Making Milk: The Past, Present, and Future of Our Primary Food 9781350029965, 9781350029996, 9781350029972

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Drinking Milk: Histories and Representations
1. More than Food: Animals, Men, and Supernatural Lactation in Occidental Late Middle Ages
2. Feminized Protein: Meaning, Representations, and Implications
3. Growing a Nation: Milk Consumption in India since the Raj
Part Two: Making Milk: Technologies and Economies
4. Unreliable Matriarchs
5. The Mechanical Calf: On the Making of a Multispecies Machine
6. Milk, Adulteration, Disgust: Making Legal Meaning
7. Markets in Mothers’ Milk: Virtue or Vice, Promise or Problem?
Part Three: Queering Milk: Male Feeding and Plant Milk
8. The Lactating Man
9. “Cow’s Milk is for Calves, Breastmilk is for Babies.” Alfred Bosworth’s Reconstituted Milk and the Women Who Innovated Infant Feeding Amid an American Health Crisis
10. Plant Milk: From Obscurity to Visions of a Post-dairy Society
11. Critical Ecofeminism: Milk Fauna and Flora
Part Four: Thinking about Plant Milk
12. Milk and Meaning: Puzzles in Posthumanist Method
13. DIY Plant Milk: A Recipe-manifesto and Method of Ethical Relations, Care, and Resistance
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

MAKING MILK

Also available from Bloomsbury ETHNOGRAPHIES OF BREASTFEEDING edited by Tanya Cassidy and Abdullahi El Tom FOOD AND FEMININITY by Kate Cairns and Josée Johnston THE SEXUAL POLITICS OF MEAT by Carol J. Adams

MAKING MILK THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF OUR PRIMARY FOOD

Edited by Mathilde Cohen and Yoriko Otomo

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 Paperback edition first published 2019 Copyright © Mathilde Cohen, Yoriko Otomo and Contributors, 2017 Mathilde Cohen and Yoriko Otomo have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xviii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Holly Bell Cover image © Horae, ms. B11.22, f.118v, 1300, Flemish, Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, England. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-2996-5 PB: 978-1-3501-1632-0 ePDF: 978-1-3500-2997-2 ePub: 978-1-3500-2998-9 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

This book is for Oscar and Rose, who love milk and who have waited patiently while we work.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations List of Tables List of Contributors Foreword Acknowledgments

ix xii xiii xvii xviii

Introduction

1

Part One:  Drinking Milk: Histories and Representations

5

1

2

3

More than Food: Animals, Men, and Supernatural Lactation in Occidental Late Middle Ages  Chloé Maillet

7

Feminized Protein: Meaning, Representations, and Implications  Carol J. Adams

19

Growing a Nation: Milk Consumption in India since the Raj  Andrea S. Wiley

41

Part Two:  Making Milk: Technologies and Economies

61

4

Unreliable Matriarchs  Melanie Jackson and Esther Leslie

63

5

The Mechanical Calf: On the Making of a Multispecies Machine  Richie Nimmo

81

Milk, Adulteration, Disgust: Making Legal Meaning  Yofi Tirosh and Yair Eldan

99

Markets in Mothers’ Milk: Virtue or Vice, Promise or Problem?  Julie P. Smith

117

6

7

Part Three:  Queering Milk: Male Feeding and Plant Milk 8

The Lactating Man  Mathilde Cohen

139 141

Contents

9

“Cow’s Milk is for Calves, Breastmilk is for Babies.” Alfred Bosworth’s Reconstituted Milk and the Women Who Innovated Infant Feeding Amid an American Health Crisis  Hannah Ryan

161

10 Plant Milk: From Obscurity to Visions of a Post-dairy Society  Tobias Linné and Ally McCrow-Young

195

11 Critical Ecofeminism: Milk Fauna and Flora  Greta Gaard

213

Part Four:  Thinking about Plant Milk

235

12 Milk and Meaning: Puzzles in Posthumanist Method  Jessica Eisen

237

13 DIY Plant Milk: A Recipe-manifesto and Method of Ethical Relations, Care, and Resistance  Matilda Arvidsson

247

Notes Bibliography Index

251 257 291

viii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1.1 Horae, ms. B11.22, f.118v, 1300, Flemish, Trinity College, Cambridge, England. 1.2 Jusepe de Ribera, The Bearded Woman (La mujer Barbuda, Magdalena Ventura con su marido), 1631, Hospital de Tavera, Toledo, Spain. 1.3 Saint Paul (?) breastfeeding a child and a snake, Bible, BM Ms 1, f 452, twelfth century, Clermont-Ferrand, France. 1.4 Boccaccio, The Famous Women (Des Cleres Femmes), Ms Royal 20cv f. 102v, early fifteenth century, British Library, London, England. 2.1 Greek Moothology, California, March 2016. Photograph courtesy of Mark Hawthorne. 2.2 AZ Quality Meat, Quality Meats Store Front, Brooklyn, N.Y., 2013. Photograph courtesy of Anne Zaccardelli of New York City. 2.3 “You Can Drink It!” France, 2016. Photograph courtesy of Camille Brunel. 2.4 “Dairy cows who have had their babies removed from them, so that we can drink their milk, watch the new mother bond with her calf.” Photograph courtesy of Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals. 2.5 “As the calf takes her first steps, the cows watch the humans warily.” Photograph courtesy of Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals. 2.6 “Hardest Part is Getting In!” Photograph of a veterinary school senior class fundraising T-shirt, 1995. Courtesy of Carol J. Adams. 2.7 “Porca Vaca,” Italy, 2014. Photograph courtesy of Evalisa Negro. 2.8 “Cow at Hawaii State Fair,” Hawaii, mid-1990s. Photograph courtesy of Cathy Goeggel. 2.9 The sexual politics of meat grid. 2.10 “Calf Removed from Mother.” Photograph courtesy of Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals. 3.1 The cow as Mother India: “Her precious milk nourishes Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians alike.” Originally published in Himal Magazine, January 2011. Collection, JPS Uberoi & Patricia Uberoi, Delhi. 3.2 Total production and domestic consumption of fluid milk 1965–2015. 3.3 Per capita milk intake or production, 1970–2015 (g/day). 3.4 A Mother Dairy milk ad from India emphasizing milk’s contributions to faster growth and development, c. early 2000s.  4.1 Blue Bunny Ice Cream Co. Frozen Superhero Confection Bars, 2016. Courtesy of Anna Echiverri.

7 12 13 16 20 21 24

28 29 31 34 35 37 39

49 53 54 56 65

List of Illustrations

4.2 The Lick, 2015. Melanie Jackson. Courtesy of the artist. 4.3 A Woman Is Holding a Baby Who Is Drinking Milk From a Goat, Photographic Postcard, c. 1930. Courtesy of The Wellcome Library, London. 4.4 Eugène Delacroix, La liberté guidant le peuple (Liberty Leading the People), 1830, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Source: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain. 4.5 Honoré Daumier, La République (The Republic), 1848, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Source: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain. 4.6 SM Mall of Asia, Pasay City, 2011. Courtesy of Marco Driz Dalma. 4.7 Hands Free Pumping Bra, 2016. Courtesy of Simple Wishes. 4.8 Deeper in the Pyramid, 2017. Animation Production Still. Courtesy of Melanie Jackson. 5.1 Advertisement for the Surge milker, 1929. Courtesy of GEA. 5.2 The Mechanical Calf, commercial image, 1929. Courtesy of GEA. 5.3 Publicity for the Pine Tree Milker exhibit at the New York State Fair, c. 1919. Courtesy of GEA. 7.1 “Her Desperate Plea for Help,” 2015, Australian abattoir specializing in slaughtering spent dairy cows in Tongala, Victoria. Courtesy of Tamara Kenneally. 7.2 “Breastfeeding Filipina.” Courtesy of Jonahmar A. Salvosa from the Philippines. 7.3 “It’s a Management Decision. You’re Weaned,” 2004. Cartoon used with permission of Neil Matterson. 7.4 This is a mother of twins in Pakistan in 1993. The baby on the left is a healthy breastfed boy. It was not felt there would be enough milk for two babies; because boys are valued more highly than girls, the boy’s twin sister was bottle fed. She died soon after this picture was taken. © UNICEF1993/C-107/#1. 9.1 The Boston Floating Hospital. Digital Collections and Archives, date unknown, Tufts University. 9.2 Nurse holding two babies, T.E. Marr and Son, 1920. Digital Collections and Archives, Tufts University. 9.3 Toddlers on the Boston Floating Hospital ship’s sundeck, 1920. Digital Collections and Archives, Tufts University. 9.4 Boston Floating Hospital ship: check-­in time for mothers and babies before coming on board, T.E. Marr and Son, 1906. Digital Collections and Archives, Tufts University. 9.5 Boston Floating Hospital ship: nurses tending to babies, T.E. Marr and Son, 1906. Digital Collections and Archives, Tufts University. 9.6 Boston Floating Hospital ship: bottling of mother’s milk. T.E. Marr and Son, 1906. Digital Collections and Archives, Tufts University.

x

66

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69 70 71 73 80 95 96 96

124 127 136

137 162 166 167

168 169 170

List of Illustrations

9.7 The Boston Sunday Advertiser, March 20, 1921. Alfred Bosworth Papers, #22-2-3998. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. 9.8 Letter to Alfred Bosworth from Mrs. Peter Anderson, Berlin, New Hampshire, March 28, 1921. Alfred Bosworth Papers, #22-2-3998. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. 9.9 Photographs from the 1912 MIA Annual Report: “William B. when admitted,” and “William B. When Discharged: Six weeks in Hospital and eight weeks at board,” UMass Boston Archives. Courtesy of the University Archives & Special Collections Department, Joseph P. Healey Library, University of Massachusetts Boston: Massachusetts Infant Asylum records, 1868–1916. 9.10 MIA Annual Report 1909, the Outdoor Pavilion, wet nurses and charges. Archives of UMass Boston. Courtesy of the University Archives & Special Collections Department, Joseph P. Healey Library, University of Massachusetts Boston: Massachusetts Infant Asylum records, 1868–1916. 9.11 Similac advertisement, date unknown. Alfred Bosworth Papers, #22-2-3998. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. 9.12 Similac advertisement, date unknown. Alfred Bosworth Papers, #22-2-3998. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. 9.13 Letter from M&R Dietetic Laboratories to Alfred Bosworth, November 21, 1932. Alfred Bosworth Papers, #22-2-3998. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. 9.14 Similac advertisement mimicking government report, 1931, cover. Alfred Bosworth Papers, #22-2-3998. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. 9.15 Similac advertisement mimicking government report, 1931, interior. Alfred Bosworth Papers, #22-2-3998. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

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xi

LIST OF TABLES

3.1 Wright’s (1937) estimates of national milk production and consumption in selected countries 7.1 2012 market prices for human milk, US $ per liter 7.2 Annual production of human milk for infants, 0–24 months, 2009–2010, selected countries 7.3 Quantity and economic value in US $ of human milk, 0–24 months, India and China, 2005–2012 7.4 Commercial baby food sales, 0–36 months, 2012 11.1 Behaviors confirming agency in plants and animals

45 132 133 134 134 221

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Carol J. Adams is the author of many books, including The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (1990) and The Pornography of Meat (2004), focusing in particular on what she argues is the link between the oppression of women and that of non-human animals. She is the co-editor of several anthologies, most recently Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth (with Lori Gruen). The Carol J Adams Reader: Writings and Conversations 1995–2015 appeared in 2016. www.caroljadams.com. Matilda Arvidsson is a post doctoral researcher and Lecturer in Law at the Department of Law at Gothenburg University. Her research interests include issues of international law, in particular theory and history of international law, international humanitarian law, and international law of belligerent occupation, theory of law, Islamic law, political theology, psychoanalysis, ethics, the legal office, spatial justice, animal jurisprudence, and law/poetry. Peter Atkins is a Professor of Geography at Durham University. His main research interests are the geographies of food and drink. The main approach throughout his career has been historical, and he has recently been developing interdisciplinary and international perspectives with colleagues in the International Commission for Research on European Food History, of which he is the Senior Vice-President. In addition to his historical work, Peter has maintained strong links with South Asia, especially Bangladesh. Research here has recently included work on problems of drinking water quality. Atkins’ most recent book is Liquid Materialities: A History of Milk, Science and the Law (2010), which offers a new type of food history that takes seriously the stuff in foodstuffs. Mathilde Cohen is a Professor of Law at the University of Connecticut and a research fellow at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. She works in the fields of comparative law, constitutional law, food law, and race, gender and the law. In the past few years, she has been researching the way in which the United States and France regulate milk, be it animal, human, or plant milk. She is conducting fieldwork in both countries to uncover popular, scientific, commercial, and legal discourses on these fluids, which raise a host of economic, political, and social questions. Jessica Eisen is a doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School, Graduate Scholar of the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program, and a Visiting Researcher at Osgoode Hall Law School’s Institute for Feminist Legal Studies. Her work has been published in the Journal of Law and Equality, Transnational Legal Theory, Queen’s Law Journal, and the International Journal of Constitutional Law (forthcoming).

List of Contributors

Yair Eldan is a member the Ono Academic College law faculty and a writer. He studied at the Hebrew University School of Law (1996–2000) and wrote his doctoral thesis at Bar Ilan University’s conflict resolution, management, and negotiations program. Eldan was a parliamentary assistant to MK Ophir Pines-Paz from the Labor party while Pines-Paz served as the Chairman of the Constitution, Law and Judiciary committee of the Knesset. Eldan teaches Jurisprudence and Jewish law, with a special interest in the intersections between law and society, law and literature, and law and psychology. Eldan is the author of Excommunication, Death and Mourning (a study in rabbinic shunning and excommunication) and of Messianism? Idolatry! The Internal Logic of the Tractate in the Mishnah, where he proposes a new literary approach to the Mishnah, a canonical Jewish legal text. He also published two novels, The Body Map, and The Letter (with Orna Reuven). Greta Gaard is Professor of English and Coordinator of the Sustainability Faculty Fellows at University of Wisconsin-River Falls. Her work emerges from the intersections of feminism, environmental justice, queer studies, and critical animal studies, exploring a wide range of issues, from interspecies justice, material perspectives on fireworks and space exploration, postcolonial ecofeminism, and the eco-­politics of climate change. Her invited essay, “Toward a Postcolonial Feminist Milk Studies,” appeared in a special issue of American Quarterly on Race, Gender, Species (2013). Author or editor of six books and over seventy refereed articles, Gaard’s most recent work includes her monograph, Critical Ecofeminism (2017) and her co-edited volume, International Perspectives in Feminist Ecocriticism (2013), with Simon Estok and Serpil Oppermann. Her creative nonfiction eco-­memoir, The Nature of Home (Arizona UP, 2007), is being translated into Chinese and Portuguese. Melanie Jackson is an artist and writer working in moving image, sculpture, and printed matter. She exhibited work internationally including the Dojima River Biennale, Osaka, ZKM Karlsruhe,Art Gallery New South Wales, Sydney, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. Solo UK exhibitions include Flat Time House, John Hansard Gallery, The Drawing Room, Arnolfini and Matt’s Gallery, London where she is also represented. She was shortlisted for the Whitechapel Maxmara Award in 2010 and winner of the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2007. She is also a Senior Lecturer at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics in the Department of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London. Her books include Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism (Pluto 2000), Hollywood Flatlands, Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant Garde (Verso 2002), Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry (Reaktion, 2005), Walter Benjamin (Reaktion 2007), Derelicts: Thought Worms from the Wreckage (Unkant, 2014), and Walter Benjamin: On Photography (Reaktion, 2015). Tobias Linné is Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication and Media at Lund University, Sweden. His research concerns the framing of non-­human animals in the media, in particular in relation to the dairy industry. In 2015 he co-­founded the Lund University Critical Animal Studies Institute. xiv

List of Contributors

Chloé Maillet is an historian and visual artist. She is currently doing her post-­doc at the Musée du quai de Branly in Paris, after receiving her PhD in Anthropological History at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. An internationally recognized visual artist, Chloé Maillet has produced genre movies, performed conferences and installations, in addition to publishing with Louise Hervé Strange Attraction, a pulp book retracing her artwork and recent exhibitions. She has also widely published in the field of historical anthropology, in particular on gender and images as well as on animal and human milk in the Middle Ages. Ally McCrow-Young is a PhD candidate in media studies at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She is a co-­founder of the Lund University Critical Animal Studies Network, Sweden where she graduated with a Master of Science in Media and Communication. Her recent research looks at alternative forms of political engagement, such as food activism. Richie Nimmo is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester. His research explores the ambiguous status of nonhumans in modern knowledge-­practices and the constitution of “the social” across materially heterogeneous (and multispecies) relations, systems, and flows. His PhD dissertation (2007) drew upon actor-­network theory and Foucauldian genealogy to develop a socio-­material history of dairy milk in the UK, which was also a posthumanist critique of modernity worked through an archive study of milk. This was the basis for his 2010 book, Milk, Modernity and the Making of the Human: Purifying the Social. Since then, he has extensively published in human-animal studies and actor-network theory, and has recently been working on a social analysis of the ongoing decline of honeybees associated with “colony collapse disorder.” Yoriko Otomo is a Senior Lecturer in Law at SOAS, University of London. She was recently a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Global History, University of Oxford and a Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales. Her research examines crosscultural histories of global governance, and she has recently published Unconditional Life: The International Law Settlement (OUP, 2016). She has written and edited various articles on law and animals, and is on the board of Minding Animals International and the Australian Feminist Law Journal. Hannah Ryan is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Art History and Visual Studies at Cornell. Through a decolonial and feminist approach, her dissertation research historicizes maternity in contexts of colonialism and slavery, situating breastmilk as a Transatlantic commodity in early modernity, and infant feeding as a means to access critical and neglected information about family and intimacy during colonization. Further, she seeks out the ways in which contemporary artists and writers reference these legacies by deploying maternal and breastfeeding imagery. Hannah holds a B.F.A. (magna cum laude), B.A. (magna cum laude), and M.A. from the University of Colorado, where she was awarded a research grant to write her thesis on anti-­colonial murals in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and received a Best Should Teach award. She has held positions at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Norton Museum of Art, and the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell. xv

List of Contributors

Julie Smith was formerly a senior economist in Australian and New Zealand treasuries and department of finance. She has a PhD in Economics (ANU) and, prior to joining ACERH (ANU), was at the Economics Program at the Research School of Social Sciences. She was an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health and ACERH, and was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship in 2015. She has published on public finance and health issues in journals across several disciplines, with a strong interest in public policy. She has undertaken an ARC Discovery Project on the economics of mothers’ milk and the market for infant food, and is currently researching a book on the economics of breastfeeding and regulation of markets in mothers’ milk. Yofi Tirosh teaches at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law. Her research explores the interrelations between law and culture, focusing on body and gender. Employing rhetorical analysis of legal documents, she has written on the construction of gender roles in rape cases and in discourses surrounding the service of female soldiers. She has also published work on affirmative action, women and national security, and on the limits of language in judicial processes. Recently, she has been mapping socio-­legal formulations of group-­based exclusion, particularly in the context of the religious exclusion of women and of profiling techniques in dance clubs. Tirosh graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and wrote her doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan. She has served as a guest researcher at the New York University School of Law and at the Humboldt University in Berlin, as well as a vising professor at the Georgetown Law Center and Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. Andrea S. Wiley is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Human Biology Program at Indiana University, Bloomington. She received her PhD in medical anthropology from University of California, Berkeley & San Francisco. She is the author of four books, including two on milk: Cultures of Milk: The Biology and Culture of Dairy Consumption in India and the United States, Harvard University Press, 2014; and Re-­ imagining Milk, 2nd edition, Routledge Press, 2016 (1st edition 2011). Her current research focuses on the cultural politics of milk promotion, beliefs about milk’s effects on human biology, and the relationship between milk consumption and child growth in the United States and in India.

xvi

FOREWORD

When I began my studies of the history of milk forty-five years ago it was a lonely occupation. There were only three or four of us and the numbers stayed in single figures for a couple of decades. Since then I have spent much of my career writing about food geographies and histories, and my book Liquid Materialities published in 2010 presented my own personal understanding of the genealogy of milk as a commodity. My project now is to write three more volumes on milk. The first, due out shortly, is entitled A History of Uncertainty and looks at the historical role of milk in spreading zoonotic disease. The second will be about the rise of artificial infant feeding, especially using cow’s milk, and the implications for infant mortality at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. The third will be a historical political ecology of dairying in the United Kingdom over the last three centuries. So, it seems that I have a busy retirement ahead. The last ten to fifteen years have seen the flourishing of food history in general and I’m delighted to see that milk is at last taking its rightful place in this scholarship, as a commodity of central importance across the globe. The novelty of the recent trend is its broadening of intellectual perspectives and theoretical contexts. As the present volume confirms, milk is of interest to scholars from many different backgrounds. But who are these people who want to discuss milk? To many it seems a trivial topic, hardly one for cutting-edge research in the social sciences or humanities. In this narrow view, milk is for dairy specialists with the technical or scientific skills of agronomists or processors. More broadly then should it be for historians, geographers, sociologists, anthropologists? Or in the post-­disciplinary sense can we take it for granted that the crossing of disciplinary boundaries and the sharing of perspectives will create insights that are more than the sum of their constituent parts? An important lesson of the present volume is that many voices can lead to greater depths of understanding. The juxtapositions and oppositions create something fresh and new. Above all there is harmony in the ultimate message, that milk occupies a focal point in society. We all have to eat, and though we don’t have to drink milk or consume butter and cheese, their presence or absence in a diet tells us a great deal about the individual consumer and her place in society. After reading this collection it will be impossible to approach milk in quite the same way again. It is a mother’s (human and non-­human) contribution to young life that has been diverted and is therefore freighted, in the very same moment of consumption, with complex meanings of both nourishment and exploitation. While the contemplation of such complexities can be challenging, I would encourage readers to see this book as a whole. The chapters stand in their own right separately, of course, but it is the multivocal diversity that is the book’s greatest strength. Em. Professor Peter J. Atkins, University of Durham, UK

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been made possible without the funding provided by the Institut Marcel Mauss-Centre d’étude des normes juridiques (UMR 8178 CNRSEHESS, Paris), the University of Connecticut, and SOAS, University of London for a two-­day meeting at which most of the contributors to this volume were able to share and discuss their work. This workshop was hosted by the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS). Many of the participants also received support from their respective institutions in traveling to, and writing up, their contributions to this volume. We are also grateful to the editors at Bloomsbury Press for their help, as well as to our research assistants Emily Dajer-Pascal, Renata Cunha (University of Connecticut), and Emily Jones (SOAS). We would like to thank Luce Irigaray, Carol Adams, and Greta Gaard for their writings (which opened up a world of thinking) and their generous encouragement. Many thanks to Aeyal Gross for introducing us to one another and to Pierre-Olivier Dittmar and Chloé Maillet for acquainting us with the image which was chosen for the book cover. Mathilde also thanks Amy DiBona, Elizabeth Emens, John Hadfield, Paolo Napoli, Anne Rajotte, and her University of Connecticut colleagues for supporting her milk research. We have taken great pleasure in talking with other milk scholars around the world, in exploring the implications of our research for one another, and in editing this volume together.

INTRODUCTION

Milk is a relational substance produced by a typically female mammal for consumption by another, typically infant, mammal of the same species. It is one of the few foods produced for others. Self-­breastfeeding remains by and large an oddity. One does not produce milk to drink it oneself. Milk is also inherently interdependent: it is produced by as well as for others. Lactating mammals literally transform their food intake, and parts of themselves, to excrete milk. Yet, absent stimulation in the form of suckling or the stimulus of an infant, lactation will not be induced, or at least not long term. This ontology of interdependence explains milk’s peculiar compositional quality. Milk’s nutritional and immunological components change daily to match the unique developmental needs of its infant recipients. It becomes more fluid when the young need more hydration, fattier, or more protein-­rich when they need more sustenance. Milk contains different hormones depending on the time of the day, some facilitating sleep, others, awakeness. It carries antibodies, which are specific to the surrounding environment, helping children ward off infections. In sum, to use Angela Garbes’ (2016) metaphor, milk may appear like “a private conversation between mother and child.” In practice, however, many actors other than just a mother and her offspring intrude into this “private” conversation. In the human realm, those include scientific, medical, legal, and religious authorities, as well as economic agents such as farmers, food industrialists, and lobbyists. Humans are unusual among mammals in that some populations consume milk of different species well past weaning and infancy. Among these societies, milk is treated as a public good requiring state control over its production and distribution. A globally traded commodity, milk, particularly animal milk, has thus become one of the most highly regulated foods. But human interventions often result in transforming milk from a caring and relational substance into a vector of oppression. If the act of nursing conjures up images of tranquil bonding, for certain species, in particular for domesticated dairy animals as well as for certain women, lactation is bound with separation and exploitation. Milk oppressions are multiple. Naming or conceptualizing a substance as “milk” or “milky” appears to call for its exploitation for human purposes. This is why this book deliberately adopts a non-­biological definition of milk, so as to encompass the full range of milk’s material, affective, historical, semantic, symbolic, and economic relations. The milk at stake here includes not only the increasing variety of plant and synthetic milks, but also, perhaps, other substances that humans treat like milk. What are typical forms of milk injustices? Most obviously, lactating animals and human mothers are devalued and commodified while the recipients of the milk—typically human children, but also adult humans—are elevated into a framework of greater value, socially and economically. Milk is complicit in many forms of brutal farming practices (from the forcible impregnation

Introduction

of cows, to their separation from their calves, to the butchering of male calves); human colonization and victimization (milk production requires vast lands and the dairy business relies on a subjugated workforce exploitable at will); and environmental destruction (the dairy industry is a key contributor to global warming); as well as the malnutrition of everybody involved (baby mammals—human and nonhuman—being too often deprived of breast milk while human adults are encouraged to drink a fluid most cannot even digest). Milk is the ultimate sign of labor: anything that produces it becomes part of an exploitative system: domesticated cows, lactating women, and dairy workers. Since the turn of the millennium, milk has become a serious topic of scholarly inquiry in the social sciences. In addition to E. Melanie DuPuis’ pioneering Nature’s Perfect Food: How Milk Became America’s Drink (2002), representative examples of books about the production and consumption of milk include Anne Mendelson’s Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages (2008); Richie Nimmo’s Milk, Modernity and the Making of the Human (2010); Hannah Velten’s Milk: A Global History (2010); Peter Atkins’ Liquid Materialities: A History of Milk, Science and the Law (2010); Deborah Valenze’s Milk: A Local and Global History (2011); Kendra Smith-Howard’s Pure and Modern Milk (2013); and Andrea Wiley’s Re-Imagining Milk (2016). There is a large (older) body of scholarship on the history, social, cultural, and political meaning of human breastfeeding, including Valerie Fildes’ Wet Nursing: a History from Antiquity to the Present (1988); Janet Golden’s A Social History of Wet Nursing in America. From Breast to Bottle (1996); Linda Blum’s At the Breast. Ideologies of Breastfeeding and Motherhood in the Contemporary United States (1995); Fiona Giles’ Fresh Milk: The Secret Life of Breasts (2003); Margaret Miles’ A Complex Delight: The Secularisation of the Breast, 1350–1750 (2008); and Kara Swanson’s Banking on the Body: the Market in Blood, Milk, and Sperm in Modern America (2014). A fuller bibliography, combining all the references from the contributions in this volume, has been provided at the end of this book. A handful of scholarly texts have explicitly addressed the intersections between human and animal milk: Carol Adams’ “Pity the Poor Mad Cow: A View from the United States,” Ecotheology, 3: 117–19 (1997); Greta Gaard’s “Toward a Feminist Postcolonial Milk Studies,” American Quarterly, 65 (3): 595–617 (2013); Yoriko Otomo’s “The Gentle Cannibal: The Rise and Fall of Lawful Milk,” Australian Feminist Law Journal, 40 (2): 215–28 (2014); and Mathilde Cohen’s “Regulating Milk: Women and Cows in France and the United States,” American Journal of Comparative Law, 65 (2017b). It is to this scholarship that this volume seeks to add, with a detailed examination of the political economies of human and animal milk: what is milk, who is it for, and what work does it do? What is the material, affective, historical, semantic, symbolic, and economic life of milk? And how should we respond as a human community to the material and metaphysical violence effected by the production and representation of milk? Our inquiry could begin with the act of breastfeeding itself, provoking questions around “how” and the “how much”: questions laid bare by Julie Smith’s work on the economics of human breastfeeding. From there, it is the separation of milk from both human and animal bodies that engenders a host of inquiries. Reading primarily images (art, advertising, and photographs) and language (of law, of advertising), the chapters in 2

Introduction

this volume examine the relationship between milk and the Church; milk and the state; technology; capital; gender, and race. They foreground and politicize human and animal milk, appreciating that the two substances are intimately connected and articulating the ways in which they are made to be distinct from one another. They demonstrate how a holistic investigation of milk illuminates relations between humans, in particular along the axes of gender, race, and class, as well as between humans, animals, and plants. Situated in diverse geographical, cultural, and disciplinary contexts, the contributions to this volume allow us to ask what milk is, how it is made, and, moreover, what it does. We have structured this volume into four parts, and cross-­referenced discussions where possible. Part I begins with Chloé Maillet’s “More than Food: Animals, Men and Supernatural Lactation in Occidental Late Middle Ages” (Chapter  1). Maillet gives a historical and theological context to milk-­feeding and milk-­drinking today, examining the transformational power of milk to create kinship and to effect salvation (depending on who is doing the feeding). She argues that the ontological relations engendered by milk between humans, animals, and the divine in the late Middle Ages stand in stark contrast to those relations of the twentieth century. In Chapter  2, “Feminized Protein: Meaning, Representations, and Implications,” Carol Adams examines the gender politics of twentieth-century representations of milk feeding, arguing that modern representations of milking, both promoting dairy milk and campaigning against it, reproduce misogynist ideology. Andrea Wiley in “Growing a Nation: Milk Consumption in India since the Raj” (Chapter  3) offers us another dimension to the struggle over the symbolic meaning invested in milk, historicizing a twentieth-­century milk-­feeding project, “Operation Flood,” to describe the interplay between religious, economic, and nationalist ideologies at work in postcolonial India. Part II begins with Melanie Jackson and Esther Leslie’s “Unreliable Matriarchs” (Chapter 4), which asks what it means for milk to be separated from the technologized body of the cow. The authors argue that the process of separating milk from the body and representing it “purifies” that fluid and enables us to project onto it all of the fantasies that drive our modern economy. Richie Nimmo, in “The Mechanical Calf: On the Making of a Multispecies Machine” (Chapter  5), explores the creation by men of the earliest mechanical milking machines, offering a historical case study to demonstrate the corporeal and relational impact of the technification of milk extraction. Yofi Tirosh and Yair Eldan in Chapter  6, “Milk, Adulteration, Disgust: Making Legal Meaning” analyze an Israeli consumer scandal over adulterated milk, which resulted in a ruling of high damages against the milk producer, compensating consumers for the disgust they felt when learning the milk’s content (by the idea that the milk was not “pure” as some silicon had been added to it). Milk here becomes intertwined with values such as white­ ness, purity, nationalism, and faithfulness, and provides courts with the opportunity to affirm these values in constructing the citizen-­consumer. Julie Smith in “Markets in Mothers’ Milk: Virtue, Vice, Promise or Problem?” (Chapter 7) offers a feminist economic framework to demonstrate the macroeconomic value of women’s unpaid lactation and breastfeeding, by using contemporary market prices for selected countries in Asia, Europe, and America. 3

Introduction

Part III Queering Milk: Male Feeding and Plant Milk, begins with Mathilde Cohen’s “The Lactating Man” (Chapter  8). Cohen examines the biological, social, and cultural phenomena of male lactation, arguing that it should be understood as a continuum of milk-­feeding practices. She uses animal-­human comparisons to illustrate how (human) sex and gender-­based assumptions surrounding lactation and breastfeeding are culturally constructed. Hannah Ryan further explores the relation of men to milk feeding in her historical study, “ ‘Milk is for Calves, Breastmilk for Babies.’ Alfred Bosworth’s Reconstituted Milk and the Women Who Innovated Infant Feeding Amid an American Health Crisis” (Chapter 9). By tracing the histories of women who sold or donated their breast milk, nurses who collected and administered it, and wet nurses who worked through a health crisis of infant mortality in early twentieth-century Boston, Ryan uncovers the material and affective labor that is obscured in the corporatization of milk. In Chapter 10, “Plant Milk: From Obscurity to Visions of a Post-dairy Society,” Tobias Linné and Ally McCrow-Young go on to look at the Swedish oat milk company Oatly. By showing how notions of plant milk are “permeated by the complex dynamics of race, gender, class, and species,” the chapter maintains a critical sensibility towards our consumption of milk in general, even if it does not involve the direct exploitation of animals. This part ends with Greta Gaard’s “Critical Ecofeminism: Milk Fauna and Flora” (Chapter 11), with her examination of how the presence of milk has signified a paradise or promised land. Gaard proposes a trans*ecofeminist critical methodology to pursue a relational politics to food—and in particular milk—production. Part IV, Thinking about Plant Milk, ends this volume with a reflection on the necessity and difficulties of resisting our current milk economy. Jessica Eisen responds to Gaard’s questions of method in “Milk and Meaning: Puzzles in Posthumanist Method” (Chapter 12). Eisen exposes the methodological challenges posed by posthumanist or interspecies accounts of milk and justice, and calls for greater “listening” to the clear nonhuman suffering communicated by animals, if not plants. Matilda Arvidsson’s “DIY Plant Milk: A Recipe-Manifesto and Method of Ethical Relations, Care, and Resistance” “considers the political theology of milk as perfecting a relation: between mother and child, between sovereign state and lawful citizen, and between corporation and consumer,” and includes directions on how to make plant-­based milk at home. Thinking about milk is important. And in light of our modern global crises of masculinity, of food sovereignty, and of climate change, it is urgent. We hope that this volume will convey some of the richness of collaborative and interdisciplinary analysis, and that it will inspire you to look differently at the making of milk and other forms of sustenance. Mathilde Cohen and Yoriko Otomo

4

PART I DRINKING MILK: HISTORIES AND REPRESENTATIONS

CHAPTER 1 MORE THAN FOOD: ANIMALS, MEN, AND SUPERNATURAL LACTATION IN OCCIDENTAL LATE MIDDLE AGES Chloé Maillet*

Introduction The French nineteenth-­century writer Victor Hugo and his wife were disappointed by the wet nurses they had hired for their son, and decided to replace them with a goat. “Here is Leopold fed by a goat! It’s his fifth wet nurse and I hope this last one will give us satisfaction.” (Hugo et  al. 1988: 552).1 Hugo’s description of the poor socio-­economic situation of wet nurses at that time, according to Hugo’s correspondence, stresses that they were obliged to give up any relationship with their own partner and children. Leopold Hugo’s former wet nurse was suspected of being pregnant (a test proved her milk to curdle when heated) (Hugo et al. 1988: 549). This led Hugo to imagine that a goat would be a much more trustworthy wet nurse. Victor and Adèle Hugo described the boy as their little “kid” (chevreau), the French word not having the same equivocal significance; it really meant he had become the goat’s offspring. Unfortunately the “kid” died shortly thereafter.

