Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA)

The act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 3, 1996. Since there was to be no phase-in period, the EPA was forced to begin quickly the process of writing and issuing interpretative policies and rules.

FQPA amended the food safety laws to establish a single, health-based safety standard for all pesticide residues in food. Under FQPA, EPA must specifically determine that each newly established tolerance is safe for infants and children.

FQPA amends the two most important laws regulating pesticides in the United States: the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), which sets guidelines for pesticide use, registration, classification, an applicator certification; and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA), which regulates the setting of tolerances for pesticides used on food crops.

The Food Quality Protection Act puts the safety of the children first. First, it sets clear, consistent standards for all pesticide use on all foods for all health risks. It also sets that standard high for all pesticide use on all food for all health risks. The act also reformed the regulatory process for pesticides. Safer substitutes would be approved faster.
Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA)

Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act 1938

Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act 1938 would provide for the establishment of 3 kinds of food standards
*Standard of identity
*Standards of quality
*Standards regulating the fill in container

In 1933, Rexford G. Tugwell, with help of Professors Milton Handler of Columbia and David Cavers of Duke, drafted new regulation. The bill greatly expanded government control over the drug and food processing industry.

A major push for the enactment of the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act of 1938 was the sulfanilamide elixir tragedy of 1937, which caused 107 deaths. Sulfanilamide was one of the first of the miracle anti-infective sulfa drugs marketed, but a manufacturer mistakenly used diethylene glycol as an agent in its preparation of sulfanilamide elixir.

The incident made the limits of the 1906 law quite clear. Because there were provision against dangerous drugs, the FDA could move only on the technically of misbranding. The new law required that no new drug could be marketed until proven safe for use when used according to directions on the label.

Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act 1938 simply eliminated the ‘distinctive name proviso’ and required instead that the label of a food ‘bear its common or usual name’.

The food would be illegal (misbranded under the law) if ti represented itself as a standardized food unless it conformed to that standard.
Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act 1938

Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906

Federal regulation of food and drugs in the United States began, in a broad across-the-board way, with the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906.

The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 prohibited the interstate distribution or sale of adulterated and misbranded food and drugs.

Prior to 1906 there were no national food safety regulations in the United Sates. Instead there was a hodgepodge of state and local laws and ordinances that were based more on quality of food than on its safety.

The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 became law mostly because of revelations of unsanitary and unethical practices in the meatpacking industry and because of the many potent and dangerous drugs in the market.

Many products including meats, patented medicines and substances that contained cocaine were sold to an unsuspecting public with labels that did not adequately describe the contents and the safety in consuming them. The Pure Food and Drug Act designated the USP (United States Pharmacopeia) and NF (National Formulary) as the official stands and empowered the federal government to enforce those standards.

The Pure food Act was later superseded in 1938 by Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act. This act prohibited any food or drug that is dangerous to health to be sold in interstate commerce.
Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906