Digital Repository

Swift & Co.'s Packing House, Chicago, Illinois, 1906

When Upton Sinclair released his novel The Jungle in 1906, readers were horrified by its descriptions of unsafe and unsanitary conditions in American meatpacking plants. Public outcry convinced Congress to pass the Federal Meat Inspection Act, which required inspection of meat processing plants by the Department of Agriculture, and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which created what would become known as the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA.

Swift & Co.'s Packing House, Chicago, Illinois, 1906. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.