Figure 1.1  Horae, ms. B11.22, f.118v, 1300, Flemish, Trinity College, Cambridge, England. *  I thank Pierre-Olivier-Dittmar and Astrée Questiaux without whom I would not have been able to write these lines. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Marie-France Morel, Didier Lett, and Salvatore d’Onofrio.

Making Milk

As a historian specializing in gender and kinship studies, I have been studying texts and images dealing with cross-­species milk kinship in the Middle Ages, when wet nurses were not as organized as they were in Modern societies, and when most mothers still breastfed their own children (Morel and Lett 2006). These substitutions of women with goats struck me as I was preparing a paper with colleagues on animal breastfeeding (Dittmar, Maillet, and Questiaux 2011). Soon thereafter, the closest I experienced to being a goat or a cow was when I was expressing my own milk in order to give it to a milk bank, hoping it would help with feeding premature infants. Disappointed by the small quantity of milk expressed, I observed with concern the peculiar machine that was pumping in front of me, thinking of a farmer recording the decline in production in an old cow. Then I heard the cry of my own son waking up, and was surprised to see the milk flowing in the machine and filling the bottle at an increasing speed. From that moment on, I always expressed milk with him in the same room and filled the fridge with bottles of my milk, wondering how cows managed to do it without their calves. I did this for six months, the maximum time allowed by the milk bank. I felt as though I had a little milk farm at my place. This experience led me to reflect on what milk was, how it was produced, and what it meant to give milk to other beings. It was only from that moment that I experienced milk as an actual bodily substance, realizing that it was much more than food. I had a brief glimpse of milk when it was an unstable and rare substance—a far cry from the milk we see in shops, selling for merely a few dollars per plastic gallon. During the late Middle Ages, milk was indeed more than food. It was understood to create kinship, and as changing the very essence of the person who was drinking it. The origin of milk, the breast of a mammal, whether it be a human being or another animal, could not be as invisible as it is nowadays in bottled milk. Then, lactation and the transmission of milk signified a means of making and of understanding relational beings—humans, animals, and gods. Now it is useful as a conceptual tool to think “problems with women and problems with society” (Strathern 1988), as well of course as problems between species. More than any other food, milk had the power to transmit not only nutrition, but also filiation, character, and virtue, from the twelfth century when the Marian cult was exalted by theologians, to the beginning of the sixteenth century when naturalism became a central reference point. As Philippe Descola has shown (Descola, Llloyd, and Sahlins 2013), it is then that the ontological distinction between humans and animals gradually replaced a worldview based on analogies, particularly analogies between humans and non-­humans. I argue in this chapter that what we have forgotten about the relational links between milk producers and their consumers might help us in thinking about solutions for dairy issues today. The examples I give of milk as kinship-­making are mainly taken from hagiography (accounts of the lives of saints or sainthood candidates) and predication literature (sermons and examples of virtues gathered to help predicators in the preparation of their speeches). These sources show a distorted image of society in order to create a laity suitable for governance by the dominant institution in Europe, the Christian Church. But, as many scholars have shown, these texts not only functioned as models: they are often paradoxical or subversive; they give a glimpse of deviant behavior that could only 8

More than Food

work if embodied by marginal characters such as powerful single women, or men behaving like women (Bynum 1992; Patlagean 1976; Easton 2009; Karras 2005).

Milk as divine product Milk is blood, blood is milk (twelfth to thirteenth centuries) Medieval medicine conceived of lactation according to principles from the Galenic tradition, the most influential medical tradition inspired by the works of the Greek scientist Galen (129–216 ad) (Morel and Lett 2006). Breastfeeding, valued more if coming from the infant’s biological mother’s breasts, was thought to transmit a substance that was complementary to the blood that mothers gave the fetus in utero. Milk itself, according to Galen’s theory, is blood whitened in utero through the process of dealbation (literally: whitening of the blood) (Morel and Lett 2006; Dittmar, Maillet, and Questiaux 2011). It transmits some of the characteristics that blood transmits in the uterus, such as resemblance. The fetus continues to build itself after birth, and milk contributes to this process: “Milk is blood cooked in the uterus” (Lac enim sanguis est in uberibus decoctus) according to Jacobus de Voragine, a Dominican from the end of the thirteenth century, author of the collection of hagiographies, Golden Legend (de Voragine [1260] 1760: Sermo II; Jacquart and Thomasset 1988). The cult of the Virgin Mary, too, enhanced the spiritualization of milk. Mary was changed by her contact with her offspring as she developed compassion by breastfeeding him, just as much as the milk nurtured Jesus. Many examples of the importance of the lactating Virgin Mary (Virgo Lactans) can be seen on almost every wall of late medieval churches. The omnipresence of the Virgin from the thirteenth century onward led Jean Wirth to argue that an archeologist without any notion of Christianity would have thought of it as a cult of the Mother Goddess (Wirth 1989).2 To save souls from purgatory Mary usually shows her breasts to remind God/Christ that she has been feeding him her milk. Some miracles in the Christian tradition concern blood that turns back into milk: lac pro sanguine (milk for blood). In Saint Blase’s life, for example, dating from the fourth century and publicized around Europe in de Voragine’s Golden Legend (1260), one can read the description of the martyrdom of one of Saint Blase’s female companions: And one of them that had two small children ran hardily and took the smocks of linen cloth and threw them in the furnace for to go after herself if she had failed. And the children said to the mother, leave us not after thee, but right sweet mother, like as thou hast nourished us with thy milk so replenish us with the realm of heaven. Then the tyrant did do hang them, and with hooks and crochets of iron did do tear their flesh and all to rent it. Of whom the flesh was as white as snow, and for blood they gave out milk. Caxton [1260] 1900: vol. 3; de Voragine [1260] 2007: chap. 39 9

Making Milk

According to this narrative, the young martyrs were still breastfed not long before their torture, still “full” of milk. The miracle of wounds letting milk flow instead of blood was repeatedly mentioned by all the Dominican writers of Jacobus de Voragine’s time (Barry 1914). The miracle also occurred in the context of adult martyrdom. It was mentioned first in the Acts of Paul as reported by Jacobus de Voragine: And as soon as the head was from the body, it said: Jesus Christus! which had been to Jesus or Christus, or both, fifty times. From his wound sprang out milk into the clothes of the knight, and afterward flowed out blood. In the air was a great shining light, and from the body came a much sweet odour Caxton [1260] 1900: vol. 3; de Voragine [1260] 2007: chap. 85 At the end of the fifteenth century, manuscripts illuminating these scenes depicted milk flowing from every wound of the martyrs in Saint Blase’s life, whether they were adults, children, men, or women.3 Interestingly, a collection of exampla, i.e., a digest of anecdotes or stories presented as truthful and written for preaching purpose (Brémond, Le Goff, and Schmitt 1982) dating from 1320, the Ci nous dit (literally: “As it is said”), explains that the flowing of milk and blood from St. Paul’s wounds had different significations. Blood meant martyrdom whereas milk meant that St. Paul had remained a virgin in the face of temptation (Blangez 1979). The reference to the Lactating Virgin was accentuated to the point where milk became associated with virginity, whereas in real life lactation is linked to maternity and therefore to sexual intercourse. This is where Jean Wirth’s idea of Christianity’s depiction as a “Mother Goddess” should be nuanced. The image of the Virgin Mary often functions not so much to signify gender relations, but to build a complex duality between human and god, men and women, blood and milk. Male lactation (twelfth to fourteenth centuries) If milk can signify virginity, it is also linked to examples of lactation not at all related to pregnancy (Walentowitz 2002). Among the examples of lactatio agravidica (lactation without pregnancy), the most unorthodox is certainly that of the lactating man (Cohen this volume). From the twelfth century, the cult of the Virgin Mary influenced works of art with the apparition of the Coronation of the Virgin around 1140 (Camille 1996; Camille 1999; Wirth 2008), but also became a leading subject in preaching strategies. It led to, or was accompanied by, a great number of sermons—the most famous being the Comments on the Song of the Song by Bernard of Clairvaux (Clairvaux and Halflants 1971). To briefly explain, the Marian cult in Western Europe (mostly in France, the German Empire, England, and Italy) feminized Jesus Christ in order to emphasize the parallel of charity and suffering between him and his mother/wife. The Virgin Mary was identified in the Christian Church as being married to Christ (Baschet 2000: chap. 1). This identification first occurred in a series of texts rooted in Cistercian literature, in France and Italy, where 10

More than Food

the exploitation of Mary’s images was omnipresent, as demonstrated in Caroline Walker Bynum’s (1982) classical essay. The lactating man, though not impossible in real life (as Mathilde Cohen argues in her chapter in this volume) had a different significance in medieval spiritual literature. Lactating men abound in sermons written by the Cistercian monk Guillaume de Saint Thierry (1085–1158) and his friend and spiritual brother who became later a saint, Bernard de Clairvaux (1090–1153). The idea behind the lactating man is here again that the milk one drinks creates the person one becomes. Bernard de Clairvaux argues that bad Christians were fed bad milk, and good ones, better milk: Let the children of Babylon seek for themselves pleasant mothers, but pitiless, who will feed them with poisoned milk, and soothe them with caresses which will make them fit for everlasting flames; but those of the Church, fed at the breasts of her wisdom, having tasted the sweetness of a better milk, already begin to grow up in it unto salvation, and being fully satiated with it they cry [. . .]. Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter LXXVIII to Suger, Abbot of Saint Denis4 When his cousin flees to Cluny, the opposing religious order, Bernard of Clairvaux claimed to have been betrayed like a betrayed breastfeeding mother: “I have fathered you in religion by my example and my words. I breastfed you” (Letter 1).5 One century later, Saint Clare of Assisi had a vision of herself suckling Saint Francis’ breast, her spiritual father, and founder of the Franciscan order: “When she arrived next to Saint Francis, he showed a breast and told her: ‘come, take and suckle.’ ”6 In that vision, Francis is clearly flashing his breast, whereas in visual representations, it is more likely to find the Christ, and Saint Francis who received the same wounds, showing wound on his side rather than a breast. These so-­called double-­intercession images that appear later in the fourteenth century show in parallel Christ making blood flowing from his wound and the Virgin making milk flow from her breast (Walker 1985; Bynum 1987: chap. 8, figure 28). It is interesting to notice that aside from Jesus and his nutrient wounds, no images of breastfeeding men have been found in the late Middle Ages. For the front cover of his 1984 book about the folklore and hagiographical stories of lactating men, Roberto Lionetti chose a copy of Jusepe de Ribera’s 1631 Bearded Woman. The person depicted looks like a bearded man breastfeeding a chubby baby, while being in fact a celebrity— Magdalena Ventura—in seventeenth-­century Italy, giving birth to three sons before her beard grew at the age of thirty-seven.7 This sole portrait of a “breastfeeding man,” therefore, is not that of a saint, but of a very unusual commoner. Saints such as Saint Mammas (men who miraculously breastfed children to save them from starvation) do not seem to have been depicted lactating. It is as if lactation, despite its bigendered conceptualization in theology, could only be represented as the purview of women or female animals. Whereas Bernard of Clairvaux described himself many times as lactating in his written work, popular imagery represents him as being breastfed by the Virgin Mary. 11

Figure 1.2  Jusepe de Ribera, The Bearded Woman (La mujer Barbuda, Magdalena Ventura con su marido), 1631, Hospital de Tavera, Toledo, Spain. 12

More than Food

Cross-­species and adult breastfeeding: transgressions and miracles The morality of lactation: women and beasts (twelfth to fifteenth centuries) While representations of spiritual breastfeeding sometimes crossed the gender line, the most common and profane representations of lactation was typically gendered and culturally determined by species (human-­animal). In Romanic art (eleventh to twelfth centuries), the theme of women breastfeeding snakes is very common. It appears on some of the most beautiful column capitals in churches that are masterpieces of Romanic art such as at the Moissac and Vezelay Abbeys in France. Art historian Emile Mâle (1922) interprets this iconography as a representation of lust, but it might have meant more than that (Dittmar, Maillet, and Questiaux 2011). As Jean Wirth (2009) argues, women’s breasts were not linked to sexual life before the twelfth century. At the time, eroticism seems to have focused on the lower part of the body (legs and sex). Breasts were mainly seen as lactating organs, for which there were no restrictions on representation. Later, female dresses began to exhibit low necklines, which can be interpreted as an eroticization of breasts, but this did not happen before the second half of the fourteenth century. An exemplum dating from 1320–1330 still recounts that the women in hell suckled by snakes are those who refused to breastfeed orphans (Gobi 1991: chap. 250). The nursing snakes could have been linked to the penitence of bad mothers as early as the twelfth century, but it is difficult to prove as there are no testimonies from that period. The image of Clermont-Ferrand’s Bible is both cross-­gender and cross-­species. The lactating person, in a rigid position, is breastfeeding a snake as well as a naked human. The image should be understood within the context of the Gloss of the First Epistle to the

Figure 1.3  Saint Paul (?) breastfeeding a child and a snake, Bible, BM Ms. 1, f 452, twelfth century, Clermont-Ferrand, France. 13

Making Milk

Corinthians: Saint Paul hopes to convert to Christianity pagans (snakes) and Jews (humans). This representation operates a fusion between the iconography of the woman suckled by snakes and Terra Mater (Mother Earth), who has been portrayed since Antiquity as breastfeeding different kinds of animals. Milk becomes power in Saint Paul’s letter. During the same period, a woman who used farm animals to breastfeed a child would usually be depicted as being evil. Scientific writings linked the consumption of animal milk to bad behavior. The philosopher and doctor Michel Scot, in his Liber Physiognomiae (1230) writes that a baby breastfed by a sow acts like a sow and one breastfed by a goat jumps everywhere. This exemplum (moral example used for predication) is also found in fictional medieval literature such as “Renart le nouvel,” a thirteenth-­century late branch of the Roman de Renart (Reynard) (Badel 1980). This novel recounts a rich man who sends his son to a wet nurse. She starts breastfeeding the baby, but her milk dries up, so she substitutes a sow in her place. In one of the manuscripts, this scene is depicted as co-­ lactation (Dittmar, Maillet, and Questiaux 2011: figure  11). The wet nurse is richly dressed; her cornet hat is a symbol of elaborate hairstyle. The sow is shown as an almost wild animal, with long brown hair. The caption of the image is very explicit (Reynard: f. 38): “Si ke li norice fist I enfant alaitier le truie et le nori” (Here is how the wet nurse made the infant suckle a sow). “l’enfancon si tres bien nourist / cius lais k’eust fait autres lais” (the infant was very well fed as if by any other milk). But when he goes back to his parents, the baby’s first action is to jump into the mud: “Conme uns pourchiaus s’i touelloit/ Et en le merde fuëlloit” (Like a piglet he ran into it / in the shit he rolls). Although the example is meant to denounce the evilness of the wet nurse, it is based on the common belief of the power of transmission in milk. When did we stop thinking that drinking the milk of animals would result in the transmission of the animals’ characteristics to the children? Surely not before the beginning of the twentieth century. Before that, feeding children animal milk was a sign of great poverty. But at the turn of the century, wet nurses fell out of favor and mothers were encouraged to give animal milk to children (Faÿ-Sallois 1996). The miraculous milk given to adult saints and heroes (twelfth to fourteenth centuries) I have so far argued that the transformative power of milk pertained only to youngsters, commonly believed during the Middle Ages to be physically changed by the milk they drank. Does the significance of breastfeeding change in the unconventional circumstances where adults suckle other adults, or animals? A canonical case of adult breastfeeding is that of Saint Giles, a saint who lived during the seventh century and became widely popular after the twelfth century. Giles was no longer a child when he began his hermitage in the woods, feeding on a wild animal’s breasts. In William of Berneville’s version of the life of Saint Giles, this is described as a miracle (1170): Sirs, listen to this beautiful miracle. As he was at home, praying and adoring God in his leaf hut, Giles saw a wild doe coming to his hermitage. The doe which was of 14

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great beauty came directly at the entrance of the pit following the path it had found. It crossed the branches and penetrated fearless inside. Its udders flowing with milk, it crawled at Giles’ feet and offered its service. When he saw the doe at his feet, Giles was full of joy, because he knew god had sent it. During all the time he lived far from the world, he fed from the doe’s milk. Berneville [1170] 2003: 95–98 The king’s army then sees the doe in the woods, and the king asks what is creating so much fuss among the soldiers: “A doe, sir, and the most beautiful one I have ever seen in my life” (Berneville [1170] 2003: 95–98). Giles’ wet nurse is a doe, and it embodies the distinctive qualities of the saint. She never left his side. To thank the doe, the saint was hurt on her behalf when he deflected an arrow shot by the king’s army. Most of the images of Giles from that period depict his martyrdom with the doe at his side. She is with him, and he protects her against enemies. This scene is commonly referred to as a quintessential scene of domestication and breastfeeding. One very rare image of Giles suckling the doe is found on a wooden panel kept in the Orte Diocesan museum in Latium, Italy.8 The image figures among a series of paintings on wood assembled as a custos (the word describes curtains or panels used to close around the sculpture of a saint). The panels depict St. Giles when he was a newborn child. In one landscape scene dotted with tree trunks in the foreground, a doe can be seen suckling the child in the background. The doe is looking closely—perhaps carefully—at the child. Are they hiding behind the trees to indicate that a secret miracle is happening? Giles has become a lost child, abandoned to the forest like Romulus and Remus or King Cyrus, heroes from Antiquity who were frequently represented in the art of that time. This astonishing image is better understood when compared to the image situated directly on top of it, in which a mother (or a nurse) stands in front of an empty cradle. The child has been kidnapped, perhaps by a demon jealous of his future sainthood, just as Saint Stephen was in the contemporary book Vita Fabulosa (Marvelous Life) (Schmitt 1983). According to that legend, narrated by Jean-Claude Schmitt along with other stories of children substituted by changelings from the thirteenth century, the child disappears and is replaced by a demon—usually described as a horrible child crying all day long. This child would be saved by a wild animal, whether a lactating doe or a saint-­dog specializing in child-­healing. The fact that the scene was transposed from Saint Stephen’s life to Saint Giles’ (when the two saints have little in common) testifies to the imagination around both the representation of missing children and of adult and breastfeeding. Conclusion: time to drink human milk? Before the twelfth century, a breastfeeding woman mostly denoted allegories of a nourishing mother earth (Terra Mater) or of the Church lactating the Christian laity. The thirteenth century saw a shift in the conception of animality, turning animals from creatures ontologically distinct from humans to creatures living inside us, similar to us 15

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in some ways, gradually turning inter-­species breastfeeding into a moral issue. In Romanic art, women were punished in hell by having to nurse snakes, and bad nurses were substituted by farm animals. At the same time, wild animals could from time to time save a child or even a hermit from starvation as a gift from God, thereby earning the same virtues as those attributed to saints. Lactation is always depicted positively where men are depicted, both as producers and consumers of milk. These are but a few of many examples illustrating the complexity of the relationships milk could create by its consumption or its absence. I will conclude with an image of a well-­known transgressive breastfeeding event: “the Roman Charity,” painted once by Caravaggio and twice by Rubens9 (Raffaelli 1997; Maillet 2007). Unknown before the Modern Era, this event has a medieval history. It concerns the story of a man, Cimon, who is locked up in a prison but survives because he is breastfed by his daughter. Another version reports the same event, with an unknown Roman girl who breastfeeds her imprisoned mother. The story, dating from the Roman era, was narrated by Valerius Maximus and Pliny the Elder, and is associated by these authors with the construction of a temple dedicated to Piety on the Roman forum (Raffaelli 1997). This example was chronicled many times in medieval collections of exempla. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375), for example, the author of the Decameron, makes the anonymous Roman girl a heroine of his collection On Famous Women

Figure 1.4  Boccaccio, The Famous Women (Des Cleres Femmes), Ms Royal 20cv f. 102v, early fifteenth century, British Library, London, England. 16

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(Boccaccio [1374] 2001). In his rendition, the daughter breastfeeds the mother, reversing her kinship, while at the same time struggling against the authority of the state that condemns her mother to starvation. Here, milk becomes an instrument of revolt against the state. We have seen that the parallels drawn between the Virgin’s milk and Christ’s blood spiritualize milk production. In sermons and in images on the walls of churches decorated during this period, milk was presented as a spiritual substance, analogous to divine knowledge. At the same time, more profane descriptions of milk consumption and wet nurses demonstrate the misogyny of the time (when most medicine and moral treaties were written by men), tending to associate evil women with “bad” animals (snakes or pigs). Cross-­species breastfeeding could be interpreted ambiguously, as a sign of election when described for heroes and saints (Saint Stephen, King Cyrus, Romulus and Remus), or of animalization (e.g., where children sucking on sows or goats start acting like animals). The suckling of adult men by animals was described as miraculous salvation in situations of despair (e.g., saints in the forest, hermits in the desert). If milk has a strong power of transmission, what it can transmit changes considerably according to the context of the texts and images. Milk—and the consumption and production of it—has been a cornerstone of representations of what it means to be human.

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CHAPTER 2 FEMINIZED PROTEIN: MEANING, REPRESENTATIONS, AND IMPLICATIONS Carol J. Adams*

like Botticelli’s Venus, such a cliché for beauty, you don’t notice the sorrow right away Amy Newman On this Day in Poetry History1 Prologue: Venus in captivity A California billboard advertisement for a Greek yogurt product called “Clover” appeared in 2016. It depicts what we assume to be a cow (she has hooves instead of hands and feet), with flowing reddish-­auburn hair, some of which covers her genital area. She is standing on a shell, containers of Clover yogurt on either side, as waves of milk lap against the containers. The caption announces “Greek Moothology.” In what some would say is a clever borrowing from Western art, the advertisement imitates Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. The imitation echoes the structuring of Botticelli’s painting: the yogurt container on the left of the central figure is a substitute for the Western wind “caressing” the female figure, and the one on the right substitutes for a handmaiden offering to “dress her shy body.”2 But one major difference exists between the archetypal image of Western female beauty and the advertisement image (besides the obvious one of the substitution of bovine for human): Botticelli’s Venus has breasts; the cow figure has none. No mammary glands, breasts, udders—nothing conveys the very reproductive organ from which the advertised yogurt is derived. While the cow’s function is thus rendered absent, what is made present by this image is human femaleness, or at least a hybrid femaleness echoing human femaleness, without breasts. Making present human femaleness to illustrate the exploitation of cows has been a project of the animal rights and vegan movement for many years. This has led to a

*   Thanks to Mark Hawthorne, Tina Kolberg, Aaron Parr, Anne Zaccardelli, Camille Brunel, Aaron Parr, Adele Tiengo, Evalisa Negro, Cathy Goeggel, and many others for sending me images and for Kathryn Gillespie and pattrice jones for talking with me. A special thanks to Élise Desaulniers for letting me draw on her remarks at the Making Milk workshop in Paris, May 2016 for this essay. Thanks also to Mathilde Cohen and Yoriko Otomo, organizers of “Making Milk” and editors of this volume, for their support and encouragement of this essay, as well as their close editing of it, challenging me to engage with these ideas in depth.

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Figure 2.1  Greek Moothology, California, March 2016. Photograph courtesy of Mark Hawthorne. proliferation of exploitative images of women strapped to milking machines and other images that I see as retrograde that recapitulate oppressive representations rather than offering something liberating. In these cases, women’s breasts become the focus of attention; often shown being milked, or in a form of bondage.3 Through a close analysis of art and advertisements relating to cows exploited for their milk, this chapter shows how these anti-­milk advertisements mirror rather than challenge the exploitation of female bodies. The chapter also reminds us of what a feminist ethics of care for animals looks like, and proposes key tenets of a vegan ethics of care: attention, activism, acceptance of grief, and acknowledging interdependence. Vegans and animal rights activists who wish us to recognize the cow as a source of mother’s milk do so by making women’s sexual oppression disappear; women’s bodies become vehicles for conveying the oppression of cows, rather than being illustrative of interconnected oppressions. Unless, that is, they gravitate to the image because of the fantasy of receiving milk from a mother, a woman, in which case the image is functioning at both a conscious/activist level and at a sublimated level. Like the Venus cow in the image, maybe they want to be awash with milk.

1 For me, the arrival of the Cow-Venus echoes the first “Venus” I encountered in my work as I was excavating and interpreting patriarchal attitudes toward animals. The image that opens Chapter 2 of The Sexual Politics of Meat is Ursula Hamdress, a pig (either dead or 20

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Figure 2.2  AZ Quality Meat, Quality Meats Store Front, Brooklyn, N.Y., 2013. Photograph courtesy of Anne Zaccardelli of New York City.

drugged) who was posed like another Venus: Titian’s Venus d’Urbino. As with Botticelli’s Venus, and the Cow-Venus, Titian’s Venus, and her pig counterpart, use an appendage to cover their private parts. This act has a formal term in art: Venus pudica. Its etymological basis is the Latin pudendus that refers either to external genitalia or shame (or both). And the question arose for me with Ursula, as it does with our two art Venuses, are they covering themselves or calling attention to what is being covered? Last year, someone sent me an image in which the Venus d’Urbino was conflated with a cow. It is a billboard, and Titian’s Venus lies there, hand still leading toward her private parts, but instead of a woman’s head, a cow’s head glances toward us. “Quality Italian Steakhouse” the billboard announces. The vertical and horizontal lines of the paintings (and images) end up meeting right at those secret parts, covered by hand or hoof or trotter. As I described in my article “Why a Pig?”, Michael Harris’ Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation identifies several patriarchal structures that obtain in the visual representations of the female nude: the assumption of a white male perspective as universal and an appropriation of female bodies for male prerogatives (Harris 2003: 126). These are present in anthropornography, a neologism coined on my behalf by Amie Hamlin to denote the furthering of oppressive attitudes by the feminizing and sexualizing of animals and the animalizing of women (Adams [2003] 2015). Animals in bondage, particularly farmed animals, are shown “free,” 21

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free in the way that women are seen to be “free”—posed as sexually available as though their only desire is for the viewer to want their bodies. Anthropornography makes animals’ degradation and suffering fun by making animals’ degradation sexy. Simultaneously, it makes women’s degradation fun because to be effective the advertisement requires the implicit reference to women’s sexualized status as subordinate. Harris identifies compositional strategies that emphasize the visual availability of the woman being depicted, specifically a vertical line that thrusts downward to the vaginal area. Harris points out that this vertical line highlights the genital area of the nude woman. In fact, the composition of Titian’s painting also includes a horizontal line made by the arm of the woman. That line, too, moves toward the pubic area. (See my discussion of “Ursula Hamdress” and Harris’ ideas in Adams 2014: 208–24.) Titian’s Venus recalls an earlier Venus, Giorgione’s “Sleeping Venus,” or the “Dresden Venus.” Before painting his version, Titian helped to finish Giorgione’s painting. Mathilde Cohen pointed out to me that in the earlier version, “Venus is surrounded by a realistic landscape, which includes a farm house on a hill, connecting (perhaps unconsciously) female humans/animals. Art historians argue that Venus’ curves mimic the hilly landscape around her. In Titian’s version, this rural background is replaced by an aristocratic interior, though he may have been the one to paint the farm building in Giorgione’s version.” A sleeping woman, outside, amidst a pastoral setting is replaced by a wide-­ awake woman, in a bedroom. In industrial farming, cows too have been moved inside. With the yogurt and steakhouse ads, Venus becomes both mother cow (source of milk) and dead-­sex-object cow. The images do not sublimate or postpone her sexual attractiveness as much as sublimate and celebrate her implicit captivity (and death). The sexualization of dead cows isn’t restricted to the United States: an Italian restaurant ad featured a man in bed cuddling with a woman-­cow hybrid; like the Quality Italian Steakhouse, she has a cow’s head and a woman’s body. Notably, when feminists objected to the image it was removed, something that rarely happens in the United States.

2 Another image, the “American Venus” (Berressem 2015): Marilyn Monroe poses above a sidewalk grate circulating air that causes her white dress to lift up. It is another vertical pose, with her arms, like Botticelli’s Venus’s, placed above her private parts not to cover with her hair but to keep her skirt from exposing these parts. The advertisement that imitates this pose is for Fairlife Milk, “Milk with Flair.” Somehow (photoshop?), a blonde woman is dressed in cow’s milk that reproduces the flaring skirt of Monroe’s pose. Her left hand, too, seems to protect her private parts. In The Sexual Politics of Meat I coined the term feminized protein to call attention to the problematic use by humans of milk from cows and goats, and eggs from chickens. It echoed the term animalized protein that had been introduced by vegetarians in the United States in the nineteenth century to refer to products consumed from dead animals’ bodies. The point, in both cases, was to remind people that the protein pre-­exists 22

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the transformation through the body of an animal; it exists as plant protein, and the transformation (meat through animals’ bodies, milk and eggs through female animal bodies) should be acknowledged. The term “feminized protein” sought to call attention to the use of female animals’ reproductive cycles to produce food. Their labor is both reproduction and production. Though my book was subtitled A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory, in terms of my understanding of feminized protein, and its use and abuse of female bodies, it could have been A Feminist-Vegan Critical Theory. In conventional attitudes, these female animals disappear from concern; partly because they are alive and partly because they are female, and partly because so much of what they experience requires both visibility and empathy. In a letter to Sally Fitzgerald, Flannery O’Connor described a dairyman who, she wrote “calls all the cows he: he ain’t give but two gallons, he ain’t come in yet . . . I reckon he doesn’t like to feel surrounded by females or something” (Fitzgerald 1988: 27). As with O’Connor’s farmer, the experiences of females who produce feminized protein have disappeared. Indeed, their experience must be absent, like those signs of a lactating female from the Moothology billboard. Many advertisements for milk and other dairy products reconceptualize the relationship of milk production as being between the cow and us, not the cow and her calf. Feminized protein from other species that is sold to humans arises from a destroyed relationship between mother and child and signals our broken relationships with other animals. Advertisements for milk try to reconceptualize the relationship as not only as being between the cow and us, but, like the American Venus clothed in milk, between us and milk. Like her calves who are removed so that the milk can become a product, the experience of the cow must be hidden. Venus’s generative power—so influential in the history of the creativity of male artists—must be subdued. Just as the male artists enacted figurative control of women’s bodies through their art (Shaw 2000: 92), the industry that trafficks in cows and extracts milk from them literally controls the bodies of others.

