For hundreds of years, governments have had an interest in regulating food processing to ensure the safety and wholesomeness of the foods consumed by their citizens. The earliest known food law was written in Japan in AD 702. Today several United States government agencies carry out inspections and enforce a comprehensive system of regulations governing food processing, packaging, and distribution. However, this wasn't always the case.
             At the turn of the century, America had numerous meatpacking industries. For many immigrants, the industry seemed like the opportunity they've been waiting for. Thousands of jobs were available at a plant, but few knew about the on going conspiracy that was led inside the doors of the plants. Besides the vigorous and unfair labor of the workers, the slaughtering conditions and lenient examinations of the animals showed need of concern and change. The meatpacking plants would process diseased and unsanitary meat and distribute it among the healthy and sanitized meat, against the regulations of the health inspectors.
             Among the first regulations in the United States for protecting the food supply was the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. It was inspired immensely by the 1906 novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which described unsanitary conditions in the Chicago stockyards. The book's beginnings started out when editors of a popular socialist newspaper, Appeal to Reason, sent Sinclair to Chicago to examine the lives of stockyard workers and the meatpacking industry. He spent seven weeks in the city's meatpacking plants, learning every detail about the work itself. The Jungle was born from this research and was first published in a serial form in Appeal to Reason. The Jungle raised a public outcry against the unhealthy standards in the meatpacking industry. Soon after, President Theodore Roosevelt began to investigate the meatpacking industry in Chicago. He found that the...