Editing Federal Meat Inspection Act (section)

== Historical motivation for enactment ==
The original 1906 Act authorized the [[United States Secretary of Agriculture|Secretary of Agriculture]] to inspect and condemn any meat product found unfit for human consumption.<ref name=FMIA_1906/>  Unlike previous laws ordering meat inspections, which were enforced to assure European nations from banning pork trade, this law was strongly motivated to protect the American diet.  All labels on any type of food had to be accurate (although not all ingredients were provided on the label). Even though all harmful food was banned, many warnings were still provided on the container.  The production date for canned meats was a requirement in the legislation that Senator Albert Beveridge introduced but it was later removed in the House bill that was passed and became law.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Davidson|first=James West|title=After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection|publisher=McGraw Hill|year=2010|isbn=978-0073385488|location=New York|pages=245–251}}</ref>  The law was partly a response to the publication of [[Upton Sinclair]]'s ''[[The Jungle]]'', an exposé of the Chicago [[meat packing industry]], as well as to other [[Progressive Era]] [[muckraker|muckraking]] publications of the day.<ref>David Greenberg. [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/how-teddy-roosevelt-invented-spin/426699/?google_editors_picks=true How Teddy Roosevelt Invented Spin: He used public opinion, the press, leaks to Congress, and Upton Sinclair to reform unconscionable industries, like the meatpackers.], ''The Atlantic Monthly,'' 2016</ref> While Sinclair's dramatized account was intended to bring attention to the terrible working conditions in Chicago, the public was more horrified by the prospect of bad meat.<ref>Powell, Jim. "Bully Boy" Crown Forum Publishing Group. 2006. p. 166</ref>

[[File:The New England magazine (1907) (14776552555).jpg|thumb|James Bronson Reynolds, 1907]]
The book's assertions were confirmed in the Neill-Reynolds report, commissioned by [[President of the United States|President]] [[Theodore Roosevelt]] in 1906.<ref>{{cite web |url = http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=69670 |title = Theodore Roosevelt: "Special Message," June 4, 1906 |author1 = Gerhard Peters |author2 = John T. Woolley |publisher = University of California –Santa Barbara |work = The American Presidency Project |access-date = November 8, 2016 |archive-date = March 12, 2017 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170312155740/http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=69670 |url-status = dead }}</ref>  Roosevelt was suspicious of Sinclair's [[socialist]] attitude and conclusions in ''The Jungle'', so he sent labor commissioner [[Charles P. Neill]] and social worker James Bronson Reynolds, men whose honesty and reliability he trusted, to Chicago to make surprise visits to meat packing facilities.

Despite betrayal of the secret to the meat packers, who worked three shifts a day for three weeks to thwart the inspection, Neill and Reynolds were still revolted by the conditions at the factories and at the lack of concern by plant managers (though neither had much experience in the field).  Following their report, Roosevelt became a supporter of regulation of the meat packing industry, and, on June 30, signed the Meat Inspection Act of 1906.<ref>Powell, Jim. "Bully Boy" Crown Forum Publishing Group. 2006. p. 167</ref>

The FMIA mandated the [[United States Department of Agriculture]] (USDA) inspection of meat processing plants that conducted business across state lines.<ref>34 Stat. 674 (amended by Pub. L. No. 59-242, 34 Stat. 1260 (1967)) (codified at 21 U.S.C. §§ 601 et seq.).</ref> The [[Pure Food and Drug Act]], enacted on the same day (June 30, 1906), also gave the government broad jurisdiction over food in [[interstate commerce]].<ref>Pub. L. No. 59-384, 34 Stat. 768 (1906), (codified at 21 U.S.C. §§ 1-15) (1934) (repealed in 1938 by 21 U.S.C. § 392(a)).</ref>

The four primary requirements of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 were:

#Mandatory inspection of [[livestock]] before slaughter (cattle, [[sheep]], [[goat]]s, [[equine]]s, and [[swine]]);
#Mandatory [[postmortem]] inspection of every [[Cadaver|carcass]];
#Sanitary standards established for [[slaughterhouse]]s and [[meat processing]] plants; and
#Authorized U.S. Department of Agriculture ongoing monitoring and inspection of slaughter and processing operations.

After 1906, many additional laws that further standardized the [[meat industry]] and its inspection were passed.