3 Today’s cows used in the dairy industry produce 61 percent more milk than cows from only twenty-five years ago, due to genetic engineering, feed rations, and growth hormones (Carter 2012). Their udders must carry an extra fifty-eight pounds of milk. The cow’s bloated udders may force her hind legs apart, causing lameness. She will be restrained and forcibly impregnated several times during her brief life. During the first seven months of her pregnancy, machines continue to take her milk from her. Élise Desaulniers’s Cash Cow: Ten Myths about the Dairy Industry reports that this effort is equivalent to jogging six or more hours a day (Desaulniers 2016). After studying systems of female reproductive servitude and visiting “milking parlors,” exhibitions, and auctions where females are sold into captivity, Dr. Kathryn Gillespie of the University of Washington found relentless “sexually violent commodification of the female body” (Gillespie 2013, 2016). Gillespie described to me a cow she saw at an auction so lame that she collapsed, her legs splayed out 23

Making Milk

behind her. Unable to stand, her huge udders were crushed beneath the weight of her body. She was leaking blood and milk. For hours, she lay there. Her back legs were tied together to see if she could stand up. But she could not and at the end of the day, she would be shot.

4 Camille Brunel saw a postcard in Normandy and photographed it for me. It adheres to the trope of reconceptualizing the feminized protein relationship as being between the cow and us, or between milk and us. In the original image from the Second World War, Rosie the

Figure 2.3  “You Can Drink It!” France, 2016. Photograph courtesy of Camille Brunel. 24

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Riveter announced “We Can Do It!”; her noun and verb referred to the collective work efforts of women. With the “You Can Drink It!” postcard, the cow’s work at producing milk disappears, and the relationship is between the consumer and the product. Cows are always working. Bovi-Shield Gold, a pharmaceutical company, crafted an advertisement campaign, “If she can’t stay pregnant, what else will she do?” offering the ludicrous answer: a cow depicted as a dog fetching a dead duck for a hunter. Bovi-Gold suggests that the cow’s life would become unanchored, unembodied, imitative of other animals, not herself. In smaller print, it advises farmers: “Keep your cows pregnant and on the job.” Cows who are not pregnant are on the job—they are producing milk and it is being taken from them, two or three times a day. What is elided in the Bovi-Gold statement is that the pregnancy is needed because her milk is drying up. Decades ago, a cow’s pregnancy was one thing: a pregnancy. It was not also a time when her milk was taken. But production expectations mean that for 7/12ths of the year she is pregnant and lactating. For the cow the sphere of production and the sphere of reproduction are the same. In March 2016, a large grocery store chain located in the Northeast United States carried, in its weekly flyer, the “Benefit Package of a Dairy Cow” next to some of its discounted items. An introduction frames what is to follow as humor: Full disclosure: This is a light-­hearted column about the benefits of being a cow. Our milk supplier, Upstate Niagara Cooperative, presented it at one of our store training sessions, and I tucked it away for sharing fun and giggles with our customers at some point. Well, that time is here. We are reminded, again, that this is humorous. “Here’s the benefit package, tongue in cheek.” To start with, the cows receive full-­time pay for part-­time work. The work (of being milked) takes about 20–30 minutes per day. The employer provides paid medical coverage, with a doctor (veterinarian) on call 24/7, 365 days per year. Meals are prepared by a nutritionist, with room service and clean up every time. There is a full-­time housekeeper who even cleans the bathrooms. A paid team of experts is always available for these bovine beauties; hair dresser, pedicurist and spa facilities are provided. There is 24-hour surveillance. No need for online dating . . . there is mate selection provided through a directory of selective traits, and could be a different mate each year. All transportation is provided free of charge for a lifetime. So much is wrong with this description. Lost to their calculations is the work of producing the milk by the cow. A cow does not get to choose whether she has a mate or not; that is not negotiable, though the use of the term “mate” to refer to artificial insemination seems a stretch. Also elided is that when she is done “producing,” she doesn’t get a retirement package. She is killed. That’s where her transportation is taking her. Her “lifetime” lasts a grand total of two to five years. 25

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Twenty years ago, I used an ecofeminist analysis to discuss mad cow disease and drew on the work of Barbara Noske: While for the male home and work are separate, and for the female work is in the home as well, animal “workers” cannot “go home” at all. The modern animal industry does not allow them to “go home”—they are exploited 24 hours a day. In the case of animals the “home” itself has been brought under factory control . . . Indeed, it is often the sphere of reproduction (mating, breeding, the laying of eggs), which the capitalist seeks to exploit. Noske 1989: 17 I have previously suggested that “without the life span of the ‘working’ cow in Great Britain, the infectious agent would not have an opportunity to manifest itself. The average terminal animal does not live long enough to manifest the symptoms of the disease. It is only because dairy cows [sic] have a functional purpose when alive that they live long enough to manifest the symptoms” (Adams 2016b: 201). I no longer would use the term “dairy cows” because it accepts the dairy industry’s characterization of cows without acknowledging the injury that is their lives. Noske applied the Marxist analysis of the worker being alienated from the fragmented product to animals whose bodies are used for animalized protein and feminized protein: 1. Workers are “alienated from their product which embodies their own labour and of which they are dispossessed” (Noske 1989: 13). What further alienation from a product can there be than becoming the product itself? Animals forced to specialize in becoming “meat” are alienated from their totality. 2. Workers are alienated from their own productive activity, which does not belong to them. “The term productivity pertains to one particular capacity in isolation (for example, milk production), whereas an animal’s well-­being concerns the whole animal” (Noske 1989: 17). For instance, the cow has been forced to specialize in the labor of milk production. When she no longer can labor, her “productive life” is over. In Cattle Today (Terrell 2015), I found this chilling statement: “If a cow is not going to produce a calf every year, she’s simply a freeloader.” 3. Workers are alienated from species life. Noske (1989: 19) saw this operating in the isolation of humans from their integral relationship with nature, and with society. For animals, “capitalist industrial production has either removed the animals from their own societies or has grossly distorted these societies by crowding the animals in great numbers.” (We’ll return to this when discussing the mother–child relationship.) 4. Workers are alienated from surrounding nature. As Noske (1989: 19) observed, “The animal’s relationship to that part of nature which is to be its food clearly shows the extent of its alienation. Factory food is to a large extent alien and not suited to the animal’s digestive system.” A practice developed in which cows were fed other cows through rendered protein products became a dramatic example of this (Adams [1997] 2016a). 26

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5 Greek mythology often causes the mother to disappear, as with Athena, born from the head of Zeus, after he swallowed Metis. Venus is said to have sprung from no woman’s womb but from the heavens themselves. Pregnancy and delivery are painful, demanding, and messy biological processes. Better to think of goddesses who simply appear from the sea (the primordial female water, the uterine water) or the father’s head. When one rises from the sea, one doesn’t have a past, or a biography. A cow’s milk production is prompted by pregnancy and delivery, but any calf who drinks the mother’s milk prevents the product from reaching the market. The lacunae in the narrative about cows and milk (like the one authored by the Upstate Niagara Cooperative Dairy) is the wrenching experience of separation of the cows and their babies. In October 2013, residents of a New England town called the sheriff to report hearing strange noises. The headline for this story announced, “Strange noises turn out to be cows missing their calves” (Rogers 2013). The story explained: Strange noises coming from High Road near Sunshine Dairy Farm Monday night and into yesterday morning prompted local police to alert residents that there’s nothing spooky or scary going on. According to Newbury police Sgt. Patty Fisher, the noises are coming from mother cows who are lamenting the separation from their calves. The separation of mother cows from their calves is a yearly occurrence and is a normal function of a working dairy farm, Fisher said. “It happens every year at the same time,” she said. The tension in the article: separation happens, the dairy farm needs it to happen, but there are these laments. The cows are disagreeing with the human-­oriented narrative, interrupting the words and the sleep of humans. The article continues: Residents in the area of Sunshine Dairy Farm may notice loud noises coming from the dairy cows at all hours of the day and night. We’ve been informed that the cows are not in distress and that the noises are a normal part of farming practices. Note: The laments are not one-­time interruptions, continuing “all hours of the day and night.” The laments are downgraded to “noises,” because those who cause the distress are allowed to police themselves. The reassurance that these are normal farming practices contests with the lines of the first paragraph in which, counter to most newspapers’ practices, cows are referred to as “who’s” rather than “that’s” and the sheriff uses the anthropomorphic term “lamenting.” Robert Frost’s poetic career could be said to have started with his famous poem “The Pasture,” which appeared in the first pages of his first American collection, North of 27

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Figure 2.4  “Dairy cows who have had their babies removed from them, so that we can drink their milk, watch the new mother bond with her calf.” Photograph courtesy of Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals. Boston. He often began his readings with this poem. One discussion of this poem (Holman and Snyder) argues that “Frost himself often chose it to lead off his readings, using the poem as a way of introducing himself and inviting the audience to come along on his journey—a purpose for which the poem is perfectly suited, because that’s what it is, a friendly, intimate invitation.” The Pasture I’m going out to clean the pasture spring; I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha’n’t be gone long. —You come too. I’m going out to fetch the little calf That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young, It totters when she licks it with her tongue. I sha’n’t be gone long. —You come too. “You come too” takes on a different meaning when we comprehend he is describing something that is wrenching and truly awful (Hollis 2012). The mother with her licking tongue, taking care of her calf, must be transformed into a milk-­producing animal, whose role as mother of a specific baby is ruptured. A poem that describes the undesired 28

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Figure 2.5  “As the calf takes her first steps, the cows watch the humans warily.” Photograph courtesy of Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals.

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task of snatching a child from his mother—a child so young that he still totters as he stands next to her, as she licks him—has entered the poetry pantheon as a poem inviting us readers into the experience of poetry. Frost shows us the forced alienation of the worker from species and family life. Millions of Frost’s readers have missed this point. They think they are merely following him into a pasture; he was asking them to follow him to this unspeakable moment when a man takes away the calf from her mother.

6 In her response to this essay when it was presented in May 2016 as part of the “Making Milk” workshop, Élise Desaulniers found a connection between the denial of the mother’s speech and another myth. She wrote: We silence cows the same way we force women and minorities into silence. In a recent article called “The Public Voice of Women” (2014) published in the London Review of Books, Mary Beard says that, “An integral part of growing up as a man is learning to take control of public utterance and to silence the female of the species.” This has happened throughout history. Beard gives dozens of examples of women being silenced throughout history. The most striking might be in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This mythological epic about people changing shape is considered one of the most influential works of literature on Western art after the Bible. In this text, the idea of silencing women is often used in the process of their transformation. Io is turned into a cow by Jupiter, so she cannot talk about his infidelity. Cows are clearly telling us they are mourning their babies and they disagree with the situation but we turn away . . . Cows have a voice. An active voice. But we choose not to listen to it. If we think that cows and other animals are simply submissive victims it’s just because we force them to be silent and we don’t listen to them. We erase them the same way Io’s story was erased by Jupiter and the way so many women’s voices have been silenced. Women are told to shut up. Cows are told to shut up. Not only do we not listen to cows, we also replace their story with one we feel comfortable with: cows want to give us their milk, they want to get pregnant and give us their calf. Besides “The Greek Moothology” image, Desaulniers points to the La vache qui rit or The Laughing Cow, a brand of cheese, so happy to be exploited she’s laughing.

7 More than twenty years ago, a T-shirt was created for a vet school fundraiser for the graduating seniors. It showed a man (presumably) with his right arm stuck up to his 30

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shoulder into the cow’s rectum. He is forcibly impregnating a cow through artificial insemination. The website “wikiHow,” which prides itself on creating how-­to instructions to enable everyone in the world to learn how to do anything, provides an explanation of how to artificially inseminate “the Female Bovine.”4 It begins with these first steps: 1. Move the tail so it’s on top of your left forearm or tie it up so it will not interfere with the AI process. Raise the tail with one hand (preferably the right) and with the other (which should be gloved and lubricated), gently reach inside the cow to clean out any feces that may interfere with the process of feeling for and inserting the AI gun into the cow’s vagina. 2. Clean the vulva with a clean paper towel or rag to remove excess manure and debris.

Figure 2.6  “Hardest Part is Getting In!” Photograph of a veterinary school senior class fundraising T-shirt, 1995. Courtesy of Carol J. Adams. 31

Making Milk

3. Take the [AI] gun out of your jacket or overalls, unwrap it, then insert it at a 30 degree angle into the cow’s vulva. This is so that you avoid going into the urethral opening into the bladder. 4. With your left hand in the rectum of the cow (which should have been there to begin with), feel with your finger tips through the wall of the rectum and vagina the location of the end of the AI gun until you reach the cervix. Until the newest edition of The Sexual Politics of Meat, I included a discussion of the “rape rack.”5 I wrote: Rape, too, is implemental violence in which the penis is the implement of violation. You are held down by a male body as the fork holds a piece of meat so that the knife may cut into it. In addition, just as the slaughterhouse treats animals and its workers as inert, unthinking, unfeeling objects, so too in rape are women treated as inert objects, with no attention paid to their feelings or needs. Consequently they feel like pieces of meat. Correspondingly, we learn of “rape racks” that enable the insemination of animals against their will. To feel like a piece of meat is to be treated like an inert object when one is (or was) in fact a living, feeling being. The meat metaphors rape victims choose to describe their experience and the use of the “rape rack” suggest that rape is parallel and related to consumption, consumption both of images of women and of literal, animal flesh. Rape victims’ repeated use of the word “hamburger” to describe the result of penetration, violation, being prepared for market, implies not only how unpleasurable being a piece of meat is, but also that animals can be victims of rape. They have been penetrated, violated, prepared for market against their will. Yet, overlapping cultural metaphors structure these experiences as though they were willed by women and animals. Adams [1990] 2010: 82 In 2009, I researched the “rape rack” more thoroughly and reached out to animal activists who had been in the trenches for decades. The fact was, none of us could find other references. One longtime activist in a national organization wrote to me, “Never heard anyone in the dairy industry use this term, though I’ve certainly seen it in our movement’s literature. I presume it’s either not real, or it may have been used in the industry many decades ago.” In 2016, I interviewed pattrice jones for an article on the sexual exploitation of cows and she suggested that it was a term that was used informally among some dairy workers (we can imagine those doing this job coming up with a phrase like that), but when the animal rights movement began, we all started to watch for language like this and it disappeared. jones says, “Whatever word you use for this, it’s forced penetration by a foreign object of an immobilized female, and at least part of the purpose is an expression of power and control” (Adams 2016b: 3). 32

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In addition, jones pointed out to me “If a male cow mounts her and she doesn’t want to be mounted, all she has to do is walk forward, and he falls down. If she does want to be mounted, she positions herself to make it easier” (Adams 2016b: 2). Cows cannot walk away from their imprisonment in the animal agriculture industry. At the 2016 “Making Milk” workshop, Desaulniers explained that “I myself have never heard anybody in the industry referring to the insemination as rape. However, the word ‘rape’ is still very often used by vegan activists when describing the insemination of dairy cows. I’ve struggled a lot on the topic and chose not to use it in Cash Cow.” jones and Desaulniers, like many advocates, do not want the debate about what to call forced impregnation to cause us to lose perspective on the totality of the experience we impose on a cow: not just the sexual violence, but the reproductive slavery, the ongoing grief for each calf, the depletion of the cow’s body by being pregnant and lactating, the rough treatment that often accompanies her last days. My task became to update the most recent edition of my book (the 25th/Bloomsbury Revelations edition). I changed one of the sentences to read: “Correspondingly, female animals are forcibly impregnated, a reproductive slavery that is required to insure plentiful supplies of meat and cow’s milk” and removed the reference to the “rape rack” (Adams [1990] 2015: 35).

8 Back to Botticelli’s Venus: the vulva, art historians tell us, is represented by the seashell upon which she stands. In the discussion of how to artificially inseminate a cow, you can’t get very far without discussing the vulva. The vulva is there and not there. Represented but hidden by Venus’s hand; available to the gloved hand that reaches into the rectum, real but hidden, one aspect of availability. With dominance, what is in plain view through symbolism, the shell as vulva, is not unavailable at all, if one is a bovine.

9 Most of us do not realize it, but a conversation about female sexual availability has been going on for years, unobserved by the average person. This conversation features others making decisions for females about their reproductive power and is found in the pages of animal industry magazines; the leaders in this field are the drug companies pushing their products. A chicken thrusts her leg out like a stripper: it is an ad for a drug. A buxom cartoon pig with stockings, heels, garters, and lipstick fondling the medicine that is being advertised with the promise, “Lisa gives you one more pig per year.” Another drug. Cows, too, according to the narrative of the pharmaceutical companies advertising, need to be pregnant (remember the Bovi-Shield Gold advertisement). As reproductive rights for women are being rolled back, advertisements like these seem to be discussing 33

Making Milk

the reproductive expectations for both cows and women. Bovi-Shield Gold issued another ad in its series that asks the question, “If she can’t stay pregnant, what else will she do?” This one showed a cow sitting in the front seat of a fire truck. The unstated answer: She might be taking your job. In such representations, stereotypes about women’s reproductive functions and constructed sexual availability are framed through representations of cows. Such images provide permission to use and eat the cow while also contributing to encroachments on reproductive choice for women. Issues of women’s uncontrollable bodies resound as well: A burger restaurant in Manchester, England features a sexually desiring, “Filthy Cow.” A cow in a necklace, stockings, and heels (again with the stockings and heels), inviting through the image, “Come upstairs and eat me.” Their website shows a cow from the rear end, with fish net stockings and high heels. (If not nude, like Venus, there must be high heels.) A gif shows her opening and closing those back legs.6 In Italy, the drawing of the back end of a stockinged-­high-heeled cow was used to advertise a restaurant. In Hawaii, a pink-­hatted cow presents her backside to us. The cows are burdened by sexist cultural representation: they want to be made pregnant, they want to “give” their milk, they want to feed us, they want to be consumed.

Figure 2.7  “Porca Vaca,” Italy, 2014. Photograph courtesy of Evalisa Negro.

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Figure 2.8  “Cow at Hawaii State Fair,” Hawaii, mid-1990s. Photograph courtesy of Cathy Goeggel.

Do these attitudes create a climate in which women’s control of our own bodies is not seen as a legitimate right? What else would she be doing if she weren’t pregnant? The representations that have appeared to reinforce this message carry variations on the same theme: women sexualized, men as authorities, women as animals.

10 Over the past ten years, I have seen the arguments for veganism change. Feminist insights into the overlapping status of female animals and women (among other intersections) seem to have been reduced to harangues toward feminists, arguing that cows are raped too, and therefore feminists should be vegan. I understand that Internet memes are not nuanced, but issues concerning interconnected oppressions are. One of the egregious examples arising from vegan campaigns (and which feminist-­vegans rightly warn is triggering, so please take note) is an image showing a gloved arm forced into a milk carton turned on its side. In red ink on the milk carton are the words, “Got rape?” As one critic explains, “The repetitive performance of violence against women’s bodies is unhelpful, to say the least, in challenging the very real threats which women today face all over the world” (Jadalizadeh 2015). The critic continues, “Wholly ignorant and disrespectful to human survivors of sexual violence, 269’s poster designs reify violence against women, with rhetoric indistinguishable from Men’s Rights Activists. Their sheer disregard for the triggering aspects of their tactics and the violences they contribute to demonstrates [sic] either their overwhelming privilege, their ignorance, or a combination of both” (Jadalizadeh 2015). 35

Making Milk

One trope found now in vegan activism: a woman on all fours with a milking machine attached to her breasts. Of course, this fits into a pre-­existing narrative about women, the pornographic fetishizing of women in submissive positions. Sexualized domination had already gone there, showing women on all fours, and a fascination with the milk-­ producing function of the breast. As I worked on this essay, a new meme appeared, called “Tables Turned” reposted from the Facebook page for “Vegan Humor.”7 Women are shown, not on all fours, but languidly laying back on chairs as though they were getting manicures. Two are smoking. Each woman has milking machine nozzles attached to her breasts. Bipedal cows in blue jackets (having masculine attributes) are shown drinking milk. All of the women’s breasts conform to stereotypic pornographic fantasies about size and fullness. All are white and the three cows are Holsteins, which Mathilde Cohen has suggested might be a depiction of “dominant”/Euro races. Bikini panties do the work that the hands and hair and hoofs in the Venus depictions do. The artist has gone out of their way to sexualize these women: the cows could have been clothed in jeans, they could even have been clothed in tops: ask any nursing mother—we do not have to strip off our tops for a baby to breastfeed. Yet by sexualizing the function of women producing milk, they re-­inscribe what ostensibly they were resisting. If this meme were attempting to capture Noske’s description of the alienation of the worker from her own body that is dairy milk production, this is one epic fail. The experience of the cow, standing on concrete, not being able to move, separated from her baby, and later bound for slaughter, is transformed to women sitting around smoking and talking. It does not depict harm. Within three days, it had garnered over 1,200 reposts.

11 A grid I developed in 2009 may help to explain the problems with animal rights activists using sexist graphic imagery and metaphors to raise awareness about the lives of cows. I thought about it in response to Cary Wolfe’s proposal that within the dominant Western metaphysical tradition we need to think in more complicated terms than the human/ animal dualism. He identified four terms: humanized human, animalized human, humanized animal, animalized animal (Wolfe 2003: 101). Wolfe suggested that the humanized human and the animalized animal were ideological fictions. But, as I argue in the new afterword to The Sexual Politics of Meat, “I see his grid—when nudged— functioning to illuminate the sexual politics of meat. The humanized human in Western culture has been the white, enfranchised, property-­owning male” (Adams [1990] 2015). Casting individuals as animalized humans is usually influenced by race, sex, (dis)ability, sexual orientation, and class. The humanized animal is, for instance, the “pet,” the animal who has a name and is treated like the individual each one is seen to be. But Wolfe misses the underlying gender categories that are functioning in our representations of and treatment of the other animals, and how speciesist attitudes about other species influence the treatment of women: 36

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Figure 2.9  The sexual politics of meat grid.

Consider an image carried in the New York Times, shortly after The Sexual Politics of Meat first appeared in the early 1990s. The image was created for an article about low-­fat hamburgers. The artist’s mind associated “low-­fat” with “women on diets.” The image is of a thin—anorexic thin—calf, standing on her back two legs (Venus again), but this calf holds up a drawing of a cow. The message is like one of those weight loss ads (“I used to be an old fat cow, but now look at me”). This image was so potent in representing animalized women and feminized animals that I used it for the cover of my 1994 book, Neither Man nor Beast: Feminism and the Defense of Animals. Joan Dunayer (1995: 13) recognizes the fluidity in referent points: As a term for a woman, cow is, in anthropologist John Haverson’s words, “thoroughly derogatory” (1976:515), characterizing the woman as fat and dull . . . Exploitation of the cow for her milk has created a gender-­specific image. Kept perpetually pregnant and/or lactating, with swollen belly or swollen udder, the “dairy cow” is seen as fat. Confined to a stall, denied the active role of nurturing and protecting a calf—so that milking becomes something done to her rather than by her—she is seen as passive and dull. The cow then becomes emblematic of these traits, which metaphor can attach to women. Now we also have “Skinny Cow” advertisements, in which the cow has a tape measure around her middle, to reflect her thinness. These are not the issues cows have: these are size-­related issues in a fat-shaming society (Farrell 2011). Names associated with the female reproductive system become insults: Old cow, fat cow, pig, sow, hen, old biddy, and bitch all have negative connotations. Terms for women derived from females who have absolutely no control over their reproductive choices. In 37

Making Milk

2013, Democrats Organizing for America responded to new punitive and restrictive abortion laws with a meme showing a cow (only a cow, no women) asking “What do you call a female who is not allowed to control her own reproduction? LIVESTOCK.” Some animal activists thought it was a pro-­vegan, anti-­dairy meme. It wasn’t. It was comparing women to cows solely on behalf of women’s rights.

12 When Venus arises from the sea, she arises from violence and fragmentation. After Cronos castrated his father, Uranus, he threw his genitals into the sea. Out of these scattered body parts, Venus arises. As one scholar explains, “Venus, or desire, is produced from the foam, or excess, released in the act of cutting the father’s testicles from the body” (Johnson 2007: 9). Flesh eating also involves scattered body parts. When mad cow disease appeared, it was because cow’s bodies had been scattered and fed to other cows. The scattering of dead body parts has also contributed to the repeated outbreaks of E. coli 0157: H7. According to Eric Schlosser (2002: 205), “A single fast food hamburger now contains meat from dozens or even hundreds of different cattle.” Look closely at the photo of the bovine Venus: in the lower right corner, a Burger King sign lit up, a reminder of her future fate, her scattered body parts for sale.

13 In July 2016, I posted to my public Facebook page a screenshot of a do-­it-yourself ear tag for a cow from the Facebook page of “Uptrend Farm & Agriculture.” The ear tag read: “Bitch from Hell.” One could also read the comments of various farmers regarding cows they considered “bitches from hell.” They mentioned writing “slut” on one cow, or cheerfully sending cows that were aggressive toward them to the slaughterhouse. In less than two weeks, more than 900 people had shared my Facebook post. In the hundreds of comments that responded to the image, the women farmers who had shared the post were themselves referred to as “sluts” or “cunts” by individuals posting on my page thus engaging in the same degrading language as animal oppressors. In response to this image on my Facebook page, some commentators felt the farmers did not deserve to live, while one wrote: “I hope those bastards catch bone marrow cancer or burn alive in a oil fire.”8 In The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics: A Reader, Josephine Donovan and I identified what we believed to be the central components of a feminist ethics of care for animals: 1. It is wrong to harm sentient creatures unless overriding good will result for that creature. 38

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2. It is wrong to kill such creatures unless in immediate self-­defense of oneself or one’s immediate circle (those for whom one is personally responsible). 3. One has a moral obligation to care for those animals unable for whatever reason to adequately care for themselves, in accordance with their needs and wishes, as best one can ascertain them and within the limits of one’s own capacities. 4. Finally, one has a moral duty to oppose and expose those who are contributing to animal abuse (Donovan and Adams 2007: 4). The hostile responses to animal abusers such as the ones I cited above suggest the need for a vegan ethic of care. Drawing on objectifying and fragmenting language to attack animal oppressors participates in the same patriarchal ethical framework we are trying to undermine. Components of the vegan ethic of care would build on the principles identified by Donovan and myself. 1. Attention. A vegan ethics of care is always asking the question, “What are you going through?” This question is taken from a beautiful insight of Simone Weil who wrote, “The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, ‘What are you going through?’ ” She writes that this question is a recognition that the sufferer exists not as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from the social category labeled “unfortunate,” but as an individual, who “was one

Figure 2.10  “Calf Removed from Mother.” Photograph courtesy of Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals. 39

Making Milk

day stamped with a special mark by affliction” (Weil [1951] 1971: 75). The cows’ laments told us what they were going through. We need to listen. 2. Activism. Activism is as varied as open rescues, rescue work with shelters, fostering animals, activism against slaughterhouses, photojournalism, vegan education, and serving delicious vegan food so that others can encounter veganism in a safe space. Veganism itself is a boycott of a cruel system. 3. Acceptance of grief. Mourning is a given in an animal-­destroying culture. Grief is the gift of awareness. Because we care, we will feel grief. We won’t privatize it or be ashamed of it. The recent work of scholars such as Stanescu (2012) and Gillespie (2016) highlight the importance of acknowledging grief in one’s work and life as critical animal scholars. We must also acknowledge that cows experience grief and this grief, caused by human beings, is a valid ethical issue. 4. Acknowledging interdependence rather than valorizing independence and disdaining dependence. Rather than reinforcing myths of self-­sufficiency, we can affirm our interdependence. Recalling the insights of the ethics of care that none of us is truly autonomous, we can help others reinterpret our own and others’ needs, not as burdens on others, but as aspects of our interdependency (Adams, Breitman, and Messina 2017). Learning of cows who lament, I too lament. Each day there is lamenting. We notice the sorrow in the image of Venus and the sorrow of the cows and our own sorrow. Then we determine to do something about it. Acknowledging the sorrows is a part of freeing Venus and all of her sisters from the captivity of both material and discursive violence.

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CHAPTER 3 GROWING A NATION: MILK CONSUMPTION IN INDIA SINCE THE RAJ Andrea S. Wiley

Introduction India currently has the highest level of milk production and overall consumption of all countries (United States Department of Agriculture 2015b). A dairy culture of long standing, there are cultural ideals for milk intake and beliefs about milk’s salutary effects on human bodies. Despite recognition of India’s status as a major producer of milk for domestic consumption, the country has received relatively little attention in scholarly analyses of this food. In this chapter I describe the dairy culture that emerged in India, and consider how milk has been used in the service of nation building during three specific historical moments. First, milk became part of anti-colonial rhetoric starting in the late nineteenth century, as it was intertwined with cow protection efforts that were a rallying cry against British colonial rule. Second, in the post-Independence period, boosting milk production was central to a rural development scheme known as Operation Flood, supported by European and American milk “donations,” and later World Bank loans. Third, milk consumption has been rising markedly in India in the twenty-­first century, and I argue that this is part and parcel of India’s dramatic economic growth and rising political power on the global stage. Milk has a deeply entrenched status as a “special” food in India, and its privileged status is upheld by a variety of political, economic, and social institutions. I consider the ways in which this specialness manifests and is deployed to serve particular goals inherent to the three contexts described above. As I have argued elsewhere, milk’s special status derives—at least in part—from its biological qualities as a food (Wiley 2011, 2016b). As the sole food of nursing infants, milk supports their rapid growth through its nutrients, growth factors, and immunological proteins. When milk from another animal, especially a large-­bodied bovine, is drunk by children, it seems reasonable to assume that it should likewise support their growth and produce larger and taller individuals. Despite widespread and seemingly intuitive beliefs that dairy “makes children grow,” scientific evidence supporting this relationship is somewhat mixed; any relationship between dairy consumption and child growth seems to be limited to fluid milk, rather than dairy products in general, and to periods of rapid child growth (Wiley 2016b). Bovine milk’s close associations with bodily growth can be extended to serve a variety of social purposes, particularly those related to strength, power, or status. In addition to its connection to growth, milk has other cultural meanings, and in India these are related to

Making Milk

the cow’s sacred status for its majority Hindu population. However, this is complicated by the fact that most milk consumed in India comes from the more productive water buffalo, which has a decidedly lower religious and cultural status. I explore the meanings attached to cow and buffalo milk in India as they relate to milk consumption patterns, and how they have played out in relation to nation-­building projects.1 I start with a brief history of dairying in India, with an eye toward understanding historical milk consumption practices, and then turn to a consideration of how milk’s particular meanings have become intertwined with social, political, and economic dynamics during each of the historical episodes. As relevant, I compare and contrast with similar processes in the United States, the second largest milk producer and consumer, where milk is similarly understood to have special qualities, and enjoys a level of privilege not accorded other foods (such as government subsidies and an enduring presence in official dietary guidance) even while its consumption continues its decades’ old decline. Per capita milk consumption is now less than half of that at the peak in 1945 (~200 vs 400 ml/day), and well less than it was in the early twentieth century (~300 ml/day) (USDA/Economic Research Service 2012).

