As cities such as Rome increased in size and armies traveled to distant lands, food became very important to the Roman Empire; so much so that Roman civil law included provision to protect the populace against adulterated foods.
It is the most systematic ancient treatment of food law which had a particularly strong emphasis on weights and measures.
Theophrastus (372-287 BC) in his ten volume treatise Enquiry Into Plants, reported on the use of food adulterants for economic reasons.
Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) Natural History provides evidence of widespread adulteration such as bread with chalk, pepper with juniper berries, and even adulteration with cattle fodder.
Pliny also described how unscrupulous Roman merchants adulterated foods such as olive oil, cereal grains, herbs, species and wine.
While Galen and Pythagoras recommended pure and simple food not far removed from its natural state.
From at least 1200 in Europe guilds sought to regulate food in the interests of consumers and honest traders, and doubtless at times in ways that protected monopolies for guild members at least in some cities.
The English passed their first food law, the Assize of Bread, around 1266 to prevent the adulteration of bread with cheaper, inferior ingredients.
After the eighteenth century food adulterations became dangerous to human health. After World War II, activity in international standardization stared to grow intensely. This phenomenon, connected to the new concept of food trade, was also stimulate and supported in the framework of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
In United States in 1906 Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drugs Act the first national laws designed to protect consumers against food borne illness.
The United States Public Health Service first proposed basic food safety practices in 1934. An Ordinance Regulating Food and Drink Establishments was mimeographed in December 1935 with updates in 1938, 1940, and 1943.
Brief history of food regulation
