When government inspectors investigated the claims made by Upton Sinclair in The Jungle, they found that

President Theodore Roosevelt privately wrote to journalist William Allen White, expressing doubts about the accuracy of Sinclair's claims. After reading The Jungle, Roosevelt agreed with some of Sinclair's conclusions. The president wrote that "radical measures must be taken to put an end to the efforts of arrogant and selfish greed on the part of the capitalist." After this the president ordered to investigate some meat packing facilities.

Upon hearing of the visit, the owners made their workers thoroughly clean the factories before the inspection. In any case, many of the statements that were portrayed in the novel could be verified. That year, the Animal Industry Office issued a report rejecting Sinclair's most severe allegations, characterizing them as "intentionally misleading and false."

All this resulted in the approval of the Meat Inspection Law and the Pure Food and Drug Law; the latter established the Office of Chemistry (in 1930 it was renamed the Food and Drug Administration).