A brief history of milk in India The dairy culture of South Asia has deep roots. Archeological and genetic evidence indicates that zebu cattle (Bos indicus) were domesticated from a South Asian wild progenitor around 8,000 years ago in Northwest India (Chen et al. 2010, Fuller 2006). By the time of the early Indus Valley civilization (c. 3300–1300 bce; also known as Harappan culture), archaeological evidence indicates that they were being used for milk as well as traction (Fuller 2006). Harappan seals show the characteristic hump-­backed, dew-­lapped zebu cattle, as well as western humpless taurine cattle (Bos taurus) more commonly known in Europe (Achaya 1994). The water buffalo (Bubalis bubalis) is similarly indigenous to South Asia. Like cattle, wild populations were present in South Asia long before domestication, and by the time of Harappan culture, they were being herded and used for plowing, milk, and possibly meat. Goats and sheep are also found in Harappan sites, but whether these were milked is not clear (Fuller 2006). As the Indus Valley society began to fragment during the second millennium bce, remnant pastoralist populations began to disperse east and south, while Indo-European-­ speaking groups migrated in from the northwest and settled throughout the Gangetic Plain (Thapar 2003). These migrants were agropastoralists, for whom cows were a mainstay of their livelihood. Their oxen were used to cultivate grains and cows used for milk, and cattle were also eaten (Jha 2002). They produced an oral literature called the Vedas (~1500 bce and 500 bce) that was eventually transcribed into Sanskrit and which forms the foundational texts of Hinduism. The oldest Veda, the Rigveda, contains over 700 references to cows, who symbolize endless bounty or blessings. Cows were kamadugha, meaning “milking desires” or “yielding objects of desire like milk.” Throughout the Vedas there are also numerous allusions to cow milk, as well as some 42

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mention of buffalo and goat milk (Prakash 1987). These appear to have been consumed in several forms: as fluid milk, butter, cream, buttermilk, and yogurt (curd). Fluid milk was drunk fresh or boiled, and frequently mixed with spices. As Om Prakash writes in his history of food in ancient India, “Milk formed one of the principal ingredients of the food of Vedic Indians. Generally boiled cow milk was taken. It was used in preparing a mess with grains and a gruel with poached barley flour” (Prakash 1987: 12–13). Butter was made from the churning of curds and produced buttermilk as a by-­product, which was also drunk. The remaining fat was then heated and the remaining solids removed, forming ghee, which would have preserved milk fat for use during the seasons when dairy animals were not giving milk. Two kinds of cheese were also produced: a fresh cheese—possibly simply curds that have been allowed to drain and/or are pressed—and a harder, ripened form, but these were neither elaborated nor consumed as widely as curds, milk, and ghee. As populations from the Vedic period grew and expanded further into the Indian subcontinent, they formed more permanent agricultural settlements and city-­states, growing grains and pulses and keeping cows, buffalo, goats, and sheep in village settlements (Prakash 1987). While there was a greater emphasis on plant foods, milk and milk products retained a central position in the diet, at least from what is described in the Brahamanas, a series of commentaries on the Vedic literature. Milk and its products were one of the main food groups recognized, along with cereals, pulses, vegetables, fruit, spices, animal meats, and alcoholic beverages. This may represent one of the earliest forms of dietary guidelines, and current Indian dietary guidance looks very similar (albeit with vegetarian alternatives and limits on alcohol consumption). The value of cows was not limited to milk, and their other uses may have been equally or more critical to the livelihood of their owners. Bulls provided traction and their dung was a source of fertilizer and fuel. Furthermore, cows and buffalo were eaten. In the Vedic period cow sacrifice was practiced, but with the advent of Buddhism (600–400 bce) and its emphasis on ahimsa (doing no harm), killing cows for consumption or sacrifice declined, although there was no ban on their consumption after a natural death. There was some conflict in early Buddhism over whether milk drinking itself constituted harm, as the calf was deprived of its nourishment, but this view—perhaps not surprising in this cultural and culinary context—was ultimately abandoned (Jha 2002). Prohibitions on the consumption of cows gradually emerged during the early Common Era, but these were not specific to cows, as they encompassed meat consumption and animal slaughter in general (Olivelle 2002). As Wendy O’Flaherty Doniger (1980) has argued, during this time models for ideal Hindu devotee practices underwent a transition from sacrifice and consumption of bulls to milking of cows as models for the ideal devotee. Milk, curd, and ghee constituted three of the five sacred products of the cow for Hindus (urine and dung being the other two). By this time there is unambiguous evidence of milk being widely consumed as a beverage—whether fresh, boiled, or as buttermilk, whey, or with curd or spices of various kinds added. As Om Prakash (1987: 187–9) notes, “milk and its other products such as buttermilk were generally used as beverages” and, writing about the period from 300 to 43

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750 ce, “milk continued to be the favorite beverage in India.” The Chinese Buddhist monk Xuan Zang, who traveled extensively in north India in the seventh century, noted that milk, butter and cream were among the “most usual foods” (Prakash 1987: 148). Almost 500 years later the Italian Catholic missionary John of Montecorvino wrote “The people of India were scrupulously clean, feeding on milk and rice” (Prakash 1987: 163). There is mention of water as the common drink and that the poor subsisted on rice and pulses with butter, chapattis (flatbreads made from wheat), suggesting greater usage of ghee than fluid milk or curds among the broader populace. Milk, curds, and ghee continued to be important elements of South Asian food and drink despite the multiple changes in governance (by Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, or the British and other regional European colonial powers) and influences on cuisine over the course of South Asian history. While their presence in the diet is clearly noted by various observers, it is not at all clear how much of them were actually consumed, and thus there is no baseline against which to judge contemporary patterns of intake, or compare with other contemporaneous dairying societies. As cuisines developed regionally over the vast subcontinent, milk and milk products were featured more prominently in northern and northwestern cuisines than in those of the east or south, where fish, rice, and, in the south, coconut milk were key ingredients in the diet. By the twentieth century though, reports consistently note a stronger emphasis on dairy in the north, with greater production and consumption of milk and other dairy products (Khurody 1974, Wright 1937). During the British colonial period (“The Raj,” 1858–1947), there is little mention in administrative documents of dairy as an important indigenous food until the twentieth century, despite the fact that this food must have seemed familiar to the British colonists amidst the myriad aspects of Indian life that seemed strange and quite foreign. But with a view toward expanding export commodities and expanding a market for British goods, the new rulers likely overlooked dairy as a largely non-­exportable, locally produced, and familiar foodstuff. Furthermore, British rule was punctuated by famines and periods of unrest, causing government institutions to focus on boosting production of grains rather than dairy products. In 1916 the first dairy animal census was conducted by colonial officials, and this was followed by a flurry of interest in commercial dairy production and processing, as these enterprises were taking off in Great Britain at the same time (Atkins 2010). But a major lament in discussions of the South Asian dairy industry was the low productivity of Indian dairy animals, particularly cows, which was paralleled by modest intake of milk and milk products among local populations. The “Wright Report,” a very thorough report authored by Norman Wright (1937) on the state of milk production and consumption in India, provides estimates of these during the late colonial period. Based solely on what would have been available based on per capita production, Wright estimated a per capita intake of 7 ounces [~190 g] per day, inclusive of all dairy products, the lowest of all of the major milk-­producing countries at the time (see Table 3.1). While he considered this to be inadequate in terms of the needs of the population, estimates from dietary surveys showed substantial socio-­economic and regional variation in levels of intake, ranging from much greater levels (400 to 500 g) to virtually no regular intake. 44

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Table 3.1  Wright’s (1937) estimates of national milk production and consumption in selected countries Country

New Zealand

Milk production, 1930–34 (million gallons)

Population (thousands)

Daily per capita production (ounces)

Daily per capita consumption (ounces)

870

1559

244

56

Denmark

1200

3551

148

40

Australia

1049

6630

69

45

Canada

1580

10377

66

35

Switzerland

607

4066

65

49

Netherlands

970

7935

54

35

10380

122775

37

35

France

3150

41835

33

30

Great Britain

1474

45266

14

39

Italy

1050

41177

11

10

South Asia/India

6400

352838

8

7

USA

Regardless of the precision of the amounts reported, it is clear that overall intake in India varied by geographic and economic circumstances, and, compared to other dairying countries during the same period, consumption was relatively low. It is worth questioning what the norm for milk intake should be, given that most of the world’s populations historically did not consume any milk. In the United States, recommendations during the first half of the twentieth century were on the order of one liter of milk per person per day. In fact, this is the amount that was available for daily consumption for each individual in the United States during the 1930s, although actual consumption was less than half of this. India’s per capita intake seems low by comparison, but the country’s dairy production and consumption have long been compared to the United States or northern Europe rather than other large Asian countries such as China, where milk had virtually no presence in the diet until the early twenty-­first century (“India’s Food Problem” 1936). Given the existence of a clear preference for milk and milk products and an abundance of dairy animals in India, the comparison with the West seems apt. However, it begged the question of whether it was poverty, geography, animal husbandry practices, or cultural biases that seemed to limit milk intake. Wright made India’s low consumption levels relative to those of wealthier countries with strong dairy traditions the foundation of his recommendation for increasing milk production as an agricultural priority in India. He noted that even with a lower “Indian Standard” of 15 ounces [430 g] of milk (to meet a 16 g requirement for “first-­class [e.g., animal] protein” per capita, which itself was far less than the European standard of 37 g). The importance of milk to this recommendation was emphasized in relation to the high 45

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prevalence of vegetarianism and overall low meat intake in India, in contrast to Europe where animal protein was more commonly available and consumed. “In fact, in a country with as large a vegetarian population as that of India, the consumption of milk per head should be higher than in countries with large meat-­eating populations, like England and Sweden” (“India’s Food Problem” 1936: 627). Furthermore, while the lower requirement for Indians was admittedly “somewhat arbitrarily fixed at a low figure in order to make it a feasible standard under Indian conditions” (Wright 1937: 4), it was also obvious to Wright (1937: 6) that consumption was tightly related to income. “There is no doubt that the Indian appreciates the value of milk, and that if he has sufficient means he will increase his consumption of this food.” Thus, Wright’s view was that milk production needed to increase substantially, but he emphasized that this would be ineffective at increasing consumption unless the price was lowered or incomes were raised. But there was little optimism that either could be achieved. Dara Nusserwanji Khurody (1974: 7), who had long been involved in dairy marketing in India, remarked in his retrospective book on the Indian dairy industry that “If one goes through the volumes of literature on dairying and animal husbandry in India, the theme on every occasion has been the same, namely that ‘India has too many poor cattle, they produce too little milk, its price for the consumer is very high for the little quantity of the adulterated quality per head that he can get, etc.’ ” Echoing these laments was a 1936 article in The Economist, ruminating on what came to be known as “India’s food problem”—insufficient domestic production to feed the large and burgeoning population. The author noted, “Clearly, the most important task confronting the social reformer who seeks to make India’s food supply satisfy decent standards of nutrition is to increase milk production in India. The increase has to be as large as 100 per cent . . . This is not as hopeless a task as may appear at first sight. India has a large stock of milch cattle” (627–8). The author recommended diverting cereals from humans to bovines in order to boost production, a strategy that has remained controversial under more recent milk-­production schemes, and among contemporary food systems analysts who see the inefficiencies and higher cost of converting grain to animal products rather than having humans consume grains (or proteinaceous legumes such as pulses or soy) directly (Godfray et al. 2010). Thus, the poor productivity of South Asian ruminants and widespread poverty came to be seen as the key limitations to what economists and nutritionists viewed as the desirable end of increasing dairy product availability and consumption, and this view persists well into the twenty-­first century.

Sacred cows and milk in Indian Independence movements Much has been written about why Hindus sanctify the cow, with debate in the social sciences over whether this religious ideal reflects a material benefit (i.e., its benefits outweigh its costs) to those who followed this mandate, or it serves the interests of those with political and economic power, or whether it is a logical extension of Hindu 46

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cosmology (Diener, Nonini, and Robkin 1978, Harris 1966, Freed et  al. 1981, Korom 2000). This debate resonates in current political and economic affairs, including state and national legislation that aims to punish cow slaughter in an ostensibly secular (and multi-­religious) country or in economic policies that provide greater incentives for buffalo rather than cows in dairy production. Leaving the details of the debate aside, the question is how milk consumption is related to the sacred cow motif, and how these were both deployed in anti-­colonial rhetoric in the late nineteenth century and in Gandhi and others’ pro-­independence efforts in the first half of the twentieth century. Frank Korom (2000: 190) has argued that the cow serves as a “key symbol” uniting the disparate beliefs and practices that characterize Hinduism, and that cow worship is the expression of “a central belief that the cow is good, whole, pure, and embodying all aspects of the cosmos within her.” Cows are symbolically linked to the earth and to mothers, which both have life-­giving properties, and the five products of the cow are considered inherently pure and are used to maintain the purity demanded by religious practice and caste separation. Hindu scriptures identify the cow as the mother of all civilization, with its milk nurturing its people. Importantly, while the “cow as mother” motif is a key theme in Hinduism, there is no—and apparently never has been—cow goddess, and sculptural representations of cows are scarce relative to those of bulls. The closest thing to a cow goddess is Kamadhenu, who is worshiped indirectly through veneration of cows (Lodrick 2005). Cow protection is underpinned by the principle of ahimsa, and the institution that realizes this ideal is the goshala (“a place for cows”). Goshalas have diverse forms and purposes, and are found throughout India, but all recognize the religious significance of cows and provide resources for their care. Many of the cows are beyond their economically useful days, but others are kept for milk production and then live out the rest of their lives there (Lodrick 1981). Female cows are commonly associated with Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, the preserver of the world. Krishna is often represented as a mischievous child-­god with his hand in the butter jar or as the divine cowherd (Krishna Govinda), consorting with the gopis (cow maidens). Krishna has pan-India popularity, and according to Lodrick (1981: 66), his divine child form “holds a tremendous popular attraction in a society traditionally viewing the prime role of women to be the bearing of male children.” In contrast, the bull is the vehicle of Shiva, the god of fire and fertility, and the Great Destroyer. It would appear that the association of bulls with Shiva and cows with Krishna, along with the absence of a cow goddess, serves to dilute the feminine, milk-­giving properties of cows and aligns them instead with powerful male Hindu deities. Cow protection movements gained their impetus in the nineteenth century in the writings of Swami Dayanand Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform organization (Saraswati 1889, [1932] 1975). In Gokarunanidhi, Saraswati framed cow protection as essential to health and prosperity, invoking the concept of dharm, meaning the natural order of things (Saraswati 1889). As Cassie Adcock (2010: 303) maintains, “Dharm was translated throughout in terms of the common good, measured in material terms and produced through harmony with scientific and natural principles,” rather than referring to a “religious” doctrine per se. The argument was made that “to kill cows brings 47

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harm to all the world (samsar). When cows are protected, milk is abundant and therefore inexpensive; dairy products are accessible to the poor, who eat less grain; all people produce less excrement, meaning fewer ‘insalubrious gases’; the result is a decrease of disease and an increase in the happiness of all” (Adcock 2010: 302). During the time of the Raj, appealing to religious sentiment could not be the foundation for a petition to protect cows due to its ostensible commitment to the principle of religious toleration, but employing the concept of dharm provided a broader “public health” justification for cow protection. Given other writings of the Arya Samaj that derided the British, Muslims, and those outside the caste system (such as Dalits [Untouchables]), all of whom could be charged with using cows for beef, the plea for cow protection could easily be—and often has been—read as an attempt to assert a pan-Hindu identity and political agenda (Adcock 2010). But it also referenced the scarcity of milk as a cause of misery and poor health. Cow worship and protection gained force in the agitations leading up to Indian independence in 1947. Mahatma Gandhi made cow protection part of his agenda: Mother cow is in many ways better than the mother who gave us birth. Our mother gives us milk for a couple of years and then expects us to serve her when we grow up. Mother cow expects from us nothing but grass and grain. Our mother often falls ill and expects service from us. Mother cow rarely falls ill. Hers is an unbroken record of service which does not end with her death. Our mother when she dies means expenses of burial or cremation. Mother cow is as useful dead as when she is alive. We can make use of every part of her body her flesh, her bones, her intestine, her horns, and her skin. Well, I say this not to disparage the mother who gives us birth, but in order to show you the substantial reason for my worshipping the cow. Gandhi 2001, originally published in Harijan, September 15, 1940 For Gandhi, cow protection was an essential and fundamental aspect of Indian life; he emphasized both the economic and spiritual benefits of cows as reasons for their protection. This view was invoked in an effort to motivate and unify resistance to British rule, which had allowed cow slaughter. The imperial government, coming from a culture that viewed cows solely as a source of dairy products and meat, showed little sympathy for cow worship, and cow protection became a rallying cry against British rule (Adcock 2010). The cow was further mobilized as a potent symbol of an independent “Mother India.” According to historian William Gould (2004: 78), in the politics of late colonial India “the concept of ‘mother cow’ could be twinned with the often used depictions of ‘Mother India’ and the life-­giving, pure qualities of cow’s milk could be associated in the minds of audiences with the purity and strength of the nation.” Thus, the cow’s symbolism could expand beyond the religious to become a nationalist icon, but importantly, this was facilitated by portraying the cow primarily as a source of milk. As illustrated in Figure 3.1, unlike the cow per se, milk was pan-­religious, uniting the diverse faiths in India with the common goal of an independent India. 48

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Figure 3.1  The cow as Mother India: “Her precious milk nourishes Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians alike.” Originally published in Himal Magazine, January 2011. Photo courtesy of Patricia Uberoi, Delhi.

Milk’s particular benefits as a food to promote physical growth and strength were being hailed in the early twentieth century in other countries (Wiley 2016b), and these, along with concerns about milk scarcity, became intertwined with cow protection movements. As Charu Gupta (2001: 4296) noted, “The cow was now [in the 1920s] more directly linked with building a strong nation, a nation of Hindu men who had grown weak and poor from lack of milk and ghee. For a body of healthy sons, cows became essential . . . Like a mother, she could feed her sons with milk, making them stronger.” Furthermore, the need for protection and improvement of cows to produce milk would correct “the poor physique of many of the population” (Home Poll 1922, quoted in Gupta, 2001: 4296). Stunted growth of Hindus was attributed to the shortage of cows, created by the British predilection for beef and Muslim sacrifice of cows in celebration of Bakr ’Id (Adcock 2010). Thus, links between cow milk, national strength, and physical growth were articulated as India moved toward statehood. Shortages of milk were decried, but despite the greater milk productivity of buffalo, the cow proved a more compelling symbol around which the Independence movement could rally. However, after Independence the cow did not persist as a national symbol—instead India’s national emblem was taken from the Lion Capital erected by the Emperor Ashoka. Three lions sit atop a wheel, on which there is a relief of a bull, elephant, horse, and lion. The zebu cow, often undernourished and giving little milk, did not provide a compelling symbol of the hopes and dreams of the new nation, and more powerful animals are used to represent independent India. Indeed the cow, the animal so closely associated with India, has been conspicuous in its absence on 49

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international magazine covers that showcase India’s rise to global prominence over the past twenty years (Parameswaran 2011). While cow protection efforts emphasized cows as sources of valued milk, the facts that buffalo produce the majority of milk and milk fat, and that buffalo are prized more for their milk than are cows, have been a challenge. Buffalo are considered inauspicious: “unclean, unlucky and a bad omen . . . associated with death, disease, and demons” (Hoffpauir 1977: 227). In Indian mythology, evil is often represented by water buffalo, which also serve as the vehicle of Yama, the Hindu god of death. In contrast to the cow, within whom all the gods dwell, Yama’s fortress is filled with buffalo (Hoffpauir 1982). Gandhi lamented his compatriots’ preference for buffalo milk: I am amazed at our partiality for buffalo milk and ghee. Our economics is short-­ sighted. We look at the immediate gain, but we do not realize that in the last analysis the cow is the more valuable animal. Cow’s butter (and ghee) has a naturally yellowish colour which indicates its superiority to buffalo butter (and ghee) in carotene. It has a flavour all its own. Foreign visitor’s cow’s milk they get there [sic]. Buffalo milk and butter are almost unknown in Europe. It is only in India that one finds a prejudice in favour of buffalo milk and ghee. This has spelt all but extinction of the cow, and that is why I say that, unless we put an exclusive emphasis on the cow, she can not be saved. Gandhi 2001, originally published in Harijan, February 8, 1942 Gandhi framed the superiority of cow milk in both nutritional terms and as a religious mandate. Curiously, as Gandhi was a champion of indigenous Indian village traditions, he also intimated that European usage of cows provided another justification for the consumption of cow milk and the protection of cows. This sentiment is echoed in recent cow protection rhetoric. A 2008 article in The Indian Express describes how a government-­ sponsored cow donation program in the state of Madhya Pradesh clashed with the state’s dairy federation, which insisted that there was a much greater market for buffalo milk than cow milk. The government commission under the political leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party, a conservative Hindu nationalist party, balked. As the report noted, “When the commission learnt that cow’s milk would be mixed with buffalo’s and then sold, its chairman Babulal Jain put his foot down. ‘Cow’s milk is the elixir of life. Those who consume it become energetic and smart unlike buffalo’s milk, which produces lazy people’ ” (Ghatwai 2008).

Operation Flood—the “White Revolution” Increasing milk productivity remained a government priority after Independence, as part of an effort to bolster domestic agricultural production and foster rural development. The economic rhetoric of the time emphasized poor dairy productivity as a problem in and of itself, and hence emphasized investments. As a result, there was no plan to boost 50

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milk consumption among the poor, whose intake was well below any norm, as it was assumed that increased consumption would flow naturally from greater milk production and economic development projects to boost household income, which would, in turn, allow latent desires to be realized. These efforts came together in a dairy development scheme that ultimately led to India’s twenty-­first-century status as the world’s largest milk producer: Operation Flood. In the late 1960s, the Indian dairy industry was targeted for expansion using donations from European countries and the United States under the auspices of the World Food Program (WFP). The dairy industries of Europe and the United States had been expanding dramatically in the twentieth century, which had resulted in a vast surplus that threatened to destabilize local milk prices. The WFP was a way of disposing of this surfeit without causing the collapse of local dairy industries, and it served an ostensibly humanitarian purpose. Although initially WFP milk was intended to be used as food aid to bolster the supply and reduce the price of milk in India, the chairman of the Indian National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), Verghese Kurien, who also happened to be a director of the largest milk producers’ union in the state of Gujarat, persuaded the WFP to allow his union to reconstitute and sell the milk and invest the profits in expansion of India’s dairy industry. The dairy industries of Europe, the United States, and India, whose markets would have otherwise been inundated with milk, driving down the price of locally produced milk and reducing profits to dairy farmers and processors, were all protected by this arrangement. The consumer’s interests were not (George 1985). This initiated the first phase of “Operation Flood” (OF), whose stated goals were to: make more milk available, at reasonable prices, to urban consumers, including vulnerable groups (pregnant and nursing mothers and young children); enable dairy organizations to identify and satisfy the needs of consumers and producers such that the former’s preferences could be fulfilled at a fair price and the latter could earn a large share of the consumer price of milk; improve productivity in dairy farming in rural areas to achieve self-­sufficiency in milk, with special emphasis on small farmers and landless households’ incomes; remove dairy cattle from cities; and accelerate development of the dairy economy (George 1985). Although originally intended to be a five-­year project, it was extended another six years, and then phase II continued for another six years, with an expanded number of cities, a World Bank loan, and the removal of the WFP as the intermediary. Phase III (1985–1996), which also was supported by a World Bank loan, further expanded milk procurement and marketing efforts, and the current six-­ year National Dairy Plan “Mission Milk” is also financed in large part by the World Bank and aims to boost productivity further by improving cow breeds using foreign bull semen. Increasing milk intake among those with the lowest levels of consumption—i.e., the poor—was only partially one of OF’s goals. There was no concerted effort to lower the price of milk to make it more widely affordable, and urban populations were privileged. Evidence, including that provided by the NDDB, indicates that OF had little if any positive impact on per capita consumption or increased milk intake among the most 51

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vulnerable (Doornbos, Stuijvenberg, and Terhal 1987; George 1985, although see Atkins 1988). Instead, there were widening disparities in milk intake between the rich and the poor and between urban and rural populations. It had been assumed that increased milk production would generate more milk for consumption within rural households with milch animals, or more cash from the sale of milk, which could be turned into milk purchases. However, prices were kept relatively low to encourage milk purchases among urban consumers, and rural farmers’ incomes did not necessarily rise from participating in the cooperative scheme of OF. Moreover, households were encouraged to sell fluid milk, rather than just butterfat for ghee, leaving no residual dairy products such as buttermilk for their use. Even among villages in the most productive milk sheds in Gujarat (home state of Kurien’s Amul dairy cooperative), consumption remained low; in one such village average consumption was 108 g/day, ranging from 53 g among the poorest families to 299 g among the wealthiest (George 1985). As a consequence of OF, India is now the largest milk producer in the world, and while current per capita production levels now roughly equals the modest dietary recommendations (300 ml/day), consumption is still well below this, especially for rural and impoverished citizens, and consumer demand is expected to continue to grow (National Institute of Nutrition 2010, Kumar et  al. 2014). Furthermore, despite the expansion of the dairy industry supported by OF and subsequent World Bank investments, milk never became part of any nationwide programs to provide milk to mothers or children, as became routine in the United States, where the federal government subsidizes milk in school feeding and public health programs (such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children). In India, the government-­ sponsored Midday Meal Program and the Integrated Child Development Scheme Supplemental Nutrition Program provide only grains and pulses for pre-­school-age children. Thus, while India may indeed be a major dairy producer and there are widespread cultural supports for milk, there is no political will to make milk a cornerstone of consumption and have India join the ranks of the milk-­drinking nations. Nor have there been concerted efforts to make such highly valued foods as milk available to the poor. Verghese Kurien was awarded the World Food Prize in 1989 for OF, both as a rural development project as well as for its role in making India the largest milk producer in the world, along with several other international awards for these activities. However, as the Food and Agriculture Organization commented on OF in the early 1980s, “For some time to come, milk and milk products will probably continue to be consumed by the more well-­to-do people” (Food and Agricultural Organization 1981: 62). Despite recent dramatic economic growth and gains in average income, roughly one-­third of the population is still considered impoverished and India accounts for 25 percent of the world’s hungry population.2 It also has the highest rates of child stunting in the world: the 2005–2006 round of the Indian National Family Health Survey indicated that 48 percent of children under the age of five years were stunted in height and 40 percent were underweight, with higher rates of stunting among rural than urban children—51 percent versus 40 percent (Kanjilal et al. 2010). Boosting milk production does not appear to have brought India’s populations into alignment with other dairying 52

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countries in terms of consumption levels and body size. But then again, the role that milk actually plays in the public health of dairying countries is not at all clear (Wiley 2016b).

Milk consumption and India’s political and economic growth in the twenty-­first century As Figure  3.2 shows, India’s milk production soared, beginning in the OF years, and outpaced that of the United States in the 1990s. Overall fluid milk consumption has also risen, albeit at a slower pace, and similarly surpassed that in the United States. However, with a population that is over three times the size of that of the United States, per capita analysis is more revealing. As demonstrated in Figure 3.3, in India, per capita production tripled from ~100 to 300 g/day between 1970 and 2015, while consumption rose from 44 to 130 g/day during the same period. In contrast, US per capita production remained fairly steady at 700–800 g/day while intake declined from 350 to 250 g/day during that same time period (United States Department of Agriculture 2015b). These data come from industry milk availability reports and are therefore likely to overestimate individual consumption, but they also confirm that production well outpaces consumption in India, despite laments to the contrary. But it is also the case that production barely meets recommended amounts in the Dietary Guidelines for Indians (National Institute of Nutrition 2010). National data indicate that milk consumption is about 30 percent greater in urban than rural areas, and positively associated with socio-­economic status (National Council of Applied Economic Research 2014), just as it was in the preIndependence period. In sum, dairy industry analysts note the following current trends

Figure 3.2  Total production and domestic consumption of fluid milk 1965–2015. 53

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Figure 3.3  Per capita milk intake or production, 1970–2015 (g/day).

in India: (1) milk intake has been rising, though it is still well below US or European levels; (2) fluid milk makes up an increasing proportion of overall dairy intake; (3) the demand for milk is rising, driven by increasing income and urbanization, and is part of an overall increase in demand for animal products; and (4) as incomes rise among the poor, their demand for milk will increase and drive consumption trends in the future. What has been driving these twenty-­first-century increases in fluid milk consumption in India, and how do they relate to India’s current nation-­building projects? It is important that these trends be contextualized by the radical changes in economic policies that occurred just prior to the twenty-­first century. While post-Independence economic policies had continued an insular Gandhian emphasis on developing and protecting indigenous industries, economic liberalization in the 1990s led to a rush of foreign imports, as well as rising employment and incomes coming from foreign companies taking advantage of relatively cheap labor in India and seeking to expand their markets. In particular, Western brands and foods became widely available, albeit affordable only by those in the rising middle and upper classes. India’s economy expanded at a rapid rate, and continues to do so. Its geopolitical power has likewise surged. It is amidst these political, economic, and dietary shifts that milk consumption began to soar, all the while it continued to decline in other traditional dairy strongholds such as Europe and the United States (Wiley 2011). India’s upwardly mobile urban citizens are embracing milk through their own expenditures, as evidenced by growing levels of household purchases and consumption (Kumar et al. 2014). At first glance it seems puzzling that milk consumption should be part and parcel of the consumption desires of India’s rising middle class. Milk is, after all, a traditional food, and a longstanding component of rural and urban diets. That said, more common milk preparations such as curd or buttermilk are losing out to fluid milk, whose consumption is rising faster than traditional dairy products (Kumar et al. 2014). 54

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And given the rhetoric of the twentieth century of poor milk productivity and milk scarcity, it may be that easy and routine access to it symbolizes the end of such deprivation for those able to now afford it. While milk may have the status of an “age old” food in India, it is also allied with Western diets. It has long been a part of diets in Europe and the United States, and while consumption has been declining there, it remains a ubiquitous feature in home refrigerators. It is also notable that milk advertisements aimed at India’s English-­speaking middle class tend to use Western cows. Set amidst a verdant meadow of grass, Holstein cows, the classic black-­and-white cow breed that was domesticated in northern Europe, are featured rather than the beloved, distinctive humped zebu cows that are native to South Asia. In general Holsteins are a much larger and heftier breed than the zebu and are more prolific milk producers, and it is these Western cows that are seen as a means to boost Indian milk productivity. While it may seem surprising that the Indian dairy industry does not make greater use of familiar motifs such as the zebu cow, which also has strong Hindu associations, the fact that water buffalo milk production predominates due to greater productivity is one obstacle. In addition, India has a sizable Muslim population (~140 million; ~14 percent of the total population) and strong nationalist Hindu political movements. The dairy industry must be careful not to incite communal antipathy by using religious symbols in its marketing. Large Indian dairies such as the pan-India “Mother Dairy” brand play on some familiar—but not divisive—and unifying nationalist themes. But in the wake of economic policies that opened the doors to multinational corporations (including Nestlé or Danone), milk, which is to date still predominantly a domestic product, could use Western motifs as a way of “modernizing” or “globalizing” its image. This has the further effect of decoupling milk from its traditional (and perhaps “old-­fashioned”) roots, instead linking it to India’s full-­fledged emergence into the global political economy. It may also be that the larger size and vigorous appearance of the Holsteins relative to the scrawny zebu cow is the key symbol here. By extension, these Western cows may also symbolize larger and more robust Western mothers, feeding their developing youngsters with more copious quantities of healthful milk. In other milk advertisements, child growth is heralded as a natural outcome of consumption of milk from these cows. One particularly direct ad campaign in circulation in the early 2000s from the national milk cooperative Mother Dairy featured a variety of children dressed in oversized adult professional clothing, with the statement in bold, capital letters: “The Country Needs You! Grow Faster” (Figure 3.4). Milk’s link to growth allows it to fulfill this nationalist demand. Complan, a fortified milk powder sold by Heinz, comes with a height measuring guide on its packaging, and maintains a website (www.complanforgrowth.com) that highlights the ways in which Complan enhances growth. Promotional materials available there include the statement: “Complan provides ‘All round growth’ over and above ‘Height’ increase for your child. It ensures that children receive the exact amount of nutrition they need to keep growing, keep experimenting, and keep healthy!” Larger, more productive cows, and larger, wealthier citizens mark a distinction between the United States and northern European countries and India. A large body (in 55

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Figure 3.4  A Mother Dairy milk ad from India emphasizing milk’s contributions to faster growth and development, c. early 2000s. 56

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height and weight) is symbolic of the West and of social and economic success. But do Indian parents perceive and therefore serve milk as a means for their children to attain larger sizes? My research in Pune, a large city in the central Indian state of Maharashtra, on the relationship between milk consumption and different aspects of child growth revealed that most mothers interviewed (seventy-­six in total) believed that milk promoted growth. Almost one-­third said that if a child didn’t drink milk, the child would be weak, lack strength, or have weak bones, and almost one-­quarter said the child’s growth in height would be compromised (Wiley 2014, 2016a). In addition to these physical effects, many believed that milk drinking would enhance cognitive development. While equal numbers of children drank cow as they did buffalo milk, cow milk was generally considered better for cognition, while buffalo milk was better for growth and strength. This is consistent with popular sentiments that cow milk can make you smarter, but buffalo milk makes you bigger, but dumber, much as buffalo are larger, but considered to be less intelligent than cows. It is also in line with common beliefs in many cultures that the qualities of the animal or woman providing milk can be transmitted to the child (Radbill 1976). Western nutritionist messages seem to have caught on here as well, with many mothers specifically referencing the nutritive qualities of milk (calcium, vitamins, protein) as the source of its growth- and health-­enhancing effects, although few mothers mentioned protein as milk’s primary contribution to their children’s diets, despite this being the nutrient often considered limited in Indian diets. What do parents expect from greater size and cognitive performance among their children? Greater height is an important and overtly preferred characteristic for spouses of each sex (Smits and Monden 2012, Wiley 2011). Marriage is a means by which families may enhance their social and economic status, and height is a measure of the success of individuals and their families. Height is associated with higher socio-­economic status in India (Deaton 2008, Komlos and Lauderdale 2007). It is widely utilized in public health discourse as a convenient index of population health, and wealthier countries have taller average populations across the globe (Deaton 2007, Deaton and Arora 2009). A healthier population is defined as one in which children are allowed to reach their genetic potential for height, rather than being stunted through the combined effects of heavy infectious disease burdens and undernutrition (Subramanian, Özaltin, and Finlay 2011). Notably, average heights for men and women in India are ~155 cm and ~152 cm (Deaton 2008), among the shortest in the world, and about 12 cm shorter than men and 10 cm shorter than women in the United States (McDowell et al. 2008). If milk is thought to enhance growth in height, consumption of it may be encouraged by parents with this long-­term goal in mind. Thus, we would expect milk advertisers to target children, and play up the benefits of milk to growth. Indeed they do. Children have been the target of milk marketing efforts since the inception of public health discourse about the value of milk in the United States, and are front and center in efforts to bolster milk consumption in India. The “Mother Dairy” ads were noted as among the first in India to target children themselves (“The country needs you”) as consumers and the lack of the usual references to health or purity (Rai 2006). As children are icons for the future and national and family aspirations are projected onto them, enhancing their size, 57

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robustness, and intellectual skills is viewed as essential. Advertisements aside, dietary guidelines in India strongly recommend milk, especially for children, and seek to establish a normative basis for milk consumption (National Institute of Nutrition 2010). Given its positive correlation with socioeconomic status within and between countries and the way in which it serves as a symbol of distinction between wealthy and poor countries, height is a potent metaphor for and marker of power differentials. The fact that politically and economically powerful nations currently tend to have the highest levels of milk consumption and the tallest citizens (and the latter is often seen as the natural consequence of the former) creates a package of meanings for milk as a “modern” food, one essential to success in the twenty-­first century (Wiley 2011). Moreover, in India, research indicates that the linkage between cognitive performance and height is more than twice as strong as it is in the United States, suggesting that better nutrition in childhood is crucial (Spears 2012). Cognitive performance in turn is linked to greater job opportunities, and upward mobility. That milk might enhance both of these in one glass is a powerful motivator to provide children with milk. Restricted access to milk due to price or availability provides a justification for the dairy industry’s continued expansion, and if the growth, strength, and wealth of its citizens is enhanced as a result (despite the lack of government assistance in this effort), it will be further evidence of India’s political and economic ascendance. Thus, the linkage between milk, growth, strength, and success resonates from the individual, family, and household to the national level.

