Theodore Roosevelt, who was president at that time, received a copy of The Jungle and despite his personal reservations about Sinclair as an outspoken socialist, felt unsettled by the story.

A realisation of the truths behind the tale and a need for change to US food safety law It is a relentlessly harrowing read and you wonder if the dreadful conditions he describes in the meat packing industry could possibly have been that bad. He describes moments such as workers falling into rendering plants as a result of unsanitary and unsafe conditions. His experience inspired his novel which follows Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant, as he struggles with conditions of physical danger, insecurity, exploitation and filth. Sinclair drew his inspiration from a worker’s strike in Chicago’s stockyards in the summer of 1904, and he spent some time there himself once the strike was over researching the meat trade. Published in 1906 in the USA it was written as a socialist novel by an author aiming at the nations hearts by highlighting appalling social iniquities. Globally, ‘The Jungle’ by Upton Sinclair is probably largely unknown and this is not particularly surprising. The harrowing story of an immigrant and the USA meat industry Our Product Information Principal Advisor Steve Spice shares a story about a work of fiction and how this came to influence the world of regulatory compliance in the US.

The jungle 1906