The story is popular on the Internet that the date of manufacture and shelf life on bottles of milk began to be placed thanks to the American gangster. We decided to check if this is so.

This fact from the biography of the famous criminal is found at entertainment resources, on sites questions and answers and to forums. Published such information and some media (for example, "Russian newspaper" And "Military Review"). Users of social networks are also divided by this story ("VKontakte" Telegram, Facebook*) and the Platform blog (Livejournal, "Picabu").

Alfons Capone, better known as Al Capone, is an American gangster in the era of the dry law, heading the criminal world of Chicago from 1925 to 1931. Among his crimes of the FBI calls Butleireness, bribery, drug trafficking, support for prostitution, racket, robberies and murders. It would seem, what does such a person can have to do with dairy products and marking about the expiration date?

According to one of the distributed versions, or niece Al Capone, or all His family Once she was poisoned by stale milk, and that is why the gangster began to lobby for the appearance of appropriate information on dairy products. By another -The idea came to mind not at all because of care about health, but because of the banal thirst for profit: supposedly only one in the city was equipment for applying such a marking, and all manufacturers would be forced to contact him.

The Chicago mafia really wanted to crush the dairy industry of the city in the 1930s, when it became clear that dry law Soon it will be canceled and earned on the underground sale of alcohol will no longer be possible. But, according to the newspaper Chicago Tribunewho wrote about the "Military Wars" at that time, gangsters to achieve this goal did not at all lobby for the requirement to label the expiration date, but used completely different methods that are more familiar to criminals. They acquired a dairy factory and tried to force the leader of the Professor Products of Steve Samner to help them in the scam in exchange for roofing on their part. Gangsters were going to hire workers who were not in the trade union, which would allow them to save in production and sell milk cheaper than competitors, and then in this way to bankrupt and seize the market. Then Sumner was supposed to conduct a demonstration at the plant, after which the company would have hired employees from the trade union and sharply raised prices. Sumner refused to cooperate with the mafia, which laid the foundation for the "dairy wars", during which the gangsters attacked both factories and the leaders of trade unions.

American journalist and author of popular science works Gus Russo In his book The outfitdedicated to the Chicago gang of the same name, which was headed by Al Kapone, writes that in 1931 the gangsters founded the MEADOWMOOR dairy company, and then, with the help of their representatives in the city council, introduced a scale of milk quality, forbidden the sale of products below class A (the highest that corresponded to their own goods) and thereby starting the extrusion of competitors from the market. And yes, according to Rousseau, the mafia allegedly also lobbied the introduction of mandatory marking with the expiration date on dairy products, although nothing was said about the reasons that prompted them to sell such a measure. It should be noted that Al Kapone did not take part either in the "Military Wars" or in the lobbying of the markings - from 1931 to 1939 he was in prison for non -payment of taxes, and the gang led the gang Frank Nitty. There is no reason to believe that the actions of Nitty were the idea of Al Capone, which he somehow handed over and/or realized because of the grille.

Source: FBI/United States Bureau of PrisonsPublic Domain, Via Wikimedia Commons

Mario Gomez, a collector of objects related to Al Capone, a researcher of his life and an invited biography expert on the famous gangster in many television shows and documentary films, claimsthat the story of the idea of the criminal to put the shelf life on bottles of milk is nothing more than a myth. He even gives a clipping from the Chicago Daily Tribune newspaper, which was released in 1913, when the future criminal was only 14 years old, which already mentioned similar markings on dairy products. In addition, Gomez also notes that the Chicago criminal organization, which was headed by Al Capone, entered the dairy business after the gangster was sent to prison.

Deidre Kapone, grandchildren of the famous gangster, in her book "Uncle Al Capone: An unexplored story from the inside of his family»Writes that the initiator of the introduction of labeling on dairy products was not Alfons himself at all, but just his older brother Ralphalso an active member of the Chicago mafia. She even claims that her father received her nickname Bottles (English Botts) not because of the occupation, but thanks to her idea to put notes on the shelf life of a bottle of milk. At the same time, the beginning of the "Military Wars" and the foundation of the Gang of the Dairy Company Ralph Kapone, like his more famous younger brother, missed, since also He was In prison on charges of tax failure from April 1930 to February 1934.

In 2016, the American edition Huffpost She also tried to figure out this story and turned to the Office for Sanitary Supervision of the Quality of Food and Medicines of the United States (FDA), the US Department of Agriculture and the University of Cornell’s security expert, but no one was able to confirm that Al Capone or his gang had any relation to the introduction of labeling with the shelf life of milk. Moreover, today the law in the USA does not require From the manufacturers of not only milk, but also other perishable products (with the exception of baby food) of compulsory marking with a shelf life. Therefore, each manufacturer himself decides whether to indicate it and what formulation to choose for this.

Thus, there is no reliable evidence that Al Capone was directly related to the introduction of compulsory marking with the expiration date on dairy products in Chicago in particular and in the world as a whole. Some researchers studying the history of the Chicago Mafia believe that the gang, the leader of which for some time was Kapone, really could lobbilize such a norm, but by this moment he himself was already in prison and could hardly have a serious impact on the decision made by gangsters. In addition, judging by the archives of the newspapers of the beginning of the last century, some milk producers put such notes before, although this was not fixed in the law, so Al Kapone could hardly be the inventor of such a marking. The story about the poisoning of milk of one of the members of the Kapone family, which allegedly produced the gangster to introduce marks on the expiration dates, was also not able to confirm.

*Russian authorities They think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Instagram, an extremist organization, its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Photo on the cover: Wide World Photos, Chicago Bureau (Federal Bureau of Investigation)Public Domain, Via Wikimedia Commons