Conclusion Because of milk’s “special” qualities, which seem to attach primarily to its fluid state, it has been deployed in India in a number of “building” projects in India: individual bodies, families, the dairy industry, and the nation-­state. The particular meaning of milk in relation to these projects has varied, but the growth motif is a common thread. Milk’s means to build a strong independent nation in post-­colonial South Asia utilized the trope of the Hindu sacred cow, which could stand in as the mother of civilization, nurturing its emergent citizens. It was cow protection movements mounted in resistance to the British (and Muslim) predilection for beef, which were also meant—at least rhetorically—as a way to ensure enough milk to grow the emergent nation’s citizens, although zebu cows were known to be poor producers compared to the non-­valorized buffalo. Poor growth due to food scarcity or lack of affordability combined with infectious diseases of childhood made milk’s growth-­enhancing qualities especially attractive. Large and powerful citizens were needed to build strong nations—in the United States milk consumption reached its apex during the Second World War and was marketed at the time as a way to maintain the strength of soldiers and civilians at home (Wiley 2016b). Milk also has long been used as part of social reform movements. In the mid-­ nineteenth century, access to clean, uncontaminated milk was seen as a solution to the 58

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problems of urban poverty in the United States (DuPuis 2002). Milk was similarly used as a means to “grow” the rural economy and reduce rural poverty in newly independent India under the auspices of OF. This ushered in India’s dominance as a milk producer, but a lack of political will failed to make access to this food a priority and consumption continued to lag well behind levels deemed desirable by nutritionists and public health reformers, as well as the poor. Similar to the United States, the primary destination for milk procured from rural areas was the cities, whose consumption was privileged over that of the countryside. The rural poor have been left behind even though boosting dairy production would have seemed, on its surface, to have been a means to enable greater access to it. Interestingly, although it is the largest producer and consumer of milk, in India there has been no attempt to build a national identity around milk even in the wake of OF. Instead, in 2012 Indian newspapers asserted that tea would be named the national drink by April 2013, but in the end the commerce department declined to do so in order to avoid conflict between the coffee and tea industries (which are geographically aligned with the South and North, respectively). Amul, India’s largest dairy, which markets itself as the “taste of India,” did plead for milk’s status as the national drink: “Milk is the world’s original energy drink for all age groups and for all healthy nations. . . . Everybody knows milk is the national drink” (Rupera 2012). The tea industry responded by noting that tea was much less expensive than milk, and a traditional drink served to guests (Press Trust of India 2012). The alignment of milk consumption with national health is not new, but currently fresh milk consumption is rising among the Indian middle class to build citizens with larger sizes and résumés to match the growth of Indian political and economic power in the global realm. Milk is promoted to enhance growth and development in India—to solidify India’s position among the world’s “growing” superpowers, and as a “developing” nation, but this promise exists—along with the myriad other contradictions of modern India—while problems of poverty and stunting remain entrenched. Whether milk—as a special food—is a solution to these in any way remains to be seen.

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PART II MAKING MILK: TECHNOLOGIES AND ECONOMIES

CHAPTER 4 UNRELIABLE MATRIARCHS Melanie Jackson and Esther Leslie

Introduction Milk is an ur-­substance, an originary substance (Cassirer [1907] 1994). It is the first substance to enter the mouth, to touch the tongue, to fill the belly. It is the first fluid to be incorporated into the body outside the womb. Pure white milk is an ideal-­type or a norm and, as such, it is a product of our fantasy, just as it is a product of industry. Milk possesses various forms and properties. It can be liquid, solid, powder, emulsion. It can be poured, pressed, molded, cast, extruded. It is formless, but can take on any form. It takes on shapes, the shape of the vessel, or the shapes pressed into it when in solid form. It is indexical. Milk’s uniform white color is achieved by separating all of its constituent molecules then recombining them in complex formations. If we disrupt milk’s turbid surface and explore the practices and properties intrinsic to milk preparation—of separation, recombination, and homogeneity—we can mobilize milk as a “filter” through which to explore more broadly how relations between human and non-­human entities, gender, representation, law, technology, and abstraction are set in motion. Milk helps us form our first words and catalyzes a language that is quickly adapted to a language of cogitation and communication, forming a social and cultural matrix of metaphor: skim, condense, homogenize, express, churn, curdle, culture, sour, combine, separate. Milk is polymorphic with an inclination for promiscuous collaboration—whether it be with bacteria, with cartoon avatars, with economics, pornography, racial politics, or genetic re-­calibration. Recombination emerges as a methodological question too—combining different approaches, materials, histories, and disciplines in order to ruminate on milk’s meanings. Milk thus acts as a spectrometer—an apparatus that can reveal to us the defining characteristics of an epoch. To perceive the shapes within milk, the ways in which it has been shaped over time, is to give oneself up to its minglings, its combinations and recombinations with myth, social norms, social fantasy, cultural, and practices. It means to conceive its expressability, its capacity to be images, to seep into language and be made metaphorical. It means to observe its capacity to be extracted and abstracted. It necessitates thinking about the ways in which an orientation towards separation—from the body, from suppliers—have fed into its becoming abstracted for capital, into data, into something limitlessly re-­ producible and separate from or other to itself. The Abrahamic religions overflow with milk’s sweetness, its nurturing power and metaphysical transmissions (Maillet this volume). In Gaston Bachelard’s ([1942] 1999)

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phenomenological account, water is a dream liquid, cleansing, pure, as fluid as the imagination. But milk—opaque, catalytic, combinatory—flows in more directions. It seeps into our social fabric and freezes into discernible forms. Its opacity makes of it a screen that reflects back a cornucopia of meanings. Milk’s busy activity is associated both with restful sleep and nightmare visions. Milk is a complex liquid, lending itself to reformulation, regimentation, and innovation—the rules of the nanny and the boss, the technologist and the venture capitalist; to every kind of flow that the economy demands. For a pre-­modern order, it was life giving and productive—think of the Greeks and Israelites as herders. Life, milk-­ sustained life, is linked to fate and destiny. The land that flows with milk and honey was a specific reference to the homeland of a herder people—Canaan was good land for dairy herds. This bountiful land became the very model of a life sweet and fulfilled. Contemporary idiomatic language is replete with spilt milk, milk sops, milk runs and milk routes, milk and water, running dry, milking it for all its worth—all expressions of negativity, weakening, and exploitation. They signal something of our contemporary dis-­ ease with anything that evokes dependency, Dependency is an abject state in an age dominated by a capital form that despises welfare, but thrives on precarity (Bell 1997: 45–57). There is, then, a milky language that speaks to our emotions, our socialization, and our hopes. Can we extend this milky language to help us articulate what milk means, how it produces and generates meaning? Although milk is a primal substance, it is also a substance that is ever invented anew, socially annexed, fraught. Milk has generated a busy activity of human and bovine transformations. Historically it has formed the basis of thousands of products. The geographical specificity of different articulations of cheese is notable. Different cows, different grass, different bacteria, different air and soil and nutrients, different vessels and practices. Its multiplicity is also evident in the variety of forms that it is shaped into in today’s modern, industrialized dairy environment. In frozen, liquid, and powder forms, it is the matter of infinite innovation. It is dairy turned airy—in ice creams that swell up with nothingness injected. It teams up commercially with a bestiary of cartoon avatars, and a dazzling spectrum of synthetic colors. It is frozen into colorful crystals with personality, in a crowded frozen treats market, whose products bear ever fewer tangible relations to milk. Concoctions of partially reconstituted skimmed milk concentrate, sugar, vegetable oil, whey powder, dextrose, emulsifier (mono- and di-­glycerides of fatty acids), and color adopt the shapes of superheroes, cartoon villains, baroque architectonics, and human body parts. For marketing purposes the cow is often replaced by wily, smart-­talking animals and apocryphal consumers of milk—cats, rabbits, mice—leaving only a vestigial hint of its animality, a sign of the interspecies promiscuity of milk.1 The ontology of donor species collapses as it re-­forms into consumable biomass. Milk’s capacities can also be signaled as weaknesses that can be overcome—for example, ultraheat treatment to prolong milk’s life. Lactose-­free, omega-3-enhanced, full fat, low fat, no fat. Its various forms are met by its invariant standardization. It is refined, homogenized, monetized, mechanized, and modernized. It is processed and 64

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Figure 4.1  Blue Bunny Ice Cream Co. Frozen Superhero Confection Bars, 2016. Courtesy of Anna Echiverri.

recombined to extend its functionality. The Mcflurry, Mr. Whippy, Dairy Queen Blizzard, Cheese String, Dreaming Cow, Laughing Cow, Skinny Cow, Crusha, Marvel: These dairy icons perform both health and the abuse of health; an array of high-calorie, high-fat, low-calorie, low-fat, high-sugar, sugar-­free, highly processed glimmer with techno-­scientific, multi-­color, hedonistic appeal. They are the product of aggressive marketeering, low margin, highly complex modes of manufacture—they are seemingly transgressive yet are utterly pervasive, hyper-­normative products. These products pitched at young people and children collaborate with a plethora of high-energy animated avatars and mascots in ecstatic reverie, weaning children from the breast and the bottle, in a sugary addictive lure. The dairy products pitched at infants, or rather their mothers—in the form of formula milk—continue to proliferate in an ever-­ expanding market and are one of the few products on the market said to be immune to economic cycles. Cow’s milk is one of the most technologized liquids on the planet and appears in recombination not only as food, but in fertilizers, airport de-­icers, bottle labeling adhesives, methane, ethanol, anti-­wrinkle agents, shampoo, hand cream, floor leveling, leather finishing, paper coating, concrete, and cement. It appears as supplements and catalysts, emulsifiers and surfactants. Milk re-­enters the human body surreptitiously, as concentrates and isolates, in the form of whey protein, to be incorporated into the muscle mass of male bodybuilders (Audic, Chaufer, and Daufin 2003). This technologized body of milk is at once a site of redemption and annihilation. 65

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Figure 4.2  The Lick, 2015. Melanie Jackson. Courtesy of the artist.

Industrial metaphysics Separation is a capacity within milk (Selia dos Reis Coimbra and Teixeira 2016). Milk is separated from cream, curds from whey. Separation is at work in the distancing or abstraction of milk from the female mammal’s body by various means. It is a primary process in the dairy milk industry, where calf is separated from cow, and milk is extracted from animals for human consumption. Separation more broadly occurs between nature and culture, commodity as exchange value from object as use value, and it occurs in the dualistic approach whereby object is separated from subject. Separation is also part of the process of individuation. Separation is our situation. We separate from our caregivers, having passed through the nexus that milk provides. Milk extracted or abstracted is a liquid representation of an annihilation of nature over time. In producing cows’ milk for humans, there is no seasonal cycle related to gestation. Through adapted breeding cycles, genetic and hormonal adjustments, there is instead the endless time of ever increasing and ever adapted milk yields. This is the time of the market, production, and circulation. Production time is decoupled from the idea of limits and insists that what is profitable is available at all times (Hammer 2011: 46–8). Milk flows across the political body, its stream an emblem of progress and the perfectability of modern times. Situating it as infinitely available, fresh, white, aseptic, and central to the adult Western diet became a driving quest of modernity, articulated in enough contexts to make of it a narrative. The mass industrialization of milk was a mode of industrial metaphysics: an abstraction from its associations with female human and non-­human animal lactation, and 66

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transformation into an industrial staple. It is a fluid that flows through contemporary distribution networks, and helped to bring them into being. How does the mechanization of milk position the cow as source of the milk? As doubled form—a product of pastoral fantasy and the bio-­politically invaded. The source of milk, whether bovine or human, has to be regulated, access to supply guaranteed, subject to regulation and laws (Cohen 2017a, 2017b). The availability of milk exemplifies the mass operations that often invisibly, or in peripheral vision, guarantees the social reproduction of our existence. Dairy is the industry that has pioneered the application of big data, assisting milk’s accelerated abstractions into chemical components, economic actions, and bodily manipulations. It has provided a model for other industries to generate their algorithmic futures (Madrigal 2012). Milk is enmeshed industrially in various operations that shape it metaphorically and abstract it from the producing body. But the producing body of the milk giver is no simple entity. It is monstrous. It refuses. It takes on other shapes. For example, humans have engaged and imagined other milk suppliers, which take on the shape of unusual caregivers. In myth, a nanny goat was said to have nursed the baby Zeus and a she-­wolf fed Romulus and Remus. Between myth and rumor, Wild Peter, who appeared in North Germany in 1724, was covered with thick hair, said to have grown as a result of him suckling from a bear—he imbibed with the milk his nursing mother’s characteristics (Douthwaite 2002: 22–5; Maillet this volume). Recent gene-­sequencing research into milk produced by cockroaches for their live young showed it to be four times more nutritious than dairy milk (Banerjee et al. 2016). Proposed as a protein-­rich “superfood of the future,” such developments extend our relations to the non-­human. At various times in history, breastfeeding appears as an animal act, suitable only for those who live amongst animals and are themselves more animal-­like. Whereas in the pre-­modern period the animal aspects of breastfeeding were acknowledged such that images of interspecies nutrition were available, the modern period introduces a series of separations and divisions of class and status, and a philosophy of Humanism dependent on hierarchies of beasts and humans, as well as within humankind, which render these problematic (Fraisse 1994: 120–1). Why would a woman of status wish to turn herself into a Milchkuh (milk cow)? The breasts of poor women were hired out to feed the children of wealthier women in Europe. Wet nursing was considered an acceptable occupation of working-­class and non-­white women—whose bodies were deemed closer to those of animals (Schiebinger 1993). In eighteenth-­century Europe, breastfeeding was unfashionable amongst the aristocracy and rising middle classes. Ladies believed it would ruin their figures, spoil their health, and interrupt the endless rounds of card games, visiting, and theater trips. Aristocratic women’s nipples were considered “vestigial” as were male nipples—organs transcending their original venal qualities (Gould 1993; Cohen this volume).2 There was not always someone to pay women to suckle babies who had been orphaned and were brought up communally in philanthropic institutions such as the Foundling Hospitals of the eighteenth century. Animals often sufficed to perform this role (Fauve-Chamoux 2000: 631). Abandoned syphilitic children, for example, suckled 67

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Figure 4.3  A Woman Is Holding a Baby Who Is Drinking Milk From a Goat, Photographic Postcard, c. 1930. Courtesy of The Wellcome Library, London.

from mercury-­infused goats and other creatures (Fletcher 2011). Today’s plastic bottles have teats rather than nipples too, linking these artificial feeding mechanisms to what has now become an alien practice: cross-­species wet nursing (Maillet this volume). The scarcity or supply of milk is a long-­standing issue and through its exigencies, breast milk is made moral, venal, and metaphorical. Breastmilk is taken possession of in so many ways. The breast and its capacity to produce nourishment might signify the transcendent or the bestial. In either case, there is a separation off from the human. The French draftsman Honoré Daumier made several images of women nursing. He entered a sketch for a state-­sponsored competition in 1848, to define the painted face of the Republic. His sketch is of a classically dressed woman in white robes, seated indoors with children feeding from her exposed breasts. It is almost a direct transposition of Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, with the armed defenders of the Republic depicted as (atypically older) suckling children. Liberty is now tethered to a chair, flag rolled at her side. The image suggests that it is the duty of women to nurture the citizens of the state. No longer bare breasted in the throes of revolutionary struggle, they now have reproductive duties to the state. Captured in this abstraction of official art as instruments of the state, milk-­laden breasts become metaphorical. It is no coincidence that in the new Republic actual women were no longer able to institute feeding networks and informal networks of wet nursing became illegal.3 Over time, as the century passes on, issues of supply become crucial in the context of deprivation and displacement. Instead of the state dispensing metaphorical milk in the shape of welfare to its citizens, the state and private industry combine to control the supply of milk to those who are becoming 68

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Figure 4.4  Eugène Delacroix, La liberté guidant le peuple (Liberty Leading the People), 1830, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Source: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.

undernourished within the ravages of the industrial capitalist system (Otomo 2014). It is at this point that animal milk—cow’s milk—comes to the fore, presenting a predictable and constantly manageable flow that can subjected to technical analysis and commodification. The whole body of the cow can be taken possession of and integrated into the grid of supply and demand, circulation, quantification, and standardization (Nimmo 2010). While cross-­species nourishment becomes socially distasteful, once technology interposes, separating source and recipient, producer and consumer, it finds an acceptable form. Formula milk is presented as a fix to problems of undernourishment and infant mortality. First invented by Justus von Liebig in 1867 (Brock 2002), “Liebig’s Soluble Food for Babies” was manufactured and sold in London by the Liebig’s Registered Concentrated Milk Company. It was composed of cow’s milk, wheat, malt flour, and potassium bicarbonate. By 1883, there were twenty-­seven patented brands of infant food on the market (Stein 2014: 162). The history of infant feeding was a triangulation between the promises of technology, commercial pressure, and the promotion of biology (academic knowledge of the body). By the following century, doctors recommended milk in this form as superior, a devaluing of anything the (female) body could produce. It was the only fluid created by the human body that science presumed to have improved. 69

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Figure 4.5  Honoré Daumier, La République (The Republic), 1848, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Source: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.

It is not until the twenty-­first century that the full complexities of human milk are beginning to be apprehended (Ballard and Morrow 2013). Another pertinent separation in relation to milk is that of the separation of mind from body, and body mass from intelligence. This has been visualized in medieval stories where breast milk provides sacred cognition out of a visceral and bestial source—the visceral body denounced constantly as part of initiation into the sacred. The trope of breast milk as something venal and transcendent is repeated in medieval mythologies where St. Bernard is sprayed with the Virgin’s breast milk as an act of divine intervention— the story is told variously as providing sustenance straight into his lips, to cure vision in his infected eye, or to augment spiritual and cerebral insight and applied directly to the forehead. Bernard’s rapture about the Virgin and her milk was transmitted to his successor Henry of Clairvaux—who when summoned to suckle directly from the Virgin’s breasts was filled with mental clarity—with sacred words—whereby cognition and godliness were dispensed in milk—Bernard called it the elixir of the “science divine” (Maillet this volume). The cult of lactating Mary persists as a contemporary phenomenon. The lactating Virgin can still be found in shopping centers across the Philippines and circulating internationally on eBay. Technological processes for separation allow for the ubiquity of formula milk. Formula milk is now couched in the language of the technically advanced upgrade, 70

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Figure 4.6  SM Mall of Asia, Pasay City, 2011. Courtesy of Marco Driz Dalma.

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genetically and bio-­technologically optimized—mirrored in brand names of milk. These are names resonant of growth and transcendence: “Optimal,” “Advantage,” “Humana,” “Platinum,” “Gold.” There are promises of great futures and social advantage. In Asian markets the Anglicized brand names reflect the market confidence, regulation, and corporate standardization alluded to by Western origination—combined with aspirational technophiliac fantasy: “Smart baby,” “gene-­plus,” “nu-­gene,” “neo-­baby,” “neo-­kid,” all brand names of formula milks. In all of these there is an imperative of intelligence, improvement—insinuated is a transfer of smartness from substance to baby brain. Just like the smart phone, which is smarter than us and makes us smart, milk is smart—technically augmented—and makes for smart babies. There are also breast pumps “featuring new iQ Technology”; the pitch is: the pump’s memory chip makes it smart, but the name also plays on claims that human milk, like fortified formula milks, raise I.Q. scores. Donna Haraway (1997: 22–72) has underlined the ways in which milk is available for separation and recombination—as indicated in her lines on how “breast milk is not nature to the culture of Nestlé’s formula. Both fluids are natural-­technical objects, embedded in matrices of practical culture and cultural practice” (Haraway 1997: 58). All too often a polemical distinction is made between natural and artificial forms. A humanist philosophy of science assumes that its inventiveness can exceed anything that nature has produced, but at the same time, something called nature is essentialized and rendered a source of specific value. What is key is that whatever is devised does not exist in a vacuum, but is drawn into a matrix of valorization, which overdetermines its expressions. But what the body produces “naturally” cannot be shrugged off. It is subtle, responsive, biodynamic: an adaptable, multi-­purposed liquid which is emulated and subject to optimizations (Ryan this volume). Despite historical claims and efforts to improve on the fluid, no such task has been accomplished. In modern Western discourse, women are endowed with messy bodies. According to Grosz (1994: 21), “women’s corporeality is inscribed as a mode of seepage.” Formula milk and expressed milk extract, separate, and attempt to recombine that problematic fluid into something more streamlined. Bodies become erased in the dynamic of technologically realized reproduction. This is why it returns again and again as pornographica and as excessively visceral fantasy. We are strangely ambivalent about its visibility as a source of nutrition and comfort for babies but as a seeping spurting image for adult sexual consumption, in a return of the repressed, lactating breasts form their market niche in the pornographic index: Preggo/Milky. Breastfeeding is not just about the provision of milk. It is also not just about intimate bonds. Like the act of reproduction, lactation is the enactment of a splitting, of a formation of self and part-­self that is to become other. It disrupts the dominant motif of the bounded body, of sovereign individuality. Milk is a bridge between bodies: an emission from one and an incorporation into another. This can be evidenced in the relatively recent proliferation of the brelfie, the breastfeeding selfie—at once an image of self and not the self—bodies joined in the transmission of milk (Boon and Pentney 2015). 72

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Figure 4.7  Hands Free Pumping Bra, 2016. Courtesy of Simple Wishes.

There is a social anxiety attached to this enactment of self-­splitting. It is mobilized to validate the social separation of the breastfeeding woman from the public environment whether through shame, or through lack of paid maternity leave, which produces the need for the technological fix of the breast pump. Breast pumps are now designed so that women can continue to be optimally productive—expected to work at the computer whilst lactating, even whilst traveling or exercising. This socio-­economic and political context of infant feeding cannot be stressed enough (Smith this volume).

Milk of the abysmal Milk for babies has to be supplied. How this supply takes place has shifted historically, but it has also long been imagined and played around with. Extracting milk supply from the control of women, and from the breast, is envisaged in origin myths of the world. This is a battle over supply and it recurs in various ways across time. According to the foundation myth in Ancient Greece, the Milky Way was formed when the philandering Zeus held up his lover’s baby to his wife Hera’s breast as she slept, hoping to suckle a little divine milk for his part-­mortal son. Hera awoke to find the usurper upon her and knocked it away. As she did so an arc of milky droplets reached far into space. In Roman myth, too, the Milky Way forms from the milk spilt from Opis’s breast in her attempt to save her newborn son Jupiter from being devoured by his father Saturn, King of the Skies. She wrapped a rock in swaddling cloth to try to foil the hungry god, but when he 73

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forced her to nurse the decoy infant one last time, her milk splattered into the heavens when her breast pressed against the rock’s hard body. Jupiter is taken away and brought up by the Nymphs, suckling milk from the goat Amalthea. In her own origin story the Egyptian deity Hathor makes her first appearance as Ra, Goddess of destruction. She is intoxicated by annihilation, set on the eradication of all human life. She is held sway, in nihilistic rapture, until she is tricked into drinking wine instead of blood (Hyginus [1482] 2012: II, 11–43). In these origin myths, spilt milk evades the lips of the babies, hits the heavens, makes a cosmos and is codified as milk of the abysmal, of death and destruction. What could give life denies it too. These myths found their way into visual forms such as in the painting of the Renaissance, where the epic squirt of breastmilk reaching far into the cosmos is rendered in splashes of oil paint, as in Tintoretto’s Origin of the Milky Way (c. 1575–1580) and Rubens’ painting of the same imagined scene, from 1637. It was also in this epoch that Galileo Galilei fixed the stars through a lens. The Ancient Greek philosophers had thought that the Milky Way might be a vast collection of stars, too dim to make out individually. But proof came when Galileo pointed his crude telescope at the Milky Way in 1610, and was able to see that the Milky Way was made up of countless stars. Through his lens the smooth splash of the Milky Way was revealed as a cluster, as points—pixels of light (Maran and Marschall 2009: 127–8). And as Galileo pointed his telescope upwards, others turned the same lens downwards to look at the smallest things. They peered into what surrounded them, inaugurating a scrutinizing glare into milk through the means of glass (Fletcher 2011: 106). Milk communicates with the lens in pursuit of death and disease. Microscopes stare into raw milk, watching and counting bacteria and somatic cells, and, in this act, remind us that body fluids formed some of the earliest matter for the microscope. In 1646, Athanasius Kircher magnified the blood of fever patients and found much of interest there (Kircher 1658; Fletcher 2011: 115–21). In 1658, in his Scrutinium Pestis, he wrote of deadly microscopic “worms” in the blood of plague victims—it is impossible that he could have seen the bacillus, but rather, was probably viewing pus cells or red blood cells. Leeuwenhoek, the lens grinder, saw much through the microscope, including dental tartar, crystals of sodium urate that form in the tissues of gout patients, dogs, pigs, mollusks, amphibians, fish, and birds, even his own sperm. In 1683, he saw the lymphatic capillaries, containing “a white fluid, like milk” (Leeuwenhoek 1952: 181). As Leeuwenhoek and the other seventeenth-­century pioneers of microscopy looked into the body they found it teeming with other forms of life. For some it affirmed their belief in the power, majesty, and the ubiquity of God. For others it profoundly altered humanity’s position in the cosmos. The cosmos was suddenly much larger and infinitely more complex, everywhere populated with life, previously unseen. Humans become less central. This new tool to explore the invisibly small made it visibly large. Over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, deciphering which of these worms were good (sperm) and which “bad” (bacteria) became a quest. The molecularization of life discovered under the microscope was so unexpected and so radical that, even in the 1840s when higher magnification microscopy revealed ever 74

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more detail, it still took decades to be universally accepted—and was still a novelty in 1903 when the Francis Martin Duncan program of films billed as The Unseen World was screened at the Alhambra Music hall in 1903. Cheese Mites was the smash of the show. The image of the mites scuttling around on screen enlarged to the size of monsters created a sensation in the audience. Spectators were at once fascinated and revolted by what they saw. Nowhere was bacteria pursued more aggressively than in milk—which nurtures when drunk directly from the body and had a tendency to poison when removed from it—the milky environment perfect as it is for nurturing all scales of life. The imperative of “purifying” milk became a driving principle of the modern era (Atkins 2010).

