2015

Final USH Essay 

Do you care about the quality of food you eat on a daily basis?  Of course you do.  Nobody wants to eat something that will make you sick or give you a disease.  But when is a food considered okay to eat or sell?  And who gets the say in when a food item can enter the circulation of the United States?  Well, that is a complex question.  The FDA, or Food and Drug Administration, is the government administration that can deny or accept any drug or food item trying to enter the US market.  Some products may be perfectly legal in other countries, but could be restricted in the United States.  The FDA was established to keep people safe from food or drugs that could cause harm.  

The FDA is a regulatory agency within the Department of Health and Human Services.  The purpose and goal of both of the agencies is to regulate the safety and effectiveness of drugs and food items.  Formed in 1906, the FDA has of course gone through many changes and criticism.  The FDA is now a ginormous industry that supervises items such as tobacco products, dietary supplements, blood transfusions, animal food, veterinary products, and cosmetics.  The FDA is now responsible for inspection and oversight for over one million food establishments around the country.  The FDA strives for science-based regulations in retail food businesses instead of opinion based.  

You may be wondering, when is something considered to be safe to eat and sell?  Well the process of getting something accepted by the FDA is not easy, to say the least.  The FDA first does basic research of the product, and then into more in-depth research and how people from other countries may have reacted to it.  Once the FDA develops a strong enough idea of the product, it then goes to the FDA review.  The FDA review consists of many of the FDA leaders reviewing your product and voting on whether it should be deemed safe or not.  This process could take a very long time, as you can imagine.  After the product passes the FDA review, it then goes to post approval reviews and then into marketing.    The FDA review panel has seen to be biased or corrupt in the past by not accepting a product due to the huge competition in the market today.  

Perhaps one of the biggest controversies in the FDA panel was the hesitation to approve the natural sweetener called “Stevia”.  Stevia has been in circulation in other countries for years, with no problems.  Stevia is a zero calorie sweetener that is said to be 150 to 400 times sweeter than actual sugar.  The FDA first labeled it as an “unsafe food additive” and kept it from entering the market.  With millions of uses of stevia around the world with no health issues, people began to wonder why the sweetener was not being accepted by the FDA.  One reason why the FDA did not approve the sweetener at first is because of the politically powerful sweetener industry.  Finally, in 1994, stevia could be sold in stores, but under one condition.  It could not be labeled as a “sweetener” or even as a “tea”.  Rob McCaleb, the president and founder of the Herb Research Foundation said “Sweetness is big money.  Nobody wants to see something cheap and easy to grow on the market competing with the things they worked so hard to get approved.”  Many political cartoons are made about the FDA and their specific choices in which products get approved and which products get denied.  

Approving food and drug items is not the only controversy the FDA undergoes.  The FDA has been under some extreme scrutiny about their actions (or lack thereof) of unsafe foods that have been accepted into the US market.  The NRDC or Natural Resource Defense Council, recently sued the FDA because the FDA did not take action to the study that said 90% of American’s carry BPA’s (Bisphenol A) due to contact with everyday items.  The FDA states that BPA’s are harmless to humans.  The world is just now learning about the harmful effects of BPA’s such as harmful effects on brain behavior, and prostate glands in fetuses, infants, and young children.  Another lack of action from the FDA came in 2011 when the cafeteria that re-packaged its mold applesauce as fruit cups only received a warning in their actions.  And on top of that, the senior consultant of the FDA Jay Cole said “Any food can be reconditioned”.  

In reaction from all of the criticism of food borne illnesses, the FDA established the FSMA Act or the Food Safety Modernization Act on January 4th, 2011.  Food borne illnesses affect 48 million American’s every year, killing thousands.  Instead of just responding to the illnesses, the FDA now actively tries to prevent any food borne illness in the United States such as salmonella, campylobacter, E coli, and listeria.  In addition to trying to fix this problem, the FDA comes out with Food Codes every three or four years.  "The Food Codes assist the food controlled jurisdictions of the FDA by providing a scientifically sound legal basis for regulating the distribution of food products." (FDA.gov).   

Granted, it is probably not easy trying to monitor and control all the things the FDA does.  With the United States having such a huge market, there are a lot of things that could go wrong.  Once something goes wrong, all fingers are usually immediately pointed at the FDA.  The FDA has an extremely important job in the US and who knows where we would be today without them.  They keep us safe and regulate things that could be harmful immediately or over time.  The FDA may make some mistakes here and there, sure but their entire organization is based on keeping us safe, and considering some problems in other countries, they are doing a great job.  The FDA has been around for one hundred and nine years, and they will most likely be around for many more.     

