The Kitchen Cartel: Pure Food & Drug Act 1906
Conflicted: A History Podcast
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The Chains of Production Are Long and Multifaceted
The burden was not on sellers to provide a safe product, but on the customer to ascertain which products would kill them or not. Oftentimes you couldn't taste the difference between a piece of candy filled with lead dyes and one filled with harmless natural dyes. Adulteration thrives when trade operates in large, impersonal chains. No single person can take responsibility for the quality of a given food or drink since it has passed through so many hands. And there was no single villain twirling their moustache and dropping a vial of poison into the food supply. It was a complex web of people involved.
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