Milk’s machines Milk met the camera as its perfect accessory. From the early days of photography, there was an interest in photographing the liquid, making a record of its shapes and trajectories. What could evince the powers of photography better than the freezing of fluid, caught as it splattered, spilt, or gushed? Water lets light through and evades visibility. Milk, opaque, even in tone, pale, outlined itself before the camera, filling out its dribbled contours or leaping into its splashes or sprayed coronets and fronds. A.M. Worthington (1908) observed and photographed for thirty years the collision of a milk drop on a surface, making visible evidence for the science of fluid dynamics. These observations were published in 1908 as A Study of Splashes. As the lenses got faster, milk’s fluid action was captured in split-­microsecond dramatic shots, such as those of milk forming crowns, carried out again and again by Harold Edgerton. What was at stake here was the gaining of knowledge for a more violent activity, for the milk-­drop studies were providing information for ballistics research. Worthington, for one, was awarded the Order of Companions of the Bath for his services to warfare, as the droplet could be substituted by a bullet. Bullet trajectories, their flight behaviors and effects, could be mimed in milk. That which is associated with the establishment of life in its early days is re-­routed for purposes of death. Such recordings reveal the extent to which photography is a medium of death. Milk’s fluid action was again captured in split microsecond stroboscopic shots by Harold Edgerton from 1931 onwards. His images capture the sense of shock by which they came into being, and his techniques were immediately adopted in the promotion of commodities, becoming the standard of advertising photography (Hayes 2008). One of Edgerton’s milk-­drop photographs, titled Coronet, was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s first photography exhibition in 1937. That same year, he began designing studio strobes for Gjon Mili, who became a well-­known photographer for Life magazine. At the request of Kodak, Edgerton set up a booth at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City, complete with a baseball-­shooting cannon that allowed visitors to take their own strobe pictures. In 1939, Edgerton also published Flash! Seeing the Unseen by Ultra-HighSpeed Photography, a collection of his photographs. It was an instant bestseller. In 1940, 75

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MGM invited Edgerton to make a stroboscopic high-­speed motion picture with comedian Pete Smith and the ten-­minute short, Quicker’n a Wink, won an Oscar. It happens that photographic film is radiosensitive, able to detect gamma, X-ray, and beta particles (Prasad 1995: 46). In 1946, Kodak customers began to complain about foggy camera film (Miller 1986: 58–60, 157–8). Eastman Kodak established that farms in Indiana had been exposed to fallout from the highly secret Trinity nuclear test in New Mexico in 1945 and materials from the farms used in the cardboard packaging had contaminated the films. Kodak kept silent. The detonations continued, in the Pacific and in Nevada from 1951. Kodak knew because the company monitored radiation levels and they caught a spike in snowfall that measured twenty-­five times the norm some 1,600 miles away from the test site. They complained to the authorities and an agreement was brokered that the film industry would receive exclusive information in advance of any nuclear testing, but no one else. Film-­stock was protected. Livestock and lives were not. This radiation entered the food supply. As the report from the National Cancer Institutes phrases it: “As in the case of the weapons testing in Nevada, the dominant contribution to dose from radioiodine is from I-131 transmitted from ground deposition on pasture through the food chain in milk” (Institute of Medicine 1999: 3). There was an acknowledged increased risk, especially for children, of contracting radiogenic thyroid cancer, a disease that often manifests, incidentally, as what are called small, occult tumors, through the “milk pathway.” This was known by 1953, but the tests did not stop and the famers and public were not warned until the early 1960s, while film manufacturers were provided with “maps and forecasts of potential contamination, as well as expected fallout distributions which enabled them to purchase uncontaminated materials and take other protective measures” (Ortmeyer and Makhijani 1997). Milk and photographic representation meet again in the digital age. The affinity of the lens and turbid fluid is extended for the commercial screen where the desideratum of digital real world simulation is the convincing reconstruction of fluid dynamics. Computer generated imagery (CGI) renders fluid simulations which delight in liquid rapture, from originary drips, splashes, swarms, swathes, streams, falls to spills of fluid, floods, storms, and waves of annihilation. Emulation of milk in CGI is reputedly the first thing everyone learns to do.4 Milk acts again as a kind of primal, or primary, fluid. Spilt milk becomes emblematic of both tragedy and of ecstasy. Captured by photographs or rendered digitally, milk takes on a body. It solidifies into forms—forms that we know are in a state of suspension—that will collapse and drown in a microsecond. This solidification and collapse appear to be thematized in the representations themselves. CGI extends the capacity of milk to adopt any form. It exploits its presence as liquid and animate, while rendering it as solid and infinitely shapeshifting. Milk acts like unfired clay in the digital world. The frozen coronet of Edgerton’s milk is donated an illusory capacity for movement and plasticity, combining in its phantasms the liquid and the crystal aspects of contemporary screens. Milk becomes anything, standing in for bullets, charging horses, or billowing dresses, but what it becomes specifically is a substitute for semen— for the ejaculate and its splash, as advertising always knew, when it played with milk-­cum mustaches on young women’s faces. 76

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Milk’s geometry Liquids and gases can flow. Solids keep their shape. Gases can be compressed. As liquid, milk can drip freely, but in our social practice milk is caught up, shaped, formed in to standardized objects and directed along specific pathways. As milk, it maps out a geometrics of capitalist power. In “Analysis of a City Map,” the social commentator Siegfried Kracauer ([1927] 1995) proposes two types of patterning, one encouraged, or commanded, by those with social power, and one formed by the masses themselves. Even in Edgerton’s freeze-­framed photographs of milk coronets it is possible to see something of its unruly, exuberant self-­shaping. The milk that sprays into the skies of pre- and early modern myths and paintings makes a heaven full of randomness. The milk that is made orderly within modernity is no less mythic, but it is presented as rationalized, a scientifically permeated fluid. The metaform of the “Milk Grid” has been used specifically in relation to India’s national network of milk provision, which was established in the 1970s and transformed India from a “milk-­deficient nation” into the world’s largest milk producer by 1998 (Valenze 2011; Wiley this volume). This program, also dubbed “the White Revolution” and “Operation Flood,” was reanimated in 2015, as part of a project to stimulate liquid milk trade across South Asia, in order to push out the imports of milk powders from elsewhere. The grid is a powerful image for a network that goes from cow to kitchen and covers an entire territory. It was modeled on the grid-­like network of operations pioneered by the now defunct Milk Marketing Board in the UK, that oversaw an integrated structure, from mechanized milking sheds, to tankers, to railway distribution. The motif of the cosmos returned with the seminal Plymouth to London railway line, dubbed The Milky Way—all was incorporated in its network. The milk grid can be extended from a motif of milk management in modernity enmeshed with ideas of “progress” to the standardization of operations, from insemination, gestation, feeding, to extraction, purification, bottling, and processing to the precision of the bottling plant, the outputs of cubes or triangles of cheese, and so on. The grid produces geometric forms and the more all is standardized, the sharper the angles, the more Platonically ideal the shapes. Modernity involves the shift from hand-­crafted processes (first technologies of clay to make sieves, and vessels) to wood and glass (churners and pats), to metal and mechanical processes in the nineteenth and twentieth century, to robotics and digitized operations of the twenty-­first century. Robotic systems can now milk, clean and feed the beasts, process and package the produce. In the contemporary optimized dairy operation, there is no human contact between cow and human other than when milk enters the mouth. There are geometries of milk that have emerged to ascertain quality at the level of milk’s micro and macrostructure. In testing butter, for example, penetration and compression tests deploy a range of geometries—cone, needle, cylinder, sphere, and plate. A cone enters the butter at a constant speed or with a constant load, to establish product hardness or firmness. Tetra Pak added an additional Platonic geometry with its white arrows of progress, its white tetrahedral milk packs and hexagonal geodesic supermarket stacks (Kotler and Pfoertsch 2010: 171). The Tetra Pak is generated 77

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from an endless column of a stream of pure aseptic milk. The innovation that created its success was based on the observation that a tube of milk can be poured endlessly and bisected laterally to create this iconic pyramid form, never contacting air, hand, or machine. Following on from their emergence in the 1950s, Tetra Pak’s Brancusi-­like Platonic pyramid cartons have now morphed from solid form into conceptual strategy and economic principle. Tetra Pak currently sells 500 million packages a day. Its latest corporate strategy is labeled “Deeper into the Pyramid.” It works to insert itself into developing economies via a prescient geometry. A minimalist modernity is now conceptualized as an economic principle that will insert its white arrows into the economic pyramid and try to use a new asset-­stripped return, radically more pervasive than that creamed off from an exclusive market. “A large proportion of Ali’s customers earn between Euro 1.80 and Euro 7.20 a day, putting them firmly in the Deeper in the Pyramid consumer category that the Boston Consulting Group has identified as the ‘golden opportunity’ for international companies” (Tetra Pak 2015: 3). Tetra Pak acknowledges that tapping into this market takes adaptation. The question is how to make products that are “affordable, available and attractive to consumers on limited incomes . . . without adding unsustainable costs.” They use alternatives to whole milk— such as whey or lactic acid and other low-­value milk derivatives. Modifying, or tweaking the recipe can involve replacing a more expensive ingredient with a cheaper one. Tetra Pak also works with governments to implement regulations making it illegal to pasteurize milk at home or to supply “loose” milk.5 This new model has become the prevailing motif for Western economies that seek the extraction of value from the base of the pyramid. Capital’s will to autonomy finds material limits, and reciprocally, the material realm is shaped by the forces of abstraction. As well as the packaging for the milk—the cow’s body first becomes a process to be optimized—a language that pervades the industry, where “yield” must be increased by manipulating the cows’ feed, medication, living conditions, and genetics. There is of course also a long history of destroying animals not deemed to be economically viable as part of national animal improvement plans. The United States Department of Agriculture now carries out an “animal improvement program” through genetic selection, rather than the culling programs of the early twentieth century (Curry 2013). Genetic animal “improvements” are often tied into alliances of scientific/government/corporate policy, and particularly target humans that are identified as ‘under-­capitalized’ and thus bio-­ politically “backward,” in what plays out as an assertion of human genetic superiority. The language of optimization and improvement permeates economics, the food industry, agriculture, and overseas development programs. Humans who do not eat large amounts of meat and dairy are not considered “optimal” eaters (Twine 2013). Although these arguments are made through emerging technologies, the narrative is an historical one. Milk’s whiteness is a transferable characteristic. When Herbert Hoover made an address on the milk industry at the World’s Dairy Congress in 1923, he affirmed that ‘Upon this industry, more than any other of the food industries, depends not alone the problem of public health, but there depends upon it the very growth and virility of the white 78

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races” (Cohen 2017a). The whiteness of milk demands a white body capable of digesting it—or so think those who attribute the development of European civilization around 11,000 years ago to the lactose-­tolerance of Northern Europeans (Curry 2013; see also Wiley, this volume). Milk’s fortunes are entwined with those of national health. William Prout (1834: 234), the London physician who developed ideas of nutrients through his chemical analysis in the 1820s, alighted on milk: “the only article actually furnished and intended by nature as food,” which he decreed to be composed of the three necessary ingredients for healthy life, for milk alone, and the mechanism by which milk is secreted, “were designed, and made what they are, by the great Creator of the universe”: “In milk, therefore, we should expect to find a model of what an alimentary substance ought to be—a kind of prototype, as it were, of nutritious materials in general.” Industry and the market came rapidly to deliver this ever-­so natural and simultaneously divine substance to the masses, in ever more new and improved versions. In contemporary agriculture, the mining of vast datasets of bioinformatics are key to determining which plants and animals will proliferate. Data analytics not only facilitate complex abstracted financial exchange and market policy, but also transform the matter we put into our mouths and incorporate into our own flesh. Drivers of genomics and biotechnology present financialized imperatives as animal “improvements,” yet there is a disconnect from these and the transformations that are then acted out on bodies: “[They] are fetishized by animal or ‘meat’ scientists and policy makers as the means by which to reinvent capitalism as a new more efficient and environmentally benign project often under the banner of the knowledge based bio-­economy . . . The latter in its very enunciation pretends to portend to ideas and not somehow also to material, bodily repercussions” (Twine 2013: 79). Genetic manipulations materialize as abstracted chemical and biological events that take place under the threshold of perception, yet are manifest as physical changes that are incorporated within the systems of the donor and consuming bodies. Big data has been implemented in dairy farming more than in any other industry, and combined with the financialization of species and individual worth pioneered in the field of animal science through quantitative analysis. Animals can be given a single value figure—(NM$)2 or Lifetime Net Merit. In the case of (NM$)2, the number is denominated in dollars because it is indexed as an estimate of how much a bull’s genetic material will affect the potential revenue from a dairy cow. Fluid, fat, protein ratios of the milk, and quality of the ensuing progeny are predicted by gene markers and heritable traits, as well as pedigree records and market conditions. Body size, udder condition, feet, leg, and body ratios—cheese merit, fluid merit, daughter calving ease, productive life, daughter pregnancy rate, and stillbirth rate are all deduced through complex calculations of big datasets. There is an air of rationality gone wild, cold logic mixed with hi-­jinx whimsy and mythopoesis: the bull who has been scientifically calculated as having the highest net worth is named Badger-Bluff Fanny Freddie, and the third Ensenada Taboo Planet-Et (Madrigal 2012). Sexual and social reproduction are now separated at the nanoscale for operational rationalization and recombined for economic maximization through complex algorithms 79

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Figure 4.8  Deeper in the Pyramid, 2017. Animation Production Still. Courtesy of Melanie Jackson.

and datasets. The work pioneered on the bodies of cows has now become associated with high-­tech stock market trading, where great swathes of money flow through speculative abstractions. The work pioneered on the bodies of cows has also informed research that aims to subsume the body of the cow entirely: as scientists attempt to generate “real” milk without the cow’s presence in the new field of “cellular agriculture.” Based on the promise of taking milk cells as starter cells, but then regenerating milk synthetically, headlines ecstatically assert “Animal lovers use biotech to develop milk made by man instead of a cow” (Nguyen 2014) or “From silk to milk: why growing everything could be a 21st century game changer” (Egerton-Read 2016). Synthetic biology fulfills a fantasy of growing anything at all; circumventing politics and creating self-­generating life that intends to bypass the messy issue of sentience, or animal suffering. It also throws up the specter of erasure, and the eradication of animal bodies altogether. The nexus of nature and technology offers a physical and imaginative emancipation of generative new materiality that defies bounded perceptions of body/ gender/species, but what seems to be a point of change is also a continuity that can be perceived in the changing forms of milk over time. Milk is a liquid latent with the power of annihilation as well as being life giving, and its production is driven by the attempt to wrestle control of supply.

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CHAPTER 5 THE MECHANICAL CALF: ON THE MAKING OF A MULTISPECIES MACHINE Richie Nimmo

Introduction The bodily production of milk is a defining characteristic of mammals, central to mammalian processes of reproduction, nurturance, and growth. All female mammals nurse their young with milk secreted from the mammary glands. In this sense milk is as “natural” a substance as one can imagine, being inextricably interwoven into the ontogenetic life process intrinsic to mammalian biocorporeality. But the milk consumed in vast quantities by adult humans in modern societies is not human milk but cow’s milk; it is a product of systematic human intervention into the reproductive cycle of another species, and thus both expresses and mediates a specific human–animal relationship. Moreover, since the middle of the twentieth century an increasing proportion of dairy milk consumed in the West has been produced not on small farms but in large agro-­food enterprises on an industrial scale, using techniques of rationalized mass production increasingly permeated by science and technology. It is then distributed, exchanged, and marketed not just as a physical substance with a use-­value, and also as an exchange-­value or commodity enmeshed in capitalist economic relations. In these ways, the milk that is mass produced and consumed in late-­modern societies is not simply a natural substance, but is something enmeshed in a deeply heterogeneous assemblage interweaving humans and animals, reproduction and production, bodies and technologies, organisms and commodities, states and markets, “culture” and “nature.” This chapter seeks to restore the liveliness and agency of cows to accounts of the dairy industry by attending to the relational entanglements of cows with the processes of their milking. The history of the dairy industry in the twentieth century can be grasped as a story of radically increasing complexity in networks of milk production and consumption, made possible by changing technologies along with shifting forms of socio-­material organization, encompassing railways, refrigeration, tuberculin testing, pasteurization, bottling, municipalization, and subsidization, all of which enabled milk as material substance and exchange-­value to flow and circulate through expanding networks stretching like capillaries across an ever-­wider territory (Nimmo 2010; Atkins 2010). In the last decades of the nineteenth century, milk production in the industrialized nations was in much the same state as it had been a hundred years earlier; it was still a localized cottage industry in which most people necessarily obtained their milk from cows kept in local farms or cowsheds no more than a few miles away. Indeed, people were keen to

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consume their milk while it was “warm from the cow,” as this was taken to be a sign of its authenticity and the absence of adulteration, which was widespread (Nimmo 2011a: 69). The transformation that took place during the next hundred years could not have been more dramatic, involving the emergence of an integrated national—and subsequently international—system of standardized production, distribution, and mass marketing, in which milk underwent a process of heating, cooling, homogenization, refrigeration, and frequently transportation over hundreds of miles, in its passage between cow and consumer. As scholars in human–animal studies would undoubtedly point out, no account of the dairy industry can be satisfactory if it fails to recognize that at the center of this increasingly complex assemblage are the cows themselves. Indeed, there are well-­ established critical accounts of the impact of agricultural industrialization and intensification upon the animals involved, drawing in particular upon Marxist and feminist theoretical frameworks (Benton 1993; Gaard 1993; Adams and Donovan 1995; Noske 1997). Though these critical paradigms were initially developed with exclusive reference to human social relations, many of their principal concepts can and have been fruitfully applied to human–animal relations in the context of animal agriculture, and are capable of making important contributions to a critical social account of the modernization of milk production and consumption. Marxist approaches foreground the incorporation of nonhuman animals into the industrial labor process at point of production and their role in the circuits of capitalist valorization, exploring the connections between the commodification of human labor and the parallel processes of exploitation of nonhuman animals in the extraction of surplus value (Dickens 1996; Perlo 2002). The Marxian concepts of alienation and species-­being have been reworked and extended to nonhuman animals in order to furnish a critical vocabulary for thinking the intersection of capitalism and animal exploitation (Benton 1993; Noske 1997; Dickens 2003). A recent analysis, for example, sought to apply theories of alienation and species-­being to the situation of cows in dairy production, focusing in particular upon “grazing-­robotic systems” of automated or “voluntary” milking, which claim to render cows “free” to determine for themselves—within certain limits—both the timing and frequency of daily milking (Stuart, Schewe, and Gunderson 2013). Theoretical currents emerging from the rich spectrum of feminist approaches have brought to bear trenchant critiques of processes of objectification that are simultaneously material, epistemic, and semiotic, and which intersect and cross-­valorize gendered human and human–animal relations (Adams and Donovan 1995; Birke 1994; Plumwood 1993). In Carol Adams’ ([1990] 2010, 1994) seminal work on “the sexual politics of meat” for example, women in a patriarchal and carnivorous culture are dehumanized and objectified by being animalized, while animals are simultaneously feminized and quite literally objectified in the meat industry; this in turn normalizes the sexual objectification and consumption of women, in a structure of mutually reinforcing processes of symbolic and corporeal violence (Adams this volume). It does not require a huge leap to imagine how this “feminist-­vegetarian critical theory” could be transformed into a feminist-­vegan critical theory that could readily be mobilized in a critique of milk and dairy products, in 82

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which light the systematic extraction and consumption of cow’s milk might be grasped as at one and the same time a form of gendered animal exploitation and a process of objectification of female corporeal and reproductive capacities (Arvidsson this volume). A criticism that can be leveled at these kinds of critical approaches however is that they can tend to presuppose and affirm an essential or given animal subjectivity, which can be problematic for scholars of human–animal relations influenced by poststructuralism. Indeed, much of the analytical and rhetorical force of Marxist and feminist critiques lies in their confluence with animal rights philosophies in calling for nonhuman animals to be accorded subject-­status or personhood in opposition to the multiple and systematic objectifications to which they are subjected within industrial agriculture (Nimmo 2015b, cf. this volume). But, as Lewis Holloway observes in his analysis of robotic milking systems: Especially in relation to farming, the question of what such a subjectivity might be is in most instances underexamined. Instead, most writers . . . have tended to essentialize the subjectivity of farmed animals in ways which negate the potential for them to become, to be co-­constituted as they are entrained within various sets of socioeconomic, ecological, spatial, and technological relationships. Holloway 2007: 1041 Drawing upon Foucauldian poststructuralist understandings of subjectivity as produced by technologies of power within disciplinary and bio-­political assemblages, Holloway examines the case of robotic and information technologies in automated dairy farming systems in order to explore “the ways in which particular bovine subjectivities are produced in and through the specific sets of technospatial configurations associated with robotic milking technologies” (Holloway 2007: 1041). In this way, Foucauldian analysis purports to go beyond the politico-­ethical affirmation of subjectivity in order to trace the bio-­political constitution and reconstitution of animals in relation to particular technoscentific assemblages in animal agriculture (Holloway and Morris 2007; Holloway, Bear, and Wilkinson 2014). So, existing critical social perspectives on human–animal relations in animal agriculture explore, variously: the commodification and alienation of animals within capitalist production processes; the feminization and objectification of animals within patriarchal and anthropocentric social and cultural structures; and the bio-­political production of animal subjectivities through the disciplining of animal bodies within techno-­political apparatuses. Although there are important differences and tensions between these, they might be seen as offering broadly complementary contributions to a critical understanding of the human–animal relations bound up with late-­modern industrial-­capitalist agriculture (Novek 2005). The aim here is not to displace these approaches, but rather to explore what else emerges if one adopts some different starting points and emphases, in part by taking a more historical perspective which does not directly tackle the contemporary dairy assemblage in all of its sociotechnical complexity, but instead traces its early emergence and conditions of possibility. This chapter therefore focuses on a critical sociotechnical juncture which preceded and 83

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enabled the subsequent permeation of technoscience into dairy production that culminated in the automated robotic milking systems examined by both Stuart and Holloway, namely, the long-­frustrated and belated emergence of the first mechanical milking machines with which to replace hand-­milking. To do so it draws upon a range of primary archive sources consisting of documents produced by dairy farmers, clean milk and sanitary inspectors, milk machine engineers, and various contemporary assessors of these devices, in dairy farming and agricultural journals as well as some occasional pamphlets. The approach taken here also relies less upon structural or poststructuralist explanation as modes of critical engagement, and more upon relational-­materialist description drawing upon ontological sensibilities engendered by theoretical currents from actor-­network theory (Latour 1993, 2005; Michael 2000; Nimmo 2011b, 2016) and new materialism (Bennett 2010; Coole and Frost 2010). This means examining more agnostically how the cow’s body is entangled with other fields of relations and forces, tracing the frictions and resonances that arise from such encounters, and exploring how these are precariously stabilized. Finally, the analysis tries to avoid the reduction of technology to a tool or instrument of anthropocentric or speciesist oppression, of patriarchal domination, of capitalist exploitation, or of bio-­political subjectification, and instead describes specific technologies as socio-­material devices that mediate the relations of humans, nonhumans, organisms, substances, and forces with which they are entangled. The knottiest problem This is the one implement of which dairy farmers at the present time stand most in need. A milking machine is, however, one of the knottiest problems which inventive genius has yet to solve. Sheldon 1878: 53 Attempts to develop mechanical devices with which to milk cows began as early as the 1860s. The concatenation of various factors—some historical and situational, others rooted in the very materiality of dairy farming—created a demand for an efficient and practical milking machine which persisted throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. Paramount was the desire to replace or diminish the labor of hand-­milking, in part due to changing labor relations in agriculture resulting in an increasing difficulty in obtaining laborers willing to work for the very low rates of pay on offer, and partly because of the nature of the work itself (Morton 1878: 667; Courtney 1900: 466). Milking cows by hand is laborious, repetitive, physically demanding, and manually skilled work, requiring a degree of embodied technique that in Europe was largely the purview of women until the introduction of technological help. In order to promote optimal milk yields this work must be performed at uniform intervals during unsociable hours and with clockwork regularity, under what may well be perceived as unpleasant or uncomfortable conditions (Erf 1906: 61). Moreover, in response to an emerging awareness of the likely contribution of unclean, infected, or contaminated milk to high 84

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rates of infant mortality, tuberculosis, and outbreaks of various diseases such as scarlet fever, dairy farming was gradually becoming more conscious of the importance of sanitation in all aspects of milk production, and those carrying out hand-­milking—a majority of whom were women—began to be accused by a growing cadre of male health inspectors and sanitary experts of such practices as routinely milking with unclean, unwashed, or soiled hands, allowing dirt and dung to fall into the milk, carrying out milking while suffering from illness, and so on (Little 1881: 653; Orr 1919: 30). While sanitary concerns about dairying were not unjustified, the emphasis on milkers’ practices was no doubt fueled to a certain extent by gender-­inflected class contempt, and it is notable in the historical documents that for every acknowledgment of the labor and skill involved in hand-­milking there are more comments concerning the routine lack of cleanliness said to be pervasive among milkers (Heineman 1919: 433–4, 438–9; Orr 1919: 30–2). This perception and this discourse fed the demand for a machine with which to obviate or reduce the need for such labor. The demand for a mechanical device for milking cows was not satisfied with any degree of success for several decades, and it was only in the 1900s that a genuinely practicable milking machine became commercially available (Hamby 2014). In the interim a variety of designs were trialed, with bold claims routinely made for their effectiveness and efficiency, but all were ultimately found to be unworkable, counterproductive, or impractical in some crucial respect. The main obstacles included the difficulty of producing a machine that would milk cows at least as quickly but also as thoroughly as a skilled hand-­milker, ensuring that no milk was left in the udder as this would soon induce the cow to produce less (Carrington 1877: 11–12; Sheldon 1878: 52). At the same time the machine had to be constructed in a manner that meant it was relatively easy and quick to clean, otherwise the labor and time involved in cleaning the machine would soon either outweigh the labor saved in milking or encourage inadequate or irregular cleaning, thereby undermining the sanitary advantages claimed for mechanical milkers (Orr 1919: 32). A workable machine also had to be practically usable in the context of the normal conditions of most existing dairy farms, in the space available in the average cowshed, and with the sources of power available to most farmers, as well as easily and routinely operable by farm laborers without requiring specialist knowledge, special skill, or a detailed grasp of the engineering principles behind the machine (Erf 1906: 54). These were all significant challenges to the development of an effective and workable device, and numerous otherwise promising designs fell at the hurdle of one or more of these requirements. More daunting than any of these, however, was the problem of how to accomplish the necessary inter-­mediation between animal and machine at the point of material connection between living udder and technical apparatus, which for decades seemed to present almost insuperable difficulties. The problem was initially understood in strikingly functional and mechanistic terms, as a question of how to empty the udder of its milk as quickly and easily as possible, with curiously little reference being made to either the embodied practice of hand-­milking or the actual suckling of calves (Henderson 1890; Courtney 1900; Erf 1906). Indeed, the cow as a living being appears to be almost absent from the thinking of the designers of 85

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the earliest milking machines, who seem to approach the udder as no more than a rather awkward container of a substance that needed to be removed. This instrumental approach is manifest in the earliest attempts at mechanical milking devices, most of which utilized some form of “milk tube” design, involving the insertion of a narrow tube or catheter into the teat, forcing open the sphincter muscle so that the milk would flow out of the udder and through the tube into a container. This was adapted from the earlier method of inserting straws into the udder, which was occasionally practiced at least as early as the first decades of the nineteenth century. The first milk tube device was made commercially available in 1878: It consisted of a teat tube or tubes, having a number of small openings along its side through which the milk entered, and a flaring end for increasing the flow of the milk without unduly stretching the teat. An embracing band held the lower ends of the flexible tubes together and a flexible supporter sustained the weight of the nozzle tubes and their contained milk. Erf 1906: 3–4 Numerous minor variations on this design emerged during the 1880s, but all operated on the same principle and thus were subject to the same fundamental flaw; though initially capable of emptying the udder more rapidly than was possible by hand-­milking, by wholly neglecting the biology of cows and the physiology of the udder and teats in their design, milk tube devices soon led to damage to these organs and a subsequent diminution of milk (Van Vleck 1998). The cause was either physical injury resulting from repeatedly forcing a foreign object into the teat or the introduction of infection into the udder by the same means, and in many cases a combination of the two. It was eventually recognized that milk tubes could not be made effective by any modification of the basic principle, with further attempts to develop such devices being all but abandoned by 1900. Yet it seems extraordinary that they were ever considered, let alone put into practice; they are materializations of a highly reductive conception of the cow as an object and the udder as simply a milk-­container, with apparently little thought being given to the species-­being of the animal and its reproductive and ontogenetic life process, within which cow, udder, teat, and calf are inextricably intertwined organic elements, which can only be properly understood in relation to each other. Hence, the calf, having already been made physically absent in order to facilitate the appropriation of its mother’s milk, was equally absent from the thinking of the engineers, who failed to see their task as a matter of how best to approximate the action of a calf suckling, but instead saw it in narrowly technical terms, as a question of how best to remove a fluid from its container. How could the designers have been so blinkered, obtuse, and consequently brutal? It is telling in this respect that many of those who developed the early machines were engineers who saw an opportunity but had relatively little personal experience of dairy farming or milking cows (Henderson 1890: 645). This no doubt contributed to their tendency to approach the problem in abstract, engineering terms, with little reference to bovine corporeality. Indeed, insofar as the biological body of the cow appears to have 86

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entered into their thinking at all, it was as a recalcitrant “nature” which could be—indeed had to be—forced by science to yield to the human will. Moreover, there was often friction between those developing the machines and those performing the everyday labor of hand-­milking on working dairy farms, who frequently had to accommodate the engineers as they experimented with different designs and tested their efficacy (Henderson 1890: 645, 651). This is unsurprising given that the engineers ultimately aimed to render the milkers redundant, hence their presence would have exacerbated the already tense labor relations on dairy farms. It is also important to note that the engineers were overwhelmingly male while a large proportion of the hand-­milkers were women, who, in contrast to the disembodied functional abstractions of those designing the machines, and by virtue of their everyday embodied experience, were more likely to have a “hands-­on” appreciation of the process of milking another animal as an inter-­corporeal interaction between biological beings. A machine with organs If the cow is viewed as a machine, it is evident that it will run more perfectly if all its parts are in good condition. Hazard 1885: 472 As the experiments with milk tube devices were abandoned, machines utilizing different principles began to be developed. The first main alternative was pressure machines, which operated via mechanical compression of the teats by means of some configuration of rollers and pressure plates, in order to massage the teats and stimulate the secretion of milk into an attached tube. These were significant in marking the initial transition away from a wholly mechanistic approach and towards an attempt—albeit crude—to approximate the action of biological organisms, amounting to a sort of rudimentary bio-­ mimicry, though significantly it was still the hand motions of a human milker rather than the suckling of a calf that was the object of imitation for these devices. One of the earliest such machines, registered for patent in 1886, was described as follows: It has . . . a main frame to which an auxiliary frame is attached and upon the latter is a pair of milking cylinders, each provided with a hinged shield, a detachable pressure plate, spout leading to the delivery trough, a series of yielding, automatically adjustable rolls which revolve within the milk cylinders. Adjustable base plates support the rolls which revolve within the milk cylinders. Adjustable base plates support the rolls. A suitable shaft, levers and gearing are provided for transmitting motion to the yielding rolls. Erf 1906: 6 There were many variations on this pressure machine design, as successive attempts were made to devise more effective means of massaging the teats and udder, which would more 87

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closely approximate the subtle hand motions of a skilled milker. Whereas the earliest pressure machines were designed simply to reproduce the squeezing of the teat by applying pressure through mechanical rollers, later machines attempted to devise a means of recreating the combined squeezing and tugging motion used in hand-­milking. But the challenge of mimicking a human hand, with all its joints, tendons, and muscles, in the performance of a set of dexterous manipulations irreducible to a simple application of force, and long before the era of robotics, proved almost insurmountable. Thus, while pressure machines were undoubtedly more effective than milk tubes, and somewhat less damaging to the cow’s body, they were nevertheless still highly inefficient in comparison with a proficient hand-­milker, excessively complicated to operate in many cases, very difficult to keep clean in normal dairy farm conditions, and therefore unviable for regular use in most cases because in practice they did not significantly reduce the total labor involved. The movement away from a thoroughly mechanistic approach and towards an increased focus on the imitation of organic principles marked by the emergence of pressure machines can be traced in the language used to describe them, which manifests an increase in the use of organic terms with which to name or describe the various parts of the apparatus and their interaction with the animal body. Thus one pressure machine is said to have “two inwardly connecting lips at the outer part connected by a pin” (Erf 1906: 6), while in another “Non-­porous sacks have their mouths stretched over the tops of the cylinders,” another “has a frame upon which are milking fingers, consisting of an angular body which may be pivoted at the forward end of the inner member” (Erf 1906: 6, 8), and yet another “consists of nipples which fit over the teats . . . attached by short necks to an elastic bulb” (Erf 1906: 16). Such language reveals that the machines were beginning to be seen in quasi-­organic terms as efforts were made to adapt their principles of operation more closely to the body of the animal. Yet the cows themselves are still remarkably absent from many of the descriptions of the machines, almost as though they are but the natural element or raw material upon which the machine is designed to operate. This strangely absent presence is made suddenly visible in one case when it is punctured by the description of a particular machine: No. 24, invented in 1901 . . . is a machine having a body upon which are spaced a teat-­engaging apparatus, an udder-­pressing device located on the body between the teat apparatus and projecting above the upper face of the same, yielding supporting means connected to the body of the machine in operative relation to the udder. Straps pass over the cow to support the machine. Coiled springs are placed in these straps to help retain the position. Leg-­engaging arms extend back from the machine to prevent the cow from kicking. Erf 1906: 12 The final sentence in particular is striking; in its casual reference—almost as an afterthought—to the machine’s “leg-­engaging arms,” the cow dramatically reappears, reminding us that she has been there all along, and not just as an object upon which or around which various bits of machinery are arrayed, but as a living being with an agency 88

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that is irreducible to the functions of her reproductive organs, indeed as a creature capable of some form of resistance. At the same time an increasingly organic terminology is used in reference to the machines, which are spoken of as “bodies” with “arms,” “fingers,” “lips” and “mouths,” paralleling and merging with the language used to describe the cows. The result is a strange hybrid vocabulary wherein animal and machine appear to be entangled, with proliferating references to such bovine-­cyborg entities as “leg-­engaging arms,” “udder-­pressing devices,” “teat-­engaging apparatus,” and “teat-­compressing rollers” (Erf 1906). It may be objected that this is less a case of animal–machine hybridity than of discipline and biopower acting upon the animal body by means of the machine. But what I want to emphasize—because it is less easily seen—is the extent to which the machines were also acted upon by the animal, in the sense that they were profoundly shaped by its stubborn and recalcitrant biocorporeality. This is particularly discernible in the emergence and development of a third type of milking machine, based on a new principle of operation, which became the template for all subsequent milk machines for the next sixty years, namely the suction machine. Where milk tube devices had simply penetrated the udder in order to obtain the milk, and pressure devices had operated by squeezing, massaging, and pulling the teat in an attempted simulation of hand-­milking, the invention of suction devices marked a belated realization that the suckling calf offered the best model of how the udder and teats were “designed” to work. To comprehend how it was that this was not immediately and universally recognized, it must be borne in mind that the motivating aim of the designers from the outset was to replace or reduce the labor and cost of hand-­milking, which was increasingly perceived as a key problem holding back dairy production (Sheldon 1878: 53; Murray 1879: 156). Hence, the state of labor relations on dairy farms very much framed and underpinned their efforts, and they were not thinking primarily about cows. Another important factor would have been the prevailing gender and class relations of the time, particularly in dairy farming and in the nascent field of dairy technology, and it is significant in this connection that the earliest recorded suction machine was designed and constructed by a woman, Anna Baldwin of Newark, New Jersey. It consisted of “a case or band to fit over the udder, connecting tubes and bands to fit on the teats in combination with a tube and suction pump” (Erf 1906: 14). Remarkably simple in comparison to the often complex pressure machines, with their elaborate configurations of plates, pads, grips, and rollers, the machine’s significance lay in its use of suction to draw milk from the teat. This had been presaged by the progressively closer attention of those designing successive pressure machines to the “mechanics” of the udder and teats, but the shift to suction was nevertheless a radical step because it marked the first attempt to directly simulate a suckling calf rather than the hand of a human milker.