Political cartoon of the corrupt FDA panel and their ties with financial conflicts. 

FDA with the "$" showing it's corruptness and it's connection with the big name products. 

How the FDA examines the packages coming in and what happens if it is not admissible.

Political cartoon with humor of the FDA and the restrictions on food coloring and dyes. 

The most recent Food Code sent out by the FDA. 

Sources:
FDA.gov
Primary Source.  The FDA's website has all the information one could possibly want to know about the FDA.  The entries are, of course, very biased toward the FDA since it is their own website.
Congressional Research Service
Primary Source.  This is a PDF of how and why exactly a drug or food item can enter the circulation.  It shows the steps to making an appropriate decision on whether or not it is safe.
Mercatus Center
The Mercatus Center, of George Mason University, has many entries specifically about the FDA.  Professors and students write entries about stuff like "Are FDA Regulations safe?" and "More FDA Funding Doesn't Equal Better Food Safety"
Switchboard - NRDC
Primary Source.  NRDC or Natural Resources Defense Council, is a blog spot for recognized scientists and environmentalists to answer questions and write blogs about different topics.  "How Does the FDA Know What Is Safe to Eat or Buy If It Doesn't Define Safe?" was the blog I read, written by Peter Lehner.
People's World 
People's World is a more open blog spot for people to state opinions and write.  I read an interesting article on this website called "FDA says it's OK to turn bad food into sell-able stuff".  It states that a school lunch company took moldy applesauce and repackaged it into fruit cups to sell as school lunches.. Gross, but interesting.
Criticism of the Food and Drug Administration
I used this website because it has some of the lawsuits the FDA has gone through about approval of controversial animal drugs used in food production.
The FDA & Stevia 
This is a website that is only about the plant stevia.  Stevia was a very controversial sweetener additive that the FDA was very slow to accept due to the huge market for sweeteners already.
Food Safety 
This is a government run website about how government responds to food illness outbreaks such as salmonella and E. coli.

Cinderella Man

In our day and age, we are exposed to information overload.  There is so much information at our fingertips (literally, if you have a smart phone) that we can sometimes be overwhelmed with it.  If something interests you or you have a question about something, it is just a ‘Google’ away.  We, as twenty first century humans, can find out anything we could possible want to know in a matter of seconds.  But there are many different types of tools that can help you learn.  You can sit through a lecture, which is not everyone’s favorite way of learning, read a book, or even watch a movie.  Now, you may ask yourself which one of the methods would be the most fun.  The answer is obvious, watching movies is fun, and at the same time can be informative.  Movies like Glory and 12 Years a Slave have very vivid reenactments of things that have happened in the past such as the Civil War or slavery.  Another movie that is just as informative as the other movies previously mentioned is Cinderella Man.
Cinderella Man is based on the true events in James J. Braddock’s life.  Braddock was a boxer, who was not all that famous in his early years.  He made efficient amounts of money throughout his career.  He made enough to feed all three of his kids and his wife, and he was also able to buy a nice house.  All of these nice things would soon come to a screeching halt, due to the Great Depression.  The movie is packed full of very realistic elements that the Depression brought.  The movie even goes as far as showing Braddock walk past a newspaper that read “15 million unemployed”, which was the actual number of unemployed people in the US during the Great Depression.
In the movie, Braddock is depicted as a hardworking man.  Once Braddock’s boxing license got revoked, he set out to find other work.  Unfortunately for him, jobs were extremely sparse during the Great Depression, obviously, so he had to find some sort of other income.  Braddock would often try to get daily jobs at the dock, offloading various items that had come from barges.  The movie shows Braddock behind a fence with twenty or so other men eager to get to work.  The owner of the docks would then come out and pick seven or so of the men to work that day, leaving the rest of the men up the creek without a paddle.  This is how work usually was during the Great Depression, not always available and sparse.
Another scene in the movie is when Braddock has to apply for government relief to keep his power on at his apartment.  This scene is based on what actually happened during the Depression.  In New Jersey, the setting of the movie, over 600,000 people applied for government funding.  Regardless of whether the actual James J. Braddock went to get government relief or not does not take away the fact that New Jersey was filled with people who received government relief.  Although the movie might not follow James J. Braddock’s life and career exactly, it does do a great job of showing what life would have been like during the Great Depression.    
The movie Cinderella Man does an excellent job of not only showing the life of James Braddock, but also giving great insight of what life would have been like in the 1930’s in the United States.  One who does not know all that much about the United States Depression era could learn a lot from just watching this movie.  The overall feeling and emotion of the movie is perfect for the circumstances.  All the way from the scene shot in ‘Hooverville’, a very popular homeless community, to Braddock’s family having to sell almost everything the own just to survive, are all depictions of the rough life many people had during the Great Depression in the United States.      

