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14 results

Meat, Medicine and Human Health in the Twentieth Century
  • Meat, Medicine and Human Health in the Twentieth Century
  • Edited by David Cantor, Christian Bonah, Matthias Dörries
  • Published by: Pickering & Chatto
  • Published online: 05 December 2014
  • View description
    By the beginning of the twentieth century, meat eating was a regular part of daily life in the Western world. Whilst the extra protein in this diet had a beneficial effect on growth and resilience to certain diseases, excessive amounts were found to promote cancer, heart disease and obesity. When it comes to meat this is often what we talk about today: its implications for us, our planet and our health. However, few seem to agree on what these implications are.This collection of ten historical essays explores some of the complex relations between meat and human health in twentieth-century North America and Europe. Its subjects include the relations between the meat and the pharmaceutical industries, the slaughterhouse and the rise of endocrinology, the therapeutic benefits of meat extracts and the short-lived fate of liver ice-cream in the treatment of pernicious anaemia. Other articles examine responses to BSE and bovine tuberculosis, cancer and meat consumption, DES in cattle, American-style meat in Mexico and Nazi attitudes towards meat eating. Together these papers highlight a complicated array of often contradictory attitudes towards meat and human health.
  • Introduction
  • Edited by David Cantor, Christian Bonah, Matthias Dörries
  • Book: Meat, Medicine and Human Health in the Twentieth Century
  • Published by: Pickering & Chatto
  • Published online: 05 December 2014, pp 1-32
  • View extract

    Summary

    In July 2008, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that it would make public the names of retail stores that received tainted products. Coming soon after the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. recalled 143 million lbs of meat, then the largest meat recall in United States history, the USDA's plan was to name retail stores only when there was a good chance a person would become ill or die by consuming the meat or poultry product – so-called Class I recalls. Other recall classes, in which there was little or no chance of illness, would not be covered. Richard Raymond, the agriculture undersecretary who oversaw the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, noted: ‘We need this rule to reinstall confidence in the American public that we are in control here’.

    For many critics, the USDA's ruling had less to do with public health than with restoring confidence in a meat industry shaken by a variety of health crises, in retailers anxious to avoid a reputation for carrying tainted meat, and in a Department caught unawares. While some lawmakers and consumer groups welcomed the new USDA ruling, many criticized it, claiming that, because it did not include all meat and poultry recalls, it failed to fully protect the public. As the debate spread across the internet and other media, the issues became more confused and complex.

  • Packaging BCG: Standardizing an Anti-Tuberculosis Vaccine in Interwar Europe
  • Christian Bonah
  • Journal: Science in Context / Volume 21 / Issue 2 / June 2008
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2008, pp. 279-310
  • Print publication: June 2008
  • View abstract

    Using the example of the anti-tuberculosis vaccine BCG during the 1920s and 1930s, this article asks how a labile laboratory-modified bacteria was transformed into a genuine standard vaccine packaged and commercialized as a pharmaceutical product. At the center of the analysis lies the notion of standardization inquiring why and how a local laboratory process with standard operating procedures (SOPs) reached its limits and was transformed when the product faced international distribution. Moving from Paul Ehrlich's initial technological notion of Wertbestimmung referring to a practice physiologically testing the effects of ill-defined antitoxins, the concept of standardization is extended to pharmaceutical and economical meanings implying quality control for biological therapeutic agents produced by a variety of industrial entrepreneurs. Following the request for product uniformity, two ways to maintain levels of compatibility and commonality are depicted opposing SOPs and end-product control. Furthermore, standardization is understood as a spiral, never ending process where progressive transformation of the vaccine in its production and medical uses periodically recreated the necessity of standardization. Developments analyzed are thus understood as a stabilization process aligning laboratory settings, products, and practices with medical theories and practices through technical, bureaucratic, and organizational systems. A paradox of the analysis is that standardization as a historical phenomenon and moment in the history of drug development was initially linked to a problem of under-determination of what was to be standardized and to a knowledge gap before it could become a central concept for quality control.