Of udders and air pumps It would be quite easy to prove by reference to the facts of physiology, that the animal organism is a delicate and complicated piece of mechanism, and that the 89

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attempt to rectify any errors in its structure or functions is likely to result in disaster, unless the effort is made by someone who is familiar with all the details of the machinery. Brown 1884: 246 Suction machines worked by using an air pump to create a vacuum, or localized area of lower pressure, to produce a suction effect, thereby mimicking the mouth of the suckling calf. This—it was finally observed—stimulated the secretion of milk not by pressure as such but by creating suction around the teat. In contrast to pressure machines, which had tended to be hand-­operated, many suction machines were designed to harness inorganic power sources and most required access to a nearby diesel generator or steam-­powered engine in order to provide the motor force for the vacuum pump (Courtney 1900: 466–7; Erf 1906: 40). These were not yet readily available on all farms and could create hazards if used in the proximity of straw or hay, so there was some discussion of the practicalities of using a “tread power,” which was a mechanical treadmill used to convert the pulling force of a tethered bull or horse into a rotary motion that could be used to drive simple machines (Erf 1906: 46). Tread powers were becoming obsolete by the time that milk machines were emerging, so there would have been few cases of this arrangement being put into practice, but it is nonetheless fascinating—albeit disturbing—to contemplate the configuration of relations and translations of forces involved in the prospect of a bull walking upon a machine in order to convert its muscle power into a rotary force with which to drive another machine designed to create a vacuum in order to suck milk from the teats of a cow to feed to human beings. Perhaps the most significant advantage of the move to inorganic power sources, though, was that it created the possibility of several cows being able to be milked simultaneously using a single machine, thus dramatically increasing the efficiency of the milking process by reducing the labor required; potentially, a single operator could milk half a dozen or more cows in the time it would otherwise take to hand-­milk just one (Henderson 1890: 650). The economic advantages were obvious and the early suction machines were received with some excitement in anticipation of an imminent revolution in milk production. Reality proved rather more complex, however, and in practice these designs were still confronted with significant problems. One such problem arose from the fact that even as the potential efficiency gains of simultaneous milking began to be glimpsed, the progress of sanitary reforms in the dairy industry was gathering pace, particularly in response to the linking of unclean or contaminated milk to high rates of infant mortality, tuberculosis, and diseases such as scarlet fever which in some cases were believed to have been transmitted through infected milk. By the 1890s a concerted effort to transform the sanitary conditions of dairy production was underway, pursued by an ad hoc ensemble of sanitary inspectors, medical officers of health, and those dairying and agricultural associations that increasingly recognized the potential economic benefits of cleaner milk (Sheldon 1909: 27; Orr 1919: 21). This involved a sustained information and educational campaign along with the organization of systems of regular testing, both of cows for tuberculosis and other 90

The Mechanical Calf

diseases, and of samples of milk for bacterial content or other infection, as well as for proportions of fat and protein, which were taken to indicate the “quality” of the milk and by extension its authenticity or adulteration. At the same time, the practice of recording milk yields systematically over time in order to create a more objective basis for decisions on such matters as feeding and breeding was being ever more strongly encouraged and widely practiced, as dairy production gradually became more rationalized and more permeated by scientific knowledge-­practices (Lawson 1913; Macintosh 1921). Taken together these trends provided several reasons for retaining the individual connection between milker, cow, and milk in the milking process: so that the important opportunity to perform a routine visual inspection to detect signs of ill-­health in specific cows would not disappear from the milking process; so that the milk tested for quality, contamination, and infection could be traced back when necessary to particular cows; and so that the changing milk yields of individual cows could be accurately recorded over time and compared with others in the herd. These considerations countervailed the economic rationale for a transition to multiple simultaneous milking (Erf 1906: 66). Hence, after a short period in which suction machine designs tried to maximize the number of cows that could be milked at once (Sheldon 1878: 53), this began to be abandoned as a principal criterion for an ideal machine, and later designs were more focused once again on the most enduring problem of all, which was the bio-­material interface between teat and technology. The problem in essence was that of how to mediate between the variability and complexity of a living body and the uniformity and standardization of a machine. Unlike the constituent parts of the various milking machines that were trialed throughout the later nineteenth century, the udders and teats of cows did not conform to regular or uniform sizes, shapes, proportions, or positions, but—rather like milk itself (Nimmo 2010; Atkins 2010)—were subject to infinite natural variation. Thus, a device that fitted one teat relatively well would fit another more or less badly and would require constant supervision in order to prevent it from repeatedly slipping off and potentially falling onto the typically dirty floor below, thereby introducing contaminants into the milk (Sheldon 1878: 53). After some early attempts to use metal teat devices it was soon determined that rubber was the most suitable material for the construction of teat-­ cups, since it allowed for a degree of bending and reshaping in order to fit differently shaped teats (Erf 1906: 16; Orr 1919: 31–2). The use of rubber created another problem however, because it tended to harbor bacteria and was difficult to clean effectively given the need to avoid high temperatures or strong detergents which would damage it. Indeed claims made for the early machines by their inventors almost invariably included bold assertions about the sanitary advantages and ease of cleaning of their machines, followed tellingly by warnings that all rubber parts such as teat-­cups and tubing must be washed regularly and thoroughly, albeit only ever with cold or tepid water (Orr 1919: 32). Later machines included a wide range of variously sized teat-­cups that would better approximate the diverse shapes and sizes of real teats and udders, and the use of suction helped to create a firmer seal and keep the cups on the teats, but even this only 91

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mitigated the problem, and the tendency for the teat-­cups to fall off during milking persisted (Orr 1919: 31–2). The problem was essentially a spatial one, rooted in the difficulty of translation between the cow’s living corporeality and the inorganic materiality of the machine, as very different kinds of spatial modalities. Rubber combined with suction provided an ad hoc and imperfect solution, a necessarily approximate and messy translation between organism and machine. But entangled with this spatial dilemma was the equally difficult problem of how to mediate between the temporal mode of being of the animal, characterized by cyclical rhythms, and the more linear temporality of the machine. This did not become visible as a distinct problem until suction machines with varying teat-cup sizes had begun to render the spatial problem less overwhelming; once it became apparent, however, the temporal problem seemed to be so fundamental as to threaten to derail the operating principle of suction machines completely. A mechanical calf In the first suction machines a pump was used to create a vacuum that was transferred via tubes to rubber teat-­cups, where it acted to exert a continuous and even suction by maintaining a constant difference in air pressure between a localized area inside the rim of the teat-cup and the surrounding air. By this method, it was quickly found that cows could usually be milked considerably more quickly than by even the most skilled hand-­ milkers, and this was initially remarked upon as a real advantage of suction-­type devices: Thus, while in the case of the natural method of extracting the milk the vacuum is suspended every time the animal swallows, with Mr Murchland’s machine the action of the vacuum is maintained all through the operation, and from 8 to 10 minutes serve with the majority of the animals to empty the udder of its contents. Henderson 1890: 651 In this arrangement the intermittent action of the suckling calf is set aside, and replaced by continuous suction . . . The milking was done more rapidly by this method than by the machine which provided intermittent suction . . . As to what effect the prolonged use of this continuous suction might have on the natural powers of a cow to retain her milk, these trials could give no indication. Courtney 1900: 468 It was soon discovered however that the repeated use of suction machines led consistently to problems in the udder, characterized by bloating and bruising of increasing severity, followed by a subsequent sharp decline in milk production. It was assumed that the problem was one of excessive suction applied to the teat, and experiments were conducted in order to determine the optimal vacuum force required to drain the udder of milk without causing damage over time with repeated use (Erf 1906: 65); but these efforts were effective only in extending the number of occasions on which a machine could be used 92

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before the characteristic udder problems inevitably surfaced. It was belatedly realized that the problem was suction itself, or rather the application of continuous suction to the teat, which not only encouraged the rapid secretion of milk but also caused the pooling of blood and fluids inside the lower part of the udder, leading to a buildup of pressure and resulting in the swelling and bruising (McDonald and Lapenta 2016; Erf 1906: 63). This whole class of machines was based on the observation that a calf ’s mouth creates suction around a teat, but what had been overlooked was the importance of the fact that this is not continuous suction but intermittent, and far from this being an inefficiency that a milking machine might “set aside,” a cow’s udders and teats are evolved exclusively for intermittent suction, so that anything else will damage the tissues over time. Though a good deal of innovation had taken place in the transition from milk tubes to suction machines, with each step more closely mimicking the principles of organic life, whether the hand of a skilled human milker or the mouth of a suckling calf, continuous suction designs failed at the final hurdle because by attempting simply to suck the milk from the udder as efficiently as possible they ultimately reverted to the same crude instrumental rationality that had underpinned—and undermined—the early milk tube devices. The machines could not effectively mediate the interface between organism and machine because, while they were more spatially attuned to the udder than previous designs, they were still inimical to the distinctive temporal rhythms of the udder and involved the attempt to impose a linear, economic, and machine-­like temporality upon the organism. Hence, despite the efforts of the designers of continuous suction machines to stress their efficiency and to render them less injurious, it was soon impossible to deny their damaging effects. The first intermittent suction or “pulsator” machines emerged in 1895, with two similar designs patented that year, one by Alex Shiels of Glasgow, Scotland, and another by Modestus Cushman of Waterloo, Iowa. The Cushman machine consisted of “differentiated expansible vacuum chambers, milk pipes and a receptacle”: A rotary valve is placed at the bifurcation of the air pipe, which connects with the chambers; a similar one is at the junction of the air and milk pipes. The valves are connected by a rod whereby both are simultaneously operated for alternately opening and closing, communicating between the vacuum chambers, air pipes, milk pipes, and receptacle. Erf 1906: 18 These machines represented the last major innovation in terms of fundamental operating principles, and all subsequent designs were essentially refinements and improvements on the “pulsator principle.” The most significant of these refinements was a partial return to some of the ideas that had underpinned the earlier pressure machines, in that it sought to combine intermittent vacuum suction with “a pneumatic pulsating action varying inversely with the volume of the milk flow between the fixed minimum and fixed maximum of intensity” (Erf 1906: 27). Again, the intention was to mimic more closely the precise mouth actions of the suckling calf, which, it was observed, combined intermittent 93

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suction with a gentle tugging upon the teat, and it was felt that that this tugging probably had a role in properly stimulating the optimal secretion of milk. It was approximated through refining the application of intermittent suction so that it did not simply alternate between suction and no suction in an abrupt on/off binary action, akin to the explosions that power an engine, but instead cycled more fluidly through a buildup and then decline of suction in a wave formation, causing properly fitted teat-­cups to “tug” intermittently at the teat as the pressure increased and then decreased with each pulsation. Intermittent suction machines with some version of this refinement became known as “Thistle” machines, and these were the first milking machines widely regarded as practicable for regular use on working farms. They became the dominant design for milking machines throughout the early twentieth century, until they were eventually displaced by large-­scale automated pipeline systems in the 1960s (McDonald and Lapenta 2016). Commercially available versions of “Thistle” machines were being marketed to dairy farmers in the United States under the name “Pine Tree Milkers” from 1900 and in Europe shortly after (Hamby 2014). Unlike the claims made by the designers of the earliest machines, which typically involved contrasting the putative efficiency of machines based on rational principles with the inefficiencies of nature, these later machines were presented not just as close imitations of the principles of nature, but as an improvement upon those principles, which managed to put them into operation more perfectly than nature itself. “Surge” milking machines for example were the most commercially successful of the pulsation milkers, utilizing a design where the machine hung just under the udders during milking, which both significantly reduced the length of tubing that needed to be regularly cleaned and negated the problem of teat-­cups falling onto the dirty floor if they became detached (Hamby 2014). As well as incorporating some design adaptations, Surge milkers were promoted with what at the time was a markedly sophisticated marketing strategy. In advertisements for Surge machines the brand name was often followed by the slogan “The Mechanical Calf,” emphasizing its closeness to nature; the machine operates so exactly like a real calf that in effect it is a calf, we are told, albeit an efficient and mechanical one. The accompanying brand imagery consists of a cartoon depiction of a calf ’s head sprouting from a metallic mechanical body with robotic legs, shown in the act of playfully kicking away an anthropomorphic milk pail labeled “hand milker,” as it winks conspiratorially at the viewer. A caption for “Pine Tree Milkers” reads “The cows like it, that’s why the farmer likes it—it milks better” (Hamby 2014). Thus the agency of the cow, far from being simply denied, is actually being invoked and enrolled in the discursive stabilization of this assemblage. Along with the tendency of some cows to reduce their milk production in response to machine milking, the act of a cow kicking away a milking machine in annoyance or discomfort was often remarked upon—albeit usually as an aside—in evaluations of the practicability of different machines, and is perhaps the most visible signifier of the cow’s agency and resistance (Courtney 1900: 470). That this very action was used—and its meaning cleverly reversed—in the marketing of milking machines is therefore very revealing of the discourse at work here: these machines are not only better for farmers than hand-­milking, because they reduce the labor involved 94

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Figure 5.1  Advertisement for the Surge milker, 1929. Courtesy of GEA.

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Figure 5.2  The Mechanical Calf, commercial image, 1929. Courtesy of GEA.

Figure 5.3  Publicity for the Pine Tree Milker, exhibit at the New York State Fair c. 1919. Courtesy of GEA. 96

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and increase the efficiency of the process, but they are also preferred by the cows themselves, because they more perfectly simulate the natural suckling of a calf. In this way, it is nature itself that is being sold to the farmer, albeit a nature mediated by technology and perfected by machines.

Conclusion This chapter has drawn upon historical archive sources in order to examine a historical-­ sociotechnical moment that was pivotal for the subsequent industrialization and automation of milk production. It has traced how the development of mechanical devices for milking cows was a messy, uneven, and ad hoc process, full of contingencies, failures, and wrong turns. This is not consistent with any treatment of animal agricultural technologies as mere instruments of heteronomous political forces rooted in prior structural relations; instead technology emerges here as a contingent, contested, and agential moment in socio-­material assemblages. It follows that the specifics of technological design as material practice should not be backgrounded or unduly simplified in order to serve a critical structural or post-structural narrative. With this in mind, tracing the tortuous trajectory of milking machines empirically has unearthed a persistent tension between the extent to which the animal could be forced to adapt and yield, and to be reconstituted through the technology and in relation to the technology, and the extent to which the animal resisted subordination to the apparatus, instead forcing the technology to be adapted to her being. Thus, rather than situating the animal principally as a subject that is objectified, disciplined, and exploited by technology conceived as a political apparatus, what is striking in the case of milking machines is the degree to which the animal is resistant, and not principally through rudimentary acts of conscious resistance such as kicking away the apparatus, but as a being whose complex biocorporeality itself resists reduction to the materiality of the machine. In this way, this chapter has sought to contribute to restoring the liveliness and agency of cows that can be inadvertently exorcized in critical analyses of the dairy industry, by attending more agnostically to the relational entanglements of bovine biocorporeality with sociotechnical processes. The body of the cow has its own nuanced spatio-­material and temporal rhythms and modes of being that exceed reductive, linear, and instrumental rationality, and which tend to thwart material devices rooted in these ways of knowing and measuring “nature.” Thus, the cow is never wholly objectified or disciplined by the machine, but rather—more symmetrically—becomes partially enrolled into an animal-­machinehuman hybrid in which each constitutive element mediates and conditions the others, but not without persistent material frictions, stresses, and moments of disjuncture, which at any moment could fracture the precarious assemblage. These frictions or interferences are not just bio-­material but also bio-­temporal; so it is not enough to examine disciplinary spaces and the politico-­spatial dimensions of farming technologies, it is also necessary to attend to the ways in which specific temporal rhythms and modalities have both shaped and been reshaped by the human-­technology-bovine 97

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nexus. What transpires from this kind of analysis is that cows are neither relatively passive objects of power, nor subjects constituted as such by the disciplinary and bio-­ political technologies that act upon their “docile bodies”; rather, the cow is a bio-­material being who shapes, constrains, and conditions the technologies that can act upon her even as she is subjected to those technologies. By exploring in this way the point of interface and mediation between animal body and technology that is at the heart of the industrial dairy assemblage, in a historical juncture wherein these relations were not yet stabilized and entrenched, this chapter has sought to strip away the layers of sociotechnical complexity and cast a new light on the relational materialities of animal, human, and machine.

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CHAPTER 6 MILK, ADULTERATION, DISGUST: MAKING LEGAL MEANING Yofi Tirosh and Yair Eldan*

This chapter explores an infamous Israeli consumer scandal involving adulterated milk, a scandal resulting in a high-­profile class action that kept courts and public opinion engaged for over a decade. Consumers’ arguments about the emotions that the milk awakened in them challenged existing legal theory and doctrine, pushing the judiciary to search for ways to conceptualize and assess such claims. This case provides a rich opportunity to examine the intersection between milk, emotions, morality, and law. The basic facts of the case are the following: Tnuva, the biggest and oldest dairy company in Israel, secretly added silicon to its UHT (long-­life) milk as a way to prevent it from foaming. Managers of Tnuva were convicted of knowingly violating food quality regulations, but when it came to monetary damages, consumers could not show any harm to their health, since the tainted milk was sold for a short time, and the quantity of silicon ingested per consumer was minuscule. The class action plaintiffs, therefore, had to conceptualize their damage differently. They argued that their unwitting consumption of the contaminated milk infringed upon their autonomy and instigated a strong sense of disgust. In a binding ruling that will be described below, the Supreme Court of Israel recognized both autonomy infringement and disgust as torts, and Tnuva was ordered to pay hefty damages. In the analysis that follows we suggest that the fact that the case involved milk and a national milk manufacturer was central to the judges’ readiness to recognize disgust as harm. The judicial recognition of disgust as a compensable harm is far from self-­evident, and has drawn much criticism by Israeli legal scholars. More generally, the career of disgust in legal thought has been paved with ambivalence. On the one hand, it is undeniably central in the human repertoire of emotions, and thus not only worthy of recognition, but also, as William Miller (1997) has argued, essential in teaching us about a given society’s core values. On the other hand, as Martha Nussbaum (2004) observed, disgust tends to operate as a conservative force that affirms social boundaries and fixes power relations, justifying xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, ableism, speciesism, and other systems of ideology that create unjust, violent, and divided societies. Indeed, disgust is a complex emotion, which has universal-­visceral dimensions as well as ethical and culturally specific dimensions. Our exploration will ask how the law should cope *   The authors wish to thank the Manna Center for Food Safety and Security at Tel Aviv University for its generous support, as well as Tomer Shahal, Dan Largman, and Shai Oksenberg for their excellent research assistance and Zohar Kohavi and Sagit Mor for their illuminating feedback on earlier drafts.

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with this disgust, and what we can learn from the fact it was prompted by milk that failed to provide what was expected of it. Part I reviews the Tnuva silicon affair and the litigation that followed, focusing on the disagreement among the Supreme Court justices on whether disgust should be legally recognized as compensable harm. Part II examines how contemporary research on disgust explicates the various dimensions of this emotion. Applying the theoretical framework on disgust to the case at hand, Part III shows that the justices in the Tnuva case recognized two dimensions in the disgust consumers experienced by the tainted milk: an essentialist-­ physical dimension and a moral-­cultural dimension. This recognition of the dual nature of disgust shaped the judicial readiness to compensate for disgust. Part IV asks what the Tnuva silicon affair can teach us about the appropriate place of disgust in law.

I.  Mixed feelings: Tnuva v. Rabi In August 1995, Israeli news headlines made an announcement that most Israelis were shocked to discover: for eighteen months, Tnuva, a dairy manufacturer enjoying a unique status on which we will elaborate later, had used silicon in its 1 percent UHT milk. The addition of silicon to milk was a cheap way of preventing the milk from foaming, the alternative involving an expensive piece of machinery that the company did not want to buy. Foaming made it difficult to seal the milk cartons and was probably also bound to arouse negative reactions in consumers (incidentally, this story raises the question why consumers would object to foam in their milk cartons, but would expect and even require milk foam when they order their latte or cappuccino). State regulations strictly forbade adding silicon to milk.1 For other dairy products, small amounts of silicon were allowed, but Tnuva had used ten times more silicon than the maximum allowed for those other products. Tnuva had concealed its actions, resorting to dubious strategies such as using industrial silicon meant for cleaning in order to avoid raising the suspicion of silicon suppliers, who may have been tipped off by large orders (Rabi v. Tnuva 2008). In the process, the safety of silicon’s human consumption remained unchecked. When the news broke, Tnuva lied in its advertisements, claiming it had never added silicon to its milk (Tnuva v. Rabi 2003; Tnuva v. Rabi 2011; Haaretz 1995). The affair led to the criminal conviction of several Tnuva high-­ranking managers for violating consumer laws and production regulations and for misleading advertisements. In the civil terrain, a plaintiff named Taufik Rabi (hereinafter: Rabi) filed a class action in the name of milk consumers. The District Court and the Supreme Court approved the class action, despite Tnuva’s fierce objections—the central one being that consumers had experienced no harm. Indeed, absent physical damage to their health, plaintiffs had to turn to other arguments to describe the harm that they had suffered. They claimed that their autonomy was infringed, a recognized tort under Israeli law (Daaka v. Carmel 2003), and that they suffered feelings of disgust, for which they should be compensated. They declared feeling anguished, having experienced “a sense of disgust, disregard, deceit, fear and anxiety of the many potential health hazards involved in the presence of a 100

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forbidden substance in an essential everyday commodity,” as well as breach of trust in Tnuva and food producers in general (Tnuva v. Rabi 2003: 694–5). Writing for the majority (Justice Levin concurring and Justice Procaccia in dissent), Justice Miriam Naor found that the damage alleged by the plaintiffs, which she defined as the infliction of “negative sensations and sensations of disgust,” was legally recognizable under Israel’s tort law’s recognition of non-­monetary damages. She noted that Tnuva misleading its customers could amount to an infringement of their autonomy, even if the only harm suffered was the consumption of a substance they did not intend to consume. The opinion does not elaborate on the precise relationship between the harm to autonomy and the harm of experiencing disgust. Still, it does establish that even a consumer’s knowledge that his or her autonomy was infringed upon eating something he or she did not intend to eat, can, in and of itself, provoke painful sensations, including disgust (Jacob 2012; Keren-Paz 2007). As Justice Naor stated, If one wants to consume only kosher food, and post factum learns that the food presented deceptively is not kosher, one will feel a sense of disgust and an infringement of one’s autonomy . . . Indeed, he who does not keep kosher could [allegedly] say to the keeper of kosher: nothing happened if you ate non-­kosher food; no damage was inflicted upon you. But this is not the worldview of he who wishes to keep kosher. Tnuva v. Rabi 2003: 682 The Court’s reference to disgust caused by unknowingly eating non-Kosher food as a primary example of the type of disgust worthy of compensation is telling. Kosher rules are granted high importance in Israel, culturally and legally. Respect for kosher expectations is prioritized in every public institution. University cafeterias, military kitchens, theater and museum restaurants are all kosher, as mandated by law and reinforced by convention (The Kashrut (Prohibition of Deceit) Law, 1983; The Kasher Food for Soldiers Ordinance of 1948; Barak-Erez 2009: 2497; Mazie 2006: 146–7). In the supermarket, every food item is labeled not just for whether it is kosher (and it usually is, as non-­kosher food stores are distinct), but also for the kind, or degree, of the kosher observance involved in its production. Over the Passover week, when Jewish law forbids eating bread, vendors in Jewish towns are not allowed to sell it. Moreover, Israel’s Supreme Court recently ruled that only state-­authorized “kosher supervisors” could accord the label “kosher.” Grass-­root organizations, which emerged due to dissatisfaction with the state service and offer alternative kosher supervision to restaurants, are prohibited from using the term “kosher” (Gini v. The Central Rabbinate 2016). Kosher, then, is never a standalone dietary preference or religious obligation: it involves collective practices and a communal effort, all designed to respect a deeply personal dietary choice. For Justice Naor, selling milk tainted with silicon is analogous in its severity to breaking the trust involved in selling non-­kosher food to a kosher eater. Importantly, Justice Naor clarifies that not every case of disobeying manufacturing regulations or misreporting the content of a food product will justify a lawsuit (Gilead 2012; Klement and Procaccia 2014): 101

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My approach does not imply that any case of diversion from mandatory standard or of false reporting on the content of food would justify a claim for damages. There can be many cases where slight diversion from one standard or another, even regarding food, would not establish a personal suit nor a class action. A claim lacks justification when the harm is de minimis . . . But the present lawsuit is not insignificant on its face. The misleading information that Tnuva advertised following the publications about silicon in its milk can allegedly indicate that Tnuva itself realized that there was considerable public objection to the addition of silicon to milk. Tnuva v. Rabi 2003: 684 Although the opinion does not specify how to draw the line between a legally recognizable harm and one that is not, we think the answer lies in the kind of disgust that plaintiffs experience. We suggest that what motivated the judges to grant legal recognition to plaintiffs’ claim was that their disgust had ethical and cultural dimensions having to do with the cultural meaning of milk. Justice Naor writes further: The non-­monetary damage claimed by the plaintiff is characterized in the sense of disgust stemming from the fact it was silicon, with all the associative baggage accompanying this substance. In my opinion, damage of this kind is on its face compensable. Tnuva v. Rabi 2003: 682 Justice Procaccia’s dissent maintained that absent physical or monetary damages accompanying the disgust claim, it should remain an extra-­legal matter. According to this view, since the criminal case against Tnuva’s managers established that there was no medical hazard in using the silicon—plaintiffs’ emotions cannot amount to anything that is legally meaningful. The only cases that would warrant compensation are those in which the ingredients or characteristics of the product have special significance for the consumer. For example, when the product is falsely presented as kosher, organic, vegan, or fat free, and the consumer makes a principled choice to buy kosher, organic, or fat-free food. If a consumer’s preference is based on religion, worldviews, vegan values, or caloric constraints, abusing these preferences would cause compensable harm. Damage of this kind would be part of the ordinary course of affairs and a direct result of the defendant’s tort. Plaintiffs, says Justice Procaccia, should have a demonstrable, well-­defined preference to purchase a product with clearly articulated characteristics in order to seek damages from the manufacturer for failing to inform consumers about the product’s qualities. Learning that one’s milk contained silicon provokes emotions that are not principled enough to be legally recognized. Justice Procaccia is concerned, then, with the idiosyncrasy inherent in a plaintiff’s disgust claim. The law should not enter amorphous and ambiguous emotions. Harms should be communicable, or capable of being expressed and grounded in rational arguments. They should be externally validated propositions, as opposed to a visceral reaction that is only testified by the body. A plaintiff is worthy of the law’s attention if she 102

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can state, “I am a vegetarian,” “I keep kosher,” or “I am on a diet.” Claims that are more subjective and difficult to formulate as rational propositions should remain outside the realm of law (Tirosh 2005). Disgust that is not grounded in the knowledge that I ate something that contradicts my principles is an emotion that is personal, hard to communicate, and does not involve logic. Disgust is expressed in a powerful physical response, often uncontrollable and hard to harness. It is a feeling that precedes explanations and nullifies them. According to Procaccia, the contours of the damages alleged by the class action plaintiffs are “narrow and shrouded in mist” (Tnuva v. Rabi 2003: 697). She therefore seeks to constrain legal analysis to areas of clarity and higher analytical and empirical certainty. The next section lays out the origins of the emotion of disgust, a survey that will enable us to fathom the complexities of the Court’s recognition of this emotion.