Sources:
James J. Braddock.com

Cinderella Man IMDb 

U.S. History in a Film 

Field Trip to Birmingham

     Yesterday, the class of 2016 went on the annual junior class trip to Birmingham.  We visited the 16th Street Baptist Church and then we went to the civil rights museum.  The speaker at the church taught us about how four little girls under the age of 14 died while they were in the changing room in the church due to a bomb planted by a member of the Ku Klux Klan.  One girl also lost an eye during the explosion. When the cops were removing the rubble from the explosion, they found all four girls stacked on top of each other. 

     Our visit to the museum of civil right was filled with fun and excitement.  We saw the actual tank that was used to maintain order in Birmingham during big riots.  We also saw a replica of a bus that had been blown up by another member of the KKK.  Griffin, Jackson G., Drew, and I went on a quest for Milo's Burgers.  We walked around downtown for 35 minutes looking for the magical restaurant and finally, after asking a lady on the street, we found out that it closed two weeks ago.  The guys were awfully mad at me. :(

Questions about World War I.

1.  When did World War I begin, and why?  What was the immediate cause? Between what two groups of allies was it fought?

The war started on June 28, 1914.  When the arch duke of Austria Hungry Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, a member of the black hand (what we would call a terrorist group today).  The war was fought between two sets of allies.  The allies that started the war were the UK, France, and Russia.  And on the other side was Austria Hungry and Germany.  (Italy, Japan and the US would later join the allies and the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria would later join the central powers.)

2.  When and why did the US enter the war?  

The US got involved on April 6, 1917 because of many different reasons, such as the US was already violating the international law by supplying the allies with war materials while the US was still neutral.  And "Unrestricted Submarine Warfare" by the Germans which sank US ships.

3. When and why did WWI come to an end?

The war was finally over on November 11, 1918.  As the US, France, and the British advanced, the Central Powers could not take anymore fighting and surrendered.

4. What were the terms of the major agreement ending the War? Why did the US not ratify this treaty, even though President Wilson had played such a major role in ratifying it?

The Treaty of Versailles (the treaty that ended WWI) put all of the blame of starting the war on Germany.  Which meant Germany had to pay for all damages.  New nations and new land was acquired after the war but the US did not ratify the treaty because the US did not want to be part of the League of Nations, because the US was afraid it would cause more overseas conflict.

5. How did SO many people die in the war?  Were diseases a factor?

The reasons so many people died in WWI is because of trench warfare.  With both sides hiding in trenches and throwing grenades non stop at each other, with no way out, many people died.  Nasty diseases that came about in the wet trenches were,as you can imagine, deadly.  Such as trench fever, trench foot, and lice all plagued the men in the trenches.

Beef Scandal Essay

Mason Jennings

US History

2/24/2015

Industrial Food Safety Essay

Have you ever bought a can of food and just trusted what the label said?  Of course you have, everyone who has ever been to the grocery store or to a restaurant has trusted what the packager of that article of food you are about to consume has said about that particular item of food.  But unfortunately, it has not always been that way.  There was a point in time in the United States that the people consuming the meat coming out of meatpacking plants, especially in a long strip of meatpacking plants in Chicago famously called “Packingtown”, had no idea what they are actually consuming.  This is a scary thought, and what is even scarier is that it was only a little over a hundred years ago!

            The shocking truth behind the curtains of the meatpacking facilities in Chicago in the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s was truly horrific.  The main proponent of the truth being revealed to the public was Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, published in 1906.  Originally, the book was supposed to display the horrible working conditions of the workers who were working in the meatpacking facilities, but the book uncovered so much more.  A quote from the book can put it into a nastier image than I could ever think, so in the book, Mr. Sinclair wrote “They advertised ‘potted chicken,’…the things that went into the mixture were tripe, and the fat of pork, and beef suet, and hearts of beef, and finally the waste ends of veal, when they had any.”  (“tripe” is the meat from the stomach of animals, and “beef suet” is raw beef or fat)

