Pure Food & Drug Act

The dawn of the burgeoning 20 th century America cast light on both poverty and progress. Health and public welfare conditions were limited at best – horrific and deadly at worst. Crusading reporters and newspapers began public exposés against questionable patent medicines, quack practitioners, exploitive businessmen, filthy food preparation and squalid working conditions. Theodore Roosevelt joined in the fight with the newspaper scribes he dubbed “muckrakers.”