II.  Disgust: Between nature and culture The theoretical discussions and empirical data with regard to disgust reveal a complex emotion in which nature, culture, body, and soul are intertwined. In this section, we will examine disgust from the point of view of the essentialist approach which sees disgust as a universal bodily reaction to a dangerous object trying to penetrate the body, as well as from the approach that focuses on the effect that moral or cultural conceptions have on our view of what is disgusting and what is not. The essentialist approach to disgust According to the essentialist approach, disgust is a physiological-­biological feeling whose function is to reject objects that threaten the body or that could contaminate it (Case, Repacholi, and Stevenson 2006). Disgusting objects are thus objects that can defile or pollute the body, or transfer diseases to it. They represent death and stir up death anxieties. Disgust is both an emotion and a sensation; it is therefore a powerful mechanism to cope with threats of contamination and defilement. Disgust brings with it unequivocal physical signals—nausea, distortion of the body and face, repulsion, and physical distancing. Some scholars think that disgust is mainly an oral defense: a bodily reaction to prevent dangerous object from entering the body through the mouth (Rozin, Haidt and McCauley 2008: 758– 9). Disgust is not only elicited by oral contact, but more generally by any penetrative attempt, thus every contact with hazardous materials can initiate it (Nussbaum 2004: 88). Social psychologists claim that disgust originates from our need to distance ourselves from our animalistic nature. This is why we are disgusted by feces, urine, semen, and menstrual blood (Rozin and Fallon 1987: 28, Rozin, Haidt and McCauley 2008: 760, Chapman and Anderson 2012: 63). Another aspect of our animality that disgust serves to suppress is our temporal fragility: the fact that we are living organisms doomed to decay and death. Disgust helps us avoid thinking about life as an organic process (Miller 1997: 48–50). But disgust extends beyond the spheres of hazards to the body, death anxiety, or our animality to the sphere of social exclusion. It can be invoked in response to unknown 103

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people, to people from a lower social status, or to those who are considered immoral or outlaws. Here, disgust works to preserve a certain social order and often reflects conservative ideas that sometimes reinforce classist, racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, or speciesist ideas. Disgust: The moral-­cultural approach Even essentialists would admit that the idea of disgust does not surrender to a coherent theoretical or universal framework. A sterile cockroach will still disgust us although it carries no threat of physical contamination. To the opposite, poisonous mushrooms will not prompt disgust although they are extremely dangerous to our body (Nussbaum 2004: 93). Additionally, essentialists would concede that different things disgust different people from different cultural backgrounds (for example, grasshoppers or frogs, which are coveted foods in some cultures and prompt aversion in others) (Kelly 2011: 43; Miller 1997: 10–11; Elwood and Olatunji 2009: 99). To take this insight one step forward, if death anxiety is the basis for core disgust then we must keep in mind that death is treated and conceived differently in different cultures. The moral-­cultural approach observes that objects are conceived as morally flawed, and, correspondingly, immoral acts will be considered disgusting (Miller 1997: 180; Nussbaum 2004: 102). Research shows that disgust plays a major role in the formulation of moral judgment (Schnall et al. 2008: 34). To be disgusted by an immoral act means that one is judging that act in a very powerful manner, combining physical and moral-­ ideological aspects. In terms of physical reaction, there is no way to distinguish between disgust provoked by feces, corpses, or semen (“core disgust”), and disgust motivated by moral notions (contra Bloom 2004; Nabi 2002). Just like disgusting objects, disgusting immoral people are subject to a chain of contamination that begins with them and corrupts anything or anyone in contact with them (Rozin and Nemeroff 1990: 207; Rozin, Haidt and McCauley 2008: 760). The moral judgment that underlies disgust, whether originating in a physical object, a person from a certain social group, or a moral act, sheds light on one of disgust’s key traits—the sense of hierarchy that accompanies it. To be disgusted by something or someone means to put oneself in a higher position than the disgusting object or person. The hierarchy that accompanies disgust is different from the hierarchy associated with contempt. Feelings of supremacy accompany both disgust and contempt, but in contrast to contempt, disgust reveals the disgusted person’s weakness since the disgusting person has an enormous power over his physical and emotional reactions. In other words, the disgusting person has power because he or she can contaminate the disgusted person and produce in the latter strong, unwanted, and involuntary physical reactions. There is an important connection between food, culture, and disgust. Beyond its essential role in survival, food has obvious cultural significances and social functions (Rozin, Haidt and McCauley 2008: 759–60). Food can be disgusting not only because it is dangerous or rotten but also due to cultural, social, or moral norms. Interesting in this context is the use of phrases borrowed from the language of food to describe moral or 104

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esthetical judgment, such as “palatable” or “distasteful.” Certain cultures develop taboos around certain foods. Take for example pork or seafood, which are not kosher according to the dietary laws of Judaism, or cow meat for Hindus. Exposure to these foods can be disgusting for those who refrain from eating them. But it is never religion alone that prompts a disgust reaction to non-­kosher foods. A religious Jew who finds out that the rice he has just eaten was not tithed will not feel disgusted, and if he does, it would not be to the degree he would feel if he found out that he has just eaten pork. The strong significance of pork in Jewish culture plays a deeper role than the knowledge that halachic rules were not kept. Another classic illustration of the strong connection between food, disgust, and culture is Mary Douglas’ account of the Leviticus dietary laws. In her seminal book, Purity and Danger, Douglas (1966: 54–8) claimed that the Israelites’ dietary laws did not restrict eating certain foods because they were disgusting or could defile their eaters, but because they did not fit into the cultural categories used to classify animals. In other words, the restrictions were not connected to the specific character of a certain animal but to the ability to place it within a known category. The kosher rules, Douglas claimed, represented the will of lawmakers to understand and control the world by confining it to a certain order—dietary laws represented the Israelites’ holiness, their distinction. Against this backdrop, the most threatening animals are those that appear to be part of one category but are actually part of another. Douglas also argued that the order reflected in the dietary laws of the Israelites is connected with the way the lawmakers imagined the “right” social order. For Douglas (1966: 115, 125), bodily rituals, dietary laws, and slaughtering rituals represented not only an “external boundary” between the Israelites and other nations, but also the social hierarchy within Israelite society itself. Douglas later modified and nuanced her claim, but the connection she made between the borders of the body and the borders of the community is insightful nonetheless. Her work suggests that anxiety over what enters the body can also reflect anxiety for the integrity of the “body politic.” After all, when accepting the cultural and moral aspects of disgust, the greatest danger is the social exclusion of those deemed disgusting because they challenge imagined and allegedly strict boundaries between the sexes, the races, and other axes, and do not fit into pre-­existing models of appearance or behavior. At this point it is worth noting Julia Kristeva’s work on abjection. Kristeva points out that the disgusting object is not only what disrupts order but also what is subversive. Take feces, for example: it is supposed to symbolize the separation between what is alive and what is dead, one of the things that is shed by a person in the process of life, but at the same time it is marked as part of the person, he recognizes death inside him. On the cultural aspect of disgust, Kristeva claims that a person who objects morality, or even praises that he disrespect the rule of law, is not disgusting, but rather what disgusts us is exactly the subversive element—when someone or something is immoral but does not reveal its true intentions, when the immorality is dark and conspirative (Kristeva 1980: 10–12). Disgust, to sum up, is a unique emotion. It has primordial origins, it involves feelings of defilement, uncleanness, death anxiety, and anxiety about our fragile existence. At the same time, it is culture-­dependent and could be altered, diminished, and amplified 105

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by time, place, and society. It is hard, almost impossible, to separate core disgust and moral-­cultural disgust because they are intertwined and influence each other. What kind of disgust was felt by Rabi when he claimed that he was anguished, sensing “disgust, disregard, deceit, fear and anxiety . . .” as well as breach of trust in Tnuva and food producers in general (Tnuva v. Rabi 2003: 694–5) when he discovered that he drank Tnuva’s silicon-­infused milk? What was the effect of the cultural and moral dimensions of disgust on his physical sensations, and should he have been compensated for these sensations? These questions are addressed in the next section.

III.  Dimensions of disgust in Tnuva v. Rabi What does it mean to say that the Court validated Rabi’s experience of disgust? What is the nature of the disgust that earned judicial recognition? A consumer finds out that he put in his body a synthetic, foreign substance that he did not intend to drink and that is unworthy of drinking. He feels disgusted. At first glance it seems that this is disgust in its most basic and primary form—visceral disgust, almost devoid of moral value and cultural meaning. We suggest, however, that there is more at stake. Judges in the majority recognized the disgust at play not merely as the result of unintended insertion of foreign substance to one’s body, but also as involving a food of a special kind, and a food producer of a special nature. Food, milk and emotion In its usage of silicon, Tnuva not only misled consumers by making them believe that what they drank corresponded perfectly with the stated content on the package, but it also desecrated the very concept of milk—a food which is the paradigm of purity, giving, whiteness, and innocence. Milk is our first food, and as such its status is primary and foundational. Breastfeeding is understood as a site of deep physical and emotional intimacy between mother and newborn (Sutherland 1999: 1). The iconic image of the act of breastfeeding functions in culture as the essence of altruistic giving, so much so that Jesus is often portrayed as a breastfeeding woman, to signify his limitless giving (Sutherland 1999: 11–12) and selfless caring (Salmon 1994: 252; Maillet this volume). Lady Macbeth complains that her husband is “too full of the milk of human kindness,” which prevents him from killing his rivals (Shakespeare [1623] 1993). A breastfeeding baby has not yet fully entered the social order. It is not surprising that nature and science are simultaneously invoked in discourses on milk, both in relation to breastmilk (Sutherland 1999: 8) and in relation to industrial milk (DuPuis 2002: 42). Milk cartons feature peaceful cows in green meadows, as if all farmers had to do is to avoid interfering with nature taking its course. At the same time, milk is presented as a product of cutting-­edge technologies and scientific advancement that guarantee hygienic and contamination-­free conditions, and careful monitoring of 106

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factors such as fat and calcium percentage (Nimmo this volume). Presenting industrial milk as pure, safe, essential, and healthy relies on associating it with breastmilk, while downplaying the differences between them—one is meant for babies and the other is marketed as good for all age groups; one is produced by the human body for human consumption and the other is produced by animals for human consumption (DuPuis 2002: 46). Stressing milk’s whiteness also serves to reinforce this image. Israeli culture privileges white as more beautiful, cleaner, more benevolent, and more civilized (Leong 2013). Light Western European hair and skin color, for example, are associated with Ashkenazi identity (Ashkenazim are Jews who immigrated to Israel from Europe) and contrasted with the blackness of Mizrahi identity (of Jews that immigrated to Israel from North African and Arab countries). This color contrast is part of a rich symbolic structure that serves to sustain the social, cultural, and material repression of Mizrahim in Israel (Erakat 2015; Shohat 1999). The whiteness of milk contributed to its status as a superior food. This systematic branding of milk encourages consumers to suspend their usual suspicions and defense mechanisms, taking a momentary pause in the safe and reassuring pre-­market stage, when cold marketing calculations were not yet full-­blown. Enter Tnuva, selling milk which contains silicon. Consumers’ distress was not only caused by unknowingly consuming silicon, but also, and perhaps most importantly, by a deep disturbance in the basic order of things. The dissonance between consumers’ unreserved trust in this milk as pure, nourishing, and maternal, and the betrayal they suffered when they discovered that the milk they consumed was in fact a fluid that was contaminated not only by silicon but also by lies and greed, was enormous. As mentioned above, foaming would have been preventable by using a new machine, but silicon was a cheaper solution. Rabi’s disgust was both visceral and cultural-­ethical, a physical response to ingesting a substance that does not belong in the body and a moral response to Tnuva’s unsettling the place of milk in the symbolic order. We propose that this latter dimension of disgust played an important role in the judicial willingness to recognize Rabi’s harm. The fact that the disgust claim pertained to milk justified judicial action that other, less culturally loaded foods would have been less likely to justify. The case we focused on thus far was the preliminary procedure that determined whether the class action should be approved and examined on its merits (Tnuva v. Rabi 2003). In the later case that examined the merits and ruled that Tnuva should pay a hefty sum in compensation (Rabi v. Tnuva 2008), Judge Binyamini in the Tel-Aviv District Court focused on the cultural properties of milk, reinforcing our analysis of the cultural dimensions of disgust that played a role in this case. To substantiate its argument that no real harm was done to consumers who drank the adulterated milk, Tnuva conducted a consumer survey. It asked customers what their response would be should they find out that there is an undisclosed additive in their soy oil. Responses suggested that consumers would hardly be bothered, leading Tnuva to ask the court to use this analogy to conclude that no shock was caused to milk consumers. Judge Binyamini objected to the comparison between milk and soy oil, castigating Tnuva for downplaying the meaning of milk and devoiding it of its rich cultural significance. “Soy oil is not drinking milk, and the silicon 107

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was inserted to the milk not as an additive, but to prevent foaming—and in severe circumstances . . .” (Rabi v. Tnuva 2008: para. 73). Milk, he continued, “is supposed to be as pure and as natural as possible” (para. 81), and “natural and pure” (para. 78). Discussing the origins of disgust, Judge Binyamini declared that: Emotions of disgust, disappointment, fraud, hurt, disregard etc. . . . are not necessarily related to health risks, but to the fact that silicon was inserted into the milk, contradictory to law and to manufacturing rules, and while this fact was hidden from the authorities and from consumers. para. 17 The moral and visceral dimensions of disgust are understood here as being intertwined. Tnuva’s fraud, especially because it pertains to a food such as milk, induces moral outrage not just because silicone was used in manufacturing the milk, but also because this fact was hidden. It is almost impossible to find in the opinions of all the judges who reviewed this case a discussion of disgust as mainly physical and devoid of a moral dimension. Although the Supreme Court did not interrogate the meanings of disgust, the District Court explicitly recognized that the expected purity of milk and consumers’ high faith in Tnuva were aggravating factors in the harm experienced by consumers. The ethos of Tnuva When an investigative journalist exposed Tnuva’s usage of silicon, the country was shaken. Newspapers featured front-­page headlines for weeks, a Knesset committee dedicated a session to the affair, and Tnuva’s sales dropped sharply. As argued above, the fact that the contaminated product was milk played a major role in the resonance of the affair and in the legal recognition of disgust as part of tort law. Of no less importance, however, is the unique stature of Tnuva as not only the largest dairy producer, but also as a motherly company whose destiny is tied to the idea of a Zionist future. Milk production had special importance for Zionist leaders, industrialists, and agricultural entrepreneurs (Rosen and Rosenthal 1994: 35, 39). Building a thriving, stable, and productive system of milk manufacturing and distribution was important as a way of feeding the nation’s children and workers, and of realizing the dream of a sovereign, strong, healthy, and productive Jewish life in the old/new homeland. Producing milk via modern technologies, keeping the process hygienic and efficient, was also a way of distinguishing Jewish production and consumption practices from local “Palestinian ways” (Novick 2014: 37). Tnuva started as a cooperative of farmers in Kibbutzim and Moshavim (different kinds of agricultural cooperatives) in the 1920s, before the establishment of Israel (Verlinsky 1973: 11–13). As such, it symbolized the core values of Zionism and of nation building of the time: agriculture, productivity, cooperation, Hebrew/Jewish labor, and making the most out of the land (Elazari 1930). Tnuva’s members saw it as an organization guided by the needs of the young nation in the Land of Israel, supplying products to remote areas and aiding the Jewish yishuv in times of 108

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crisis and armed conflict (Verlinsky 1973: 15; Moskuna 2014: 16–19). Tnuva’s online museum reinforces a narrative that interlaces the company’s fate with that of the nation. Tnuva’s timeline is organized not according to changes in production sites and technologies, markets, new products, or changes in the structure of the corporation, but based on major national events, such as pogroms, wars, military campaigns, or intifadas. The subliminal message is clear: Tnuva was there during every crisis or historical landmark (Tnuva’s On-Line Museum). “Since its inception,” the museum proclaims, Tnuva fulfilled roles of national nature, in organizing proper supply of essential food to the country’s population. This was the case in the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt . . . and this was the case during the Second World War, when merchant ships were unable to reach the harbors of the Land of Israel. During the War of Independence, the text reports, Tnuva accepted Prime Minister Ben-Gurion’s request to put its employees at risk so as to deliver dairy products to the sieged Jerusalem (Verlinsky 1973: 83–9; Davar 1947: 4). During happier times, Tnuva fed children in Israel’s periphery, “adopted” (sponsored) elite military units, and funded the reunification of an iconic Israeli band, Kaveret, for Israel’s fiftieth anniversary celebration. In times of war and in times of peace, Tnuva was there. The images of Israelis and Israeliness conveyed in Tnuva’s ads resonate with the national ethos. Children and adults in these ads are secular and light skinned, echoing the cultural and material dominance of Ashkenazi identity in Israeli society, and failing to depict Mizrahi or Arab bodies, who are all part of Tnuva’s clientele.2 This imagery positions Tnuva as reaffirming hegemonic Israeli identity, thereby tying its brand to this identity. There is a story of class to be told here as well. Tnuva’s ads reflect the changes in the dominant perceptions in Israel about the ideal life. In the first three or four decades of the company’s existence, Tnuva’s products were presented in association with agricultural or industrious pioneering life, as products of pastoral farms but also products that nourish the farmer or laborer and his family, making them strong for their important work. With the decline of the Zionist ideology of cultivating the land and encouraging a new, healthy, and productive Jew away from the frail and studious life of the diaspora, the advertisements begin to depict a more bourgeois lifestyle. In the 1990s, Tnuva’s products became associated with the emerging middle-­class ideal of suburban living epitomized in a house with a red roof and a lawn. Tnuva’s cottage cheese, its flagship product discussed below, is now marketed with the slogan “The cheese that has a home,” which refers to the suburban cottage house drawn on the packaging and to the cheese’s distinct Israeliness. In his autobiography, renowned Israeli author Amos Oz tries to imagine how the Land of Israel appeared to his mother when she arrived from Europe in the 1930s. Tnuva’s products are part of the elementary experience of Jewish living in Palestine. Tnuva foods are enumerated alongside mosque towers, dry and hot wind, or tanned bus drivers in short pants (Oz 2007: 221). Tnuva’s “green, big car” is the subject of a classical children’s song written in the 1940s, which is still sung by most Hebrew-­speaking toddlers. The song features the daily truck that transports the milk from farms to Tnuva’s factory (Bergstein 1945). When the Supreme Court reviewed the sale of Tnuva to a foreign private investment fund in 2010, Justice Amit opened his opinion by quoting this 109

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song (Yonatan Kimhi v. The Cooperative Societies Registrar 2010). Tnuva is, then, a core component of the Israeli imagination and of what it is to be Israeli. Two additional events are worth mentioning, although they happened long after the silicon case was decided in 2003, because they illuminate Tnuva’s importance in Israeli cultural and economic life. In 2008, Tnuva was sold to the British investment fund Apax (Moskuna 2014: 20–8). The sale was perceived in Israeli public discourse as symbolizing the bankruptcy of the national ethos and the victory of the cynical, individualistic, free market ideology over values such as mutual help and corporatism (Turgeman 2006: 16), which Tnuva was held to represent (Moskuna 2014: 30–3; Svorai 2011: 29). Matters escalated when, in 2014, Apax sold the control of Tnuva to Bright Food, a Shanghai-­based company that is fully owned by the Chinese government. This deal was seen not only as the privatization of a national asset, but also as selling a core Israeli asset to a foreign nation. A former head of the Mossad was quoted stating that the deal infringed upon Israel’s security (Hasson and Lavi 2014; Hayut 2015: 22), and the grandson of one of Tnuva’s founders reacted by saying: “Money blinds the righteous, and when it comes to money we completely lost ourselves. . . . There is no sense in transferring such a big company, if we are talking in terms of food security, to the hands of a Chinese government” (Azulay 2014). At the time of the sale, an image circulated in the media and social networks, which altered the house figuring on Tnuva’s signature cottage cheese. In the place of the ubiquitous Israeli style suburban house stood a pagoda (Crystal 2014; Levi 2014; Zommer 2014: 8). Such public reactions illustrate how Tnuva’s image is intertwined with national defense and even with Israel’s very survival. In the summer of 2011, Israel went through several months of what has been dubbed “The Social Protest,” an intense period of vigils, sit-­ins, a tent “town” at the center of Tel Aviv and in other cities, large demonstrations, and more. Likely inspired by the Arab Spring and preceding the Occupy Wall Street movement by a few months, the protest focused on the high cost of living, privatization, social inequality, and the housing crisis. The match that lit the fire, however, became known as “The Cottage Protest.” One man, Itzik Alrov, posted on Facebook a call for a consumer ban against Tnuva, because the price of the cottage cheese exceeded the five New Israeli Shekel line (about 1.5 US dollars). This all-­time high price was deemed outrageous for a product like cottage cheese. The public response to his call was swift, and surprisingly massive, growing into a national political movement. But why cottage cheese? Social protests over food prices typically erupt around the price of basic products, such as bread or milk. For non-Israelis, the fact that cottage cheese, a seemingly mundane spread, has the symbolic power of taking people out to the streets, is surprising. For most Israelis, however, Israeli cottage cheese is unlike any other—it has no competition in texture and flavor, and one has to taste it in order to appreciate its magic (Shamir 2013: 147). When Israeli expats say they miss the food back home, cottage cheese is often one of the first items on their list. And when they say “cottage,” they mean Tnuva’s cottage cheese. Tnuva successfully branded this cheese as a basic staple and a paradigmatic Israeli product, which is elemental not only for the Israeli diet but also for Israeli identity (Yeffet 2006). Unlike falafel and 110

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hummus, the other contenders to national food status, cottage cheese is not shared with neighboring Arab cuisines. As part of Tnuva’s branding of cottage cheese as “The cheese that has a home,” commercials have featured images of childhood memories of one’s family sitting around the kitchen table, and a voiceover commenting “Tnuva: To grow up in an Israeli home” (Toussia-Cohen 2012). For the organizers of “the cottage protest,” cottage cheese was a litmus test for the cost of living in Israel. If a middle-­class family cannot afford cottage cheese, then things have gone deeply astray (Dovrat-Mazritz et al. 2011; Sadeh 2011). The public’s identification with Tnuva as a company that enjoys a quasi-­governmental and maternal status and that is closely linked with Israeliness and the security of the nation, informed and fueled the rage against Tnuva in the affairs just described. The anger and disappointment in Tnuva were as deep as the public trust in it. As an affair that preceded the Social Protest and the selling of Tnuva, the silicon scandal was even more shocking. It was the first time that Tnuva, with its image as a benevolent benefactor (Fischer 1995a: 12), was exposed as acting cynically, motivated by profit considerations in contradiction with consumers’ interests (Rabi v. Tnuva 2008: para. 11, 129). Not only did Tnuva deceive its consumers before its actions became known, but it continued lying in the media and in the Knesset in its attempts to manage the crisis (Fischer 1995b: 19; Jacob 2012: 51–4). In finding that disgust is a compensable harm, the Rabi majority recognized that Tnuva’s actions invoked more complex forms of disgust, including a sense of betrayal, moral rage, shock, and helplessness. What was violated was not only milk’s purity in its chemical-­organic sense, but also the purity of the trust consumers had in milk, as a food carrying unthreatening and nourishing symbolic meaning, as well as the purity of the trust toward Tnuva as the supposedly benevolent maker of this milk. Without legal recognition of disgust, there was no place in the law to conceptualize these types of harms incurred by consumers.

IV.  Disgust in law Disgust has had an ambivalent and unstable status in the law. The heated scholarly debates about the appropriate legal treatment of disgust claims suggest the difficulty of either dismissing disgust or simply incorporating it into the law’s conceptual repertoire. Disgust arguments may be raised not only in tort cases like in Rabi, but also in tort cases concerning disgust caused by people, e.g., by the body odor of a homeless person, or by the sight of a breastfeeding woman. More dramatically, disgust can be invoked in criminal cases. Defendants may claim that they acted violently because they were disgusted by their victims, for instance, same-­sex couples, and should therefore benefit from acquittal or at least from lighter punishment (Commonwealth v. Carr 1990; Belkin 1988; Kahan 1998: 1621). This ambivalence, we propose, can be grounded in two reasons: law’s difficulty in working with a subjective, ambiguous, and complex emotion, and the fact that disgust undermines distinctions and categorizations that are fundamental to legal thinking. 111

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Law’s challenge in dealing with an ambiguous, subjective, and multi-­layered emotion As a powerful sensation that physically marks moral boundaries, disgust creates a hierarchy of values which is a threat to the law, whose hierarchy of values is not grounded in the visceral, fluid, and the subjective, but (at least ideally) in the objective, stable, and reasoned. Disgust can serve to identify the immoral due to the decisive physical response it prompts. In one case, for example, a murderer’s request to receive the evidence that served to convict him—which included photos of the women that he murdered in intimate and undignified positions—was denied on the sole ground that it was a disgusting request (Beldotti v. Commonwealth 1996; Kahan 1998: 1644–5). The ability of disgust to teach us about what is moral and immoral has led scholars to argue that it is essential for criminal law to recognize disgust arguments, since this emotion plays an important role in signifying the values of liberal societies and can partake in criminal law’s educating role (Kahan 1998: 1655; Devlin 1965: 15). Other scholars, in contrast, have expressed deep concerns over recognizing disgust arguments as legally admissible, arguing that it would entrench social hierarchies and inequalities by giving legal validation to acts based on disgust (Miller 1997: 202; Nussbaum 2004: 14, 221). This fear is understandable. In the United States, some judges recognized the disgust claim of defendants who acted upon their disgust and attacked gays, reducing their sentence (Belkin 1988; Kahan 1998: 1636). Due to the way disgust and morality are intertwined, acts considered immoral in a given society may prompt authentic feelings of disgust, accompanied by undeniable physical dimensions. For instance, sex outside of marriage can draw disgust-­related hate crimes. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, whose positions is that the law should not only be rational and utilitarian but make room for emotions, argues that the law should not recognize disgust because it is exclusionary and based on primordial fears (Nussbaum 2004: 72–5; Nussbaum 1999). She did argue, however, that we should differentiate between universal-­ essentialist-physical disgust and disgust that emanates from moral grounds. While the latter should be rejected by legal discourse, the former should not. For example, nuisance claims about objects that are “universally disgusting,” such as feces, carcasses, or corpses, should receive legal recognition and a plaintiff who was disgusted by a corpse on her lawn is entitled to compensation. The attempt to distinguish between universal-­essentialist disgust and moral-­cultural disgust is understandable, because it removes the possibility that disgust will serve to justify and to ground discrimination, hatred, and racism. But such a distinction is far from easy (Abrams and Keren 2010: 1197). As we have seen, disgust is to be differentiated from indignation and from contempt, because it possesses both physical and emotional dimensions. Hanna Freund-Chertok makes this point through a beautiful example. Darwin reported his disgust when his food had been touched by a “naked savage” (Darwin [1872] 1965: 256–7). The savage’s hands were not dirty, but he was considered as dirty by Darwin, due to the latter’s cultural assumptions about naked savages (FreundChertok 2011: 119). This anecdote illustrates how difficult it would be to distinguish between “universal-­essentialist” and “moral-­cultural” disgust. 112

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The difficulty in clearly differentiating between the various elements of disgust should not lead to the conclusion that disgust should be kept out of the law. On the contrary: developing a jurisprudence of disgust can provide the law with the opportunity to critically examine the values that underlie it. Things that cause disgust take us, as FreundChertok puts it, to the fascinating border zones of society and culture, allowing us to re-­examine the values and presuppositions that make something disgusting (FreundChertok 2011: 124–5). Considering a disgust argument would require lawyers, judges, jurists, and society as a whole to deliberate on the values that trigger that disgust and determine if they are defensible. In other words, disgust’s unique quality as challenging society’s moral boundaries renders it worthy of legal attention and of critical reflection. Such reflection would ask whether the type of disgust in question corresponds with or contradicts the legal system’s fundamental values, and sharpens the legal system’s moral borders. For example, a plaintiff who argues that he is disgusted by the skin color of certain people would certainly not receive legal recourse in democratic legal systems, but the very consideration of the argument, as well as the articulation of the reasons for rejecting it, can crystallize and reaffirm the legal system’s core values and commitments (Fiss 1984: 1073; Luban 1999: 127; Kahan 1999: 69–73). Disgust, nature, and the sources of law’s authority Jurists may be reluctant to engage with disgust because it threatens the very conceptual categories which are the building blocks of legal analysis. Disgust challenges legal thinking in that it deconstructs constitutive distinctions between nature and culture, particular and universal, subjective and objective, and natural law and human law. Disgust amalgamates these categories, jeopardizing the theoretical and actual differentiation between them. Disgust claims require judges to explore the semiotics of this emotion and to recognize that aversion for certain people or practices reflects social hierarchies. Accepting that disgust occurred, as a matter of fact, while rejecting it as legitimating violence or allowing for compensation, would enable a society to deliberate on its central values, its moral boundaries, and the elements that shape its identity (Kass 1997: 17). Let us return to the examples of judicial action such as the granting of an injunction or compensation for someone who was disgusted by the bodily odor of a homeless person, or a woman breastfeeding in public (Broida 2010: 217). Due to the physical nature of the emotion, judges may worry that even contemplating such a claim in court could legitimize it. Here, the power of recognizing that disgust is never devoid of cultural and moral dimensions can help courts. The feeling of repulsion in response to a homeless person emanates not strictly from the narrow dimension of the body’s physical reaction towards bad smell. It is grounded in the homeless person’s social and cultural marginality and in the threat to social order that he or she represents (Blutner and Rothchild 2013). Similarly, the disgust experienced by the plaintiff whose gaze caught the breastfeeding mother originates to a great extent from social conventions against female nudity in public— nudity that is only legitimate when it is sexualized (Broida 2010: 219). Excluding disgust from the law would maintain law’s boundaries as an institution that privileges (white, 113

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able bodied, masculine, and middle class) reason, shying away from the fluid and opaque nature of the bodily (Tirosh 2012: 295–301). The argument that disgust is too open-­ended, subjective, and morally regressive for the law is unconvincing. Social values are often debated and articulated during legal procedures. Judges routinely pour content into general and open-­ended principles and moral values. Common law’s provocation doctrine, for example, raises heated debates about the meaning courts give to reasonable reaction. Although such meanings are sometimes problematic in their sexism or racism, the juridical debates do not revolve over whether reasonableness or provocation should be altogether removed from legal doctrine, but around the correct meaning of reasonableness (Shachar 1989: 78; Kamir 1997: 136). Similarly, the law should recognize and incorporate disgust as a core human emotion without which the law’s understanding of human meanings and motivations would be deficient. Instead of excluding disgust, courts should deliberate its correct meaning in their legal systems. Legitimizing disgust in tort law would therefore help fulfill one of the most important roles of the law, namely articulating the foundational values on which it stands.

V.  Conclusion Milk that contained silicon was produced, marketed, and consumed. The actors in this case—the public, the plaintiffs, and the judges—imagine milk as the food that goes far beyond its nutritional values, as the epitome of nature and purity. The dairy that produced this milk was supposed to infuse it with particular trust, benevolence, and collective unity. Moreover, milk served here as a vehicle for restating collective commitments: social, cultural, national, ethical, and commercial. The absence of any bodily harm did not appease consumers, who looked for a language to express their dismay. Courts sided with consumers’ sense that something was profoundly out of place. Something happened; a deep violation of the confidence entrusted in milk and in its supposedly benevolent producer. Plaintiffs conceptualized their harm through disgust, a feeling which is difficult to capture and to quantify, involving primordial instincts, habits of experiencing the world, and multiple cultural layers. It is therefore unsurprising that the complex multidimensionality of disgust challenged the Court in Rabi, and challenges legal theory in general. Disgust’s resistance to distinctions such as nature versus culture, body versus mind, inside versus outside, and law versus morality threatens to debase law’s foundations. Disgust requires law’s acceptance of the second-order idea that the law can (and should) tolerate such ambiguities and blurring of categories. But Tnuva did something disgusting. The silicon-­infused dink was disgusting not only because it contained a foreign substance, but also because the drink that was deceitfully tainted was milk, and the company that made it and sold it was so trusted that consumers were caught completely off guard when its actions and motivations were revealed. When we started thinking about the Rabi affair, our initial intuition was that Tnuva customers deserved to be compensated for their disgust, but also that critics suspicious 114

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of disgust’s place in law had a valid point. In seeking for a way to validate the Rabi Court’s recognition of disgust while avoiding the pitfalls entailed in validating disgust as an actionable harm, we thought that we would try to develop a framework to articulate a distinction between core disgust arguments, referring to its visceral and universal dimensions and less value laden, and disgust that is infused with culture and ethics. There was no reason, we thought, for the law not to recognize essentialist disgust that is almost devoid of values and is mostly physical. But in the process of thinking through this case, we realized that Rabi’s disgust was not purely visceral, but had to do with the meaning of milk in general, and of Tnuva’s milk in particular. We realized that in fact, it is hard to imagine a case in which disgust will be devoid of ethical and cultural dimensions. We think that this is a good thing: discussions about what disgusts is are discussions about who we are as a society. In provoking such examinations, law fulfills one of its most profound roles.

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CHAPTER 7 MARKETS IN MOTHERS’ MILK: VIRTUE OR VICE, PROMISE OR PROBLEM? Julie P. Smith

Introduction In 2015, a company called Ambrosia Milk began buying human milk from mothers in Cambodia to sell in the United States (Jackson 2015; Clark 2016). American mothers would feed it to their newborns after they returned to paid employment while Cambodian mothers would secure a better standard of living. There are reports of commercial wet-­ nursing and human milk exchange and trading as far afield as China and North America (Fowler and Ye 2008; Thorley 2008a; Thorley 2008b; Akre, Gribble, and Minchin 2011; Dutton 2011; Medo 2013; Thorley 2015; Cohen 2017b). Markets in mothers’ milk have both problems and promise—for infants and mothers, for community health and welfare, and for gender equity. Trade and exchange of human milk might disempower women, and displace the breastfeeding relationships between mother and baby. While consuming human milk contributes to child nutrition and health, maternal breastfeeding confers a multitude of physiological and psychological benefits for the child, and protects the reproductive health of the lactating mother (Labbok 2001). Distributional concerns are profound, as market exchange may redistribute mothers’ milk away from vulnerable consumers (children) with biological claims to it, to those most able and willing to pay—including adults seeking sexual gratification. There is potential for the exploitation of lactating women due to gender inequality in wealth and income, weak or unequal bargaining power within households and markets, and inadequate human rights protections of women and children. Furthermore, if we look at examples such as the trade in human milk in Cambodia (to the United States), there is a worrying reproduction of imperial food relations that requires further analysis. The most willing producers—selling the cheapest milk—may be the more desperate or dishonest suppliers, rather than those offering the most suitable milk. Markets can systematically disadvantage purchasers over sellers of certain kinds of products because of unequal information on product characteristics such as whether a used car is a “lemon” or whether milk is diluted or contaminated (Akerlof 1970). Market prices can provide misleading signals about the societal value of products that distorts decision-­making about what is produced or consumed. Market prices fail, for example, to incorporate negative health and environmental cost externalities of milk formula consumption, or the social benefits of parental investments in children (Folbre 1994; Smith 2004; Dadhich et al. 2015).

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On the other hand, expanded markets in mothers’ milk could improve its availability, benefit nutrition and health, and contribute to greater economic justice for women (Smith 2015). Breastfