In 1906, in response to public outcry that came after Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle detailed the revolting conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking plants, the US government passed the Federal Meat Inspection Act. The legislation created what would become known as the Food Safety and Inspection Service, a force of federal employees who would spend their days in stockyards and packing plants, checking livestock for disease both before and after their slaughter. They did their work organoleptically—with their eyes, noses, and hands—an approach soon dubbed “poke and sniff.” This 100 percent testing method worked well enough for spotting the lesions that signaled tuberculosis and cysticercosis (a tissue infection caused by tapeworms), and the federal presence discouraged plants from using illegal preservatives and generally unsanitary practices.

But by the end of the 20th century, as American taste for beef mushroomed, the system was clearly and woefully inadequate. The gotta-catch-’em-all approach was no match for plants butchering hundreds of animals an hour. The bigger problem was that testing had once more fallen behind in the arms race. Decades of poking at hearts, bile ducts, spleens, lungs, lymph nodes, livers, and kidneys had effectively rid the country’s meat supply of diseases that could be spotted or sniffed out. But humans can’t see, smell, or feel Escherichia coli.

In 1993, the growing danger of E. coli made itself evident when hamburgers sold by Jack in the Box fast-food restaurants sickened more than 700 people and killed four children. The public outcry rivaled the one sparked by The Jungle and triggered two moves by the Food Safety and Inspection Service. As a short-term fix, it hired 160 extra meat inspectors. More importantly, it accelerated a change in approach that had been bubbling away in the background ever since NASA decided it was time to send astronauts to space for more than a few hours at a time—long enough for them to get hungry.

That happened in the early 1960s, when the Mercury program, which first put Americans into space, gave way to Gemini, which proved out the equipment and procedures necessary for the lon...