Question

How important was Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to passage of the Meat Inspection Act?

Answer 1

Hint: The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 was passed by the then US president Theodre Roosevelt after amendment of the prior act. This was to secure proper sanitary conditions in the slaughterhouses before and after the slaughter of animals for human consumption of meat.

Complete answer: Upton Sinclair was an author who had worked for covering the conditions of packinghouses in Chicago and brought attention to the state of this public production of meat. The coverage of these conditions resulted in his best known work called The Jungle where the condition of the workers as well as the sanitation was brought to limelight.

This brought the attention of the then President Roosevelt to the deteriorating conditions and dangerous ways in which the meat slaughter was being carried out. Having served in Cuba as a colonel in 1899 himself, he understood the issues of consuming bad meat and went ahead with the idea of amending the act.

Until then, the meat inspectors were doing a lousy job of maintaining hygienic conditions in these packinghouses. After the reforms, the conditions of these places became better due to the stricter regulations that followed. Thus, it can be said that Sinclair’s work played a prominent role in the Meat Inspection Act.

Note: With the Meat Inspection Act, the Pure Food and Drug Acts were also brought on the floor of the Congress, which till then had been long stalled for consideration and paved a way to a healthier production environment for the US food production workers.