            As promised, the visual from Upton Sinclair’s book, being gross and repulsive, was the last thing the meatpacking bosses wanted the public to hear about.  This book revealed the unsanitary conditions and meats in the meatpacking process.  Not to mention the attention brought to the sewers outside of Packingtown.  The sewers and ditches, most commonly referred to as “Bubbly Creek” or “The Bubbly River”, outside of the meatpacking institutes were the most popular places for dumping the leftover meat that they did not want to put into their meat.  The Creek was said to be ‘crusted sewage build up’ from the blood, grease, and animal remains from the butcher shops.  And after reading parts of “The Jungle”, it makes you wonder how bad something had to be to be thrown out when they were putting absolutely disgusting things into their meat and sending them off to be eaten by hundreds of families.  And these families were not the only ones to feel the nasty wrath of the meat-packers, but so did the soldiers fighting for the United States in the Spanish-American War. 

            The scandal most commonly referred to as the ‘United States Army Beef Scandal’ brought even more attention to the fact that the meat being sent around was only appropriate for the vultures.  337 tons (that’s 674,000 pounds) of refrigerated beef and 198,508 pounds of canned beef were sent to Cuba and Puerto Rico to fee our soldiers.  As soon as the soldiers began eating this sewage, they knew something was up.  Major General Nelson A. Miles testified about the beef and appointed the Dodge Commission on December 21^st 1898 to help him fight his case.  He accused the Commissary Department with accusations that chemically tainted meat was deliberately being sent to the troops.  After much controversy and skepticism, the testimony came to an end with the meat being said to be “pure, sound, and wholesome”.  Officer Alex B. Powell even said in a letter to the Commissary that the meat was immediately tarnished as soon as it was removed from the ice boxes, and that he would even pay a half cent per pound for proper shipping!

            The reason for all of the tainted meat was a call for volunteers to fight which caused a huge jump in troops from 28,000 to 280,000, causing the supplies to run thin.  With big, heavy coats in the Caribbean, and eating tarnished meat, it’s no wonder how around three thousand troops died from disease or sickness and only around three hundred died from battle, and that is including the Philippine War!  Something obviously needed to be done, and quick.  Meat could not keep going around and being served like this.  Theodore Roosevelt even said to congress that the canned meat was making all of his troops sick and that “I’d rather eat my hat than another tin of meat”.

            The FDA was the answer.  The FDA, or Food and Drug Administration came around in 1906, ironically the same year that “The Jungle” was published.  The two main proponents of the disgusting meat scandal coming to an end was, of course, the publication of “The Jungle” and, oddly enough, the assassination of President McKinley.  Before you start scratching your head too hard about our president’s assassination being a proponent for the FDA, you must know that after his assassination, someone who actually had eaten the meat before became president, Theodore Roosevelt.  Theodore Roosevelt was one of the, if not the biggest, proponent of the Pure Food and Drug Act.  The Pure Food and Drug Act along with the Meat Inspection Act, both associated with the FDA, helped eliminate many diseases transmitted by impure meat.       

            June 30, 1906 was a busy day for the FDA, and ironically enough, it was their first day with their official title.  On June 30, 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act was put into effect, along with the dawn of the FDA.  The FDA was initiated in response to the public outrage at the shockingly gross conditions of the Chicago stockyards that were brought to light by Upton Sinclair in his revolutionary book.  Not until 1906, was our food finally being inspected by professionals.  Just one hundred and nine years ago we could all have been eating tainted meat that was simply labeled “potted chicken”. 

Sources 

Sources: Food Production and Safety during Spanish American War

Primary Sources: 

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair –

Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Cambridge, MA: R. Bentley, 1971. Print.

-I received a sheet from Ms. Lawson that had an excerpt on it straight from the book.  I thought this would be helpful in my research since the publication of the book was an enormous part of the formation of the FDA. 

FDA-Federal Meat Inspection Act eText-

"Primary Source" American Decades Primary Sources: 1900-1909 Ed. Vincent Tompkins. Vol. 1. Gale Cengage 2000 eNotes.com 18 Feb, 2015 <http://www.enotes.com/topics/fda-federal-meat-inspection-act>

-This is an “EText” of the Meat Inspection Act itself.  Instead of going to the library to find an actual hard copy of the Act I just found it on an electrical format.  This was the end result of all of the beef and meat scandals that were going around in the United States.

Spanish American War, 1898, government documents: pamphlet collection.

Spanish American War, 1898, Government Documents: Pamphlet Collection. Washington, D.C.: Govt. Print. Off., 1897. Print.

