46 | OCTOBER 17 • 2019 

History of Food Safety

How one scientist helped end the century of the 
‘
great American stomachache.’

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
W

hile doing research 
for her most recent 
book, science writer 
Deborah Blum learned about 
Nathan Straus, the Jewish 
founder of Macy’
s.
At the turn of the 20th cen-
tury, Straus became a huge 
advocate for pasteurized milk. 
In New York during that time, 
many children were dying from 
milk-borne pathogens, and he 
set up free pasteurized milk 
stations.
“Nathan Straus doesn’
t get 
enough credit for what he did,
” 
says Blum, author of The Poison 
Squad: One Chemist’
s Single-
Minded Crusade for Food Safety 
at the Turn of the Twentieth 
Century (Penguin Group). 
“I spend some time in my 
book talking about the prob-
lems of unpasteurized milk and 
how dangerous it was. Because 
Straus had roots in Europe, 
where they were much more 
advanced in pasteurization, he 
proactively used this issue to 
save lives. 
“Straus is one of my personal 
unsung heroes. I love unsung 
heroes and sing about them.
”
The hero at the center of 
the new book is Dr. Harvey 
Washington Wiley, a Purdue 
University chemistry professor 
named chief chemist at the 
Department of Agriculture in 
1883. Wiley began the investi-
gation of food and drink fraud 
and did human tests on young 
men known as the Poison 
Squad.
Blum’
s book recounts Wiley’
s 
work over 30 years, most nota-
bly with the passage of the Pure 
Food and Drug Act of 1906. She 
also calls attention to the jour-

nalists intent on exposing cor-
porate greed and government 
corruption in efforts to evade 
food safety measures.
Blum, a Pulitzer Prize-winner 
and director of the Knight 
Science Journalism Program at 
the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology, will talk about her 
book and current food safety 
issues when she appears at the 
Metro Detroit Book & Author 
Society Luncheon to be held 
Monday, Oct. 21, at the Burton 
Manor in Livonia.
Other authors discussing 
their latest projects include nov-
elist Susan Isaacs (Takes One to 
Know One), memoirist Bridgett 
Davis (The World According to 
Fannie Davis: My Mother’
s Life 
in the Detroit Numbers) and 
New York Times TV critic James 
Poniewozik (Audience of One: 
Donald Trump, Television and 
the Fracturing of America).
“I really love taking a for-
gotten moment in history, in 
this case a largely forgotten 
chemist, and returning him 
to the public stage, where he 
should be,
” says Blum, married 
to retired arts and history writer 
Peter Haugen. “I’
m really glad 
to give Harvey Wiley another 
moment in the sun because 
he was so important to this 

paradigm-shifting moment in 
American history in which we 
decide that the government 
should engage in consumer 
protection starting with food 
and drugs.
“I like to remind people that 
a single person can make a 
difference, and Wiley is a great 
example of that. At a time when 
we can feel washed away by all 
the political mechanics around 
us, it’
s important to realize that 
people who stand their ground, 
hold to an issue and stubbornly 
refuse to give up on what mat-
ters actually change things.
”
Blum, 64, and influenced to 
study science by her entomol-
ogist father, Murray Sheldon 
Blum, moved on to journal-
ism and graduated from the 
University of Georgia. 
She worked as a general 
reporter before specializing in 
science journalism as taught at 
the University of Wisconsin, 
which prepared her for cover-
ing important environmental 
issues from Alaskan glaciers to 
Hawaiian volcanoes.
Blum’
s books have included 
The Monkey Wars about differ-
ing views on research animals, 
The Poisoner’
s Handbook about 
the development of forensic sci-
ence and Sex on the Brain: The 

Biological Differences Between 
Men and Women. 
“I spend a lot of time looking 
at history because I believe you 
never understand where you are 
until you also understand how 
you got there,
” says the author, 
whose personal religious history 
is traced to Jewish heritage from 
Germany and Russia.
Blum, whose books individ-
ually take less than three years 
to research and write, feels her 
release of The Poison Squad was 
very timely.
“If I had written this pro-reg-
ulation book when Barack 
Obama was president, it 
wouldn’
t have had nearly the 
traction of saying we really need 
to preserve the safety net,
” she 
says. “In the Trump administra-
tion, long-standing regulations 
are being rolled back.
”
Blum’
s Michigan talk will 
cover dramatic examples in the 
fight for regulations — past and 
present.
“I’
m going to talk some about 
that myth of 19th-century 
food, which is in the era before 
any federal food regulations,
” 
she says. “The University of 
Michigan medical historian 
Howard Markel and I were on a 
panel together, and he describes 
the 19th century as the century 
of the ‘
great American stomach-
ache.
’
“We have labels now, which 
we did not have in the 19th cen-
tury, and there’
s good informa-
tion on those labels. Our food 
labels still are not as transparent 
as I would like them to be.
” 

MARK BENNINGTON

Deborah Blum

details 
The Metro Detroit Book & Author 
Society Luncheon will be held Monday, 
Oct. 21, at the Burton Manor in 
Livonia. Book sales begin at 11 a.m. 
Lunch and speaker program start 
at noon. Book sales continue after 
lunch and during book signings. $40. 
bookandauthor.org. 
(586) 685-5750.

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