On Aug. 12, 1954, George P. Larrick becomes Commissioner of Food and Drugs. In 1937, he was responsible for dispatching very nearly the entire field force of the what is now the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to track down remnants of the poisonous Elixir Sulfanilamide which killed 109 people, and dramatized the need for premarket testing of new drugs.

In 1954, the Agency had less than 1,000 employees to regulate more than one fourth of the nation’s commerce in consumer goods. The First Citizen’s Advisory Committee report became the blueprint for extensive changes in the organization and a rapid increase in its resources.

During Larrick’s tenure, FDA appropriations increased more than tenfold, from 5 million to over 50 million, and its staff expanded to almost 4,000. The building program inaugurated during Larrick’s administration provided modern laboratories for a majority of the FDA field districts and a $25 million headquarters laboratory. His last official act was its dedication in December 1965.