Search 
The Poison Squad
The following description was submitted by the event organizer.
The late 19th century was the Wild West of food. The supermarket was a lawless place, where manufacturers could put whatever they wanted into the can, and there was no list of ingredients. Your peas don’t look green enough? Pour some copper sulfate on them. Your fish smells fishy? Try a sprinkling of borax. Your milk doesn’t have an appetizing froth on its top? Add some whipped cats’ brains. The newspapers were filled with stories of mass poisonings when a bad batch of something hit the shelves. The spirit of free enterprise driving the industrial revolution also drove food companies to chase profit at the expense of the public’s health. Women’s groups were especially appalled; how were they to take care of their families? They wrote letters to Congress, but the food companies, with their ‘campaign contributions’, spoke louder than any mail. Would no one save us from these rapacious robber barons?
Then, into town rode a would-be sheriff. Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, chief chemist at the Department of Agriculture, proposed a law that would allow government to regulate food production, punishing companies that fed poison. A massive bill, the Pure Food and Drug Act became the subject of one of the greatest legislative battles in history, taking years to pass. Wiley was a complicated man: both a committed scientist and a relentless publicity hound, a ladies’ man and a lonely bachelor. He teamed up with Alice Lakey, a great mover and shaker in the world of ladies’ groups. She brought him around the country, addressing thousands, whipping up public fury.
Wiley’s relationship with President Theodore Roosevelt was complicated, too. A Republican, Roosevelt hated regulations, but he’d been in the Spanish-American War, where he’d seen more soldiers felled by tainted meat than by enemy bullets. So he wanted this law, even though he despised Wiley. Wiley suggested to Roosevelt that he conduct what he called Hygienic Table Trials, in which healthy young men would eat specially prepared food, laced with these untested chemicals. As an experiment, it was a joke: no control group, a statistically insignificant sample. However, as publicity, it was gold: the newspapers got a hold of it, and The Poison Squad (as the Washington Post dubbed it) got lots of press. Sometimes, it was the wrong kind of press, depicting Dr. Wiley as more of a Dr. Frankenstein, but any publicity is good publicity, as the saying goes. But could Wiley convince Roosevelt of that? Otherwise, he'd be out of a job.
'The Poison Squad' takes us through that epic legislative battle, poking gentle fun at Wiley and his boys. While certain parts of the story (you'll know which) are invented, many of the strangest bits are true. So sit back, enjoy the show, and try to enjoy that snack you're eating without wondering: what's in it?