Looking from the perspective of the 1976 amendments to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, it's strange to see that the original 1906 law focused on adulteration and fraud. With a historical perspective, as shown in Bee Wilson's Swindled, it makes sense. At the time the risks (to drugs as well as food) weren't lack of efficacy or danger due to unknown effects. It was literal poisoning - arsenic based dyes in candy and pickles, bulking out flour with husks - or gypsum, sausages that were truly mystery meats, "swill milk" from diseased cows fed the by-product of whiskey production. Wilson traces the history of food adulteration from the early years when food fraud was deadly to the current era where world trade makes fraud easier (such as labeling rice from other areas as Basmati and charging a premium) even if deadly events, such as a formula scandal in China, have become less common.
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