“This Animal Must Have Been Eating Straight Insecticide”: Toxic Pathways and Cattle Bodies in Mid-Twentieth Century United States Food Production

• In Event: Beastly Bodies and Toxic Pathways

Abstract

This paper proposes to explore the toxic pathways that connected cattle to their feed and to their human consumers, a relationship that developed in the United States as agriculture producers turned to increasingly toxic compounds to aid them in their quest for agricultural prosperity in the wake of World War II. It would be cattle bodies that served as crucial pathways for chemicals to spread beyond the initial point of use and be detected by government agencies. By the mid-1950s, the Meat Inspection Division of the Department of Agriculture began testing beef for chemical residues and discovered residue levels at odds with the reigning assumption that animals would be safe from accidental contamination. Nevertheless, the Eisenhower Administration and the senior USDA leadership saw illnesses caused by chemicals as part of the cost of achieving food abundance and resisted regulating their use.

This paper will trace the efforts of regulators and politicians within the executive branch to “read” within cattle bodies the level of toxins as a proxy for national toxin levels in food production. I draw upon records contained within National Archives at College Park, MD, the State Archives of California, and the Eisenhower Presidential Archive, as well as contemporarily published scientific and veterinarian journals to reveal the toxic pathways that converged within cattle bodies and the regulatory vision that undergirded the choice to allow for the continued use of compounds known to be toxic to animal and human health. By comparing policymakers’ decisions to the bodily experiences of cattle, this paper will challenge historical assumptions about the governance of chemical use and its impact on agricultural ecosystems. Furthermore, this paper seeks to provide current policymakers and the general public with a historical model for understanding the environmental aspects of public policy decisions regarding food and the free market.

Author

• Christopher Robert Deutsch, University of Missouri