Food Standards Quotes
What is fascinating about this quotation is that each year in the United States millions of Americans get sick from contaminated food. Well over 100,000 need to be hospitalized, and over 3000 Americans die from food borne illness. Yet this Congressman from an agricultural state can make such an absurd statement. The US is better than most counties in terms of food safety, and is much improved over the last decades. However, it is certainly not COMPLETELY safe. Ideologically, he was trying to ward off calls for increased Federal Regulation of the Food System which he believed could not be as successful at making the system more safe as if the food industry engaged in self regulation. But it is common in modern politics to completely depart from the truth if the truth might create public and political pressure for legislation that the Congressman was ideologically opposed to. The end of reducing Federal Regulation for him justified a blatant untruth which misled the public who believed him. Worse, Americans have less trust in anything their legislators say as more and more are exposed making statements like this.
Clinton won a second term, but then a Republican, George W. Bush, won the presidency, and rolled back many of the environmental protection gains that the Clinton administration had achieved.
When nutritionists advocated for whole grain food in the diet, and American consumers started eating more of it, food processors and manufacturers started using the term for a wide range of food that involved grains, many of which were unhealthy. The FDA regulations were too lax and soon the term "whole grain" was being used for very healthy and very unleathy food--a little whole grain and a huige amount of sugar for example was margeted as "whole grain" but was very unhealthy. Often whole gran in small amounts were combined with the traditional milled flour and called "whole grain".
A Pure Food bill had failed to pass the Congress for years until Roosevelt took up the cause. The modern federal role in the quality control of food products had its origins with TR.
