Pure Food and Drug Act

The Pure Food and Drug Act of June 30, 1906 is a United States federal law that provided federal inspection of meat products and forbade the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated food products and poisonous patent medicines. The Act arose due to public education and exposés from Muckrakers such as Upton Sinclair and Samuel Hopkins Adams, social activist Florence Kelley, researcher Harvey W. Wiley, and President Theodore Roosevelt.

The Pure Food and Drug Act was initially concerned with ensuring products were labeled correctly. Habit-forming drugs such as cocaine were not illegal so long as they were labeled with their contents. This labeling requirement gave way to efforts to outlaw certain products that were not safe, followed by efforts to outlaw products which were safe but not effective. Coca-Cola Company's earlier advertising behind the Act was rewarded by an attempt to outlaw Coca-Cola in 1909 because of its excessive caffeine content as well as its cocaine content. In the case United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola, the judge found that Coca-Cola had a right to use caffeine as it saw fit, although excessive litigation costs caused Coca-Cola to settle out of court with the United States Government. The caffeine amount was reduced.

The 1906 Act paved the way for the eventual creation of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is generally considered to be that agency's founding date, though the agency existed before the law was passed and was not named FDA until later. The law itself was largely replaced by the much more comprehensive Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938.