This is a 996 page government document that covers every phase of the war that one could think of.  It covers everything from how to deal with enlisted men, rankings of the men, casualties, and of course, the canned food scandal the soldiers were forced through.   The document was written 25 years after the war was over, so all aspects of the war are covered. 

 The Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History

Tucker, Spencer C. The Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2009. Print.

This encyclopedia has facts of not only the Spanish American war but the Philippine-American War too.  The encyclopedia, not surprisingly, goes into great detail of the beef scandal.  Giving specific numbers and people throughout the chapter titled “Embalmed Beef Scandal”.  It even has old pictures of men in white lab coats inspecting meat carcasses hanging from the ceiling of the Swift & Company packinghouse in Chicago. 

FDA Website

 FDA. "U.S. Food and Drug Administration." U S Food and Drug Administration Home Page. FDA, 18 June 2009. Web. 11 Feb. 2015.

This is the official website of the FDA.  Not only does it have basic background information of the FDA such as founding date and founding reasons, but it also has some information of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act after the publication of The Jungle.  It even has a picture of an advertisement for the silent film of The Jungle in 1914.

The Textbook

Brinkley, Alan. American History: A Survey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995. Print.

Images 

Chemical bath that the meat was pulled through with big sticks.  

Theodore Roosevelt scooping around with his "investigation" stick in the meat scandal.

Men removing backbones and hides in Chicago. 

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair published in 1906, the book that showed the public just how awful the meatpacking business was in Chicago in the late 1800's and the early 1900's.

This political cartoon has the "odors" coming from the canned beef labeled with the problems with the meat.  

How to analyze a political cartoon

Read caption and understand that the cartoon may be ironic.  Don't take the cartoon too literally or you might misunderstand it.  Be up to date on current events.

I learned from this worksheet I learned to look for specific symbols and let my eyes go across the page before I go into a deep analysis so I don't miss any details. Look at more than one political cartoon about the same subject to get a better idea about it. 

This cartoon shows how United States makes it's way toward Havana Harbor to protect the Cubans from Spain.

This cartoon depicts how the United States army was so terrible to the Spaniard soldiers.  

Theodore Roosevelt leading the navy to conquer the Caribbean. 

The foot of what looks like uncle Sam slamming down onto the Philippines. 

The United States stopping the dictatorship of the Philippines with great force. 

Uncle Sam moving the flag away to reveal the tragic sinking of the USS Maine. 

First Semester Summary Speech

          The first semester of our eleventh grade United States history class is now over.  It seems like just yesterday we were walking into this classroom as brand new juniors trying to see if we had any friends in the class.  We were all eager to get to know Ms. Lawson, a teacher that many of us had never met before.  I think I can speak for everyone here when I say we were all extremely pleasantly surprised to watch movies for the first couple weeks of class.  Little did we know at the time, but we were actually learning a lot through watching these movies.  That was the best first impression a teacher has ever had on me, so thank you for that Ms. Lawson.  One sad day when we all walked into class we were all struck with a rather unpleasant surprise when Stuart asked “Are we watching a movie again today?” and Ms. Lawson replied “No, we are actually writing an essay on the movies we watched.”  Luckily, we all learned a lot of reliable and accurate data from the two movies we watched in class and were prepared for the essay.    

            Some of the things I learned this semester will stick with me forever.  For instance, I did my research for one of my blog entries on the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh in 2013.  The top floors of the Rana Plaza building were garment factories.  Even though the building was in terrible shape, the owners of the garment factory did not let their employees stop working.  When the building collapsed, over two thousand people were busy at work on the top floors.  Unfortunately, half of the people in the building that day died, and the rest were seriously injured.  It is said to be one of the worst accidental collapses of a building in history.

            Conflict that was around in the period of our study can still be seen in our country today.  Racial tension between some black and white people may not be as strong as it was in the early 1900’s, but it definitely is still around today.  Instances such as the Trayvon and Zimmerman case and more recently the conflict in Ferguson really show that there is definitely still racial tension in the United States.  These examples are just a few of many discrepancies between white and black people in our country today, but the extremities of them are far less than those of the discrepancies between the two races that we learned about this semester such as slavery and black people having no rights.

            If I were a historian and had to name the era of 1865 to 1920, I would call it something like the period of “systematization” meaning to arrange into a system or to make systematic.  Throughout every chapter in the book that we have read this semester, the theme of arrangement, building, or creation can be found.  With the creation of the first small towns to the biggest cities the world had ever seen, and from the arrangement of social classes to new political parties, the United States was constantly changing to eventually become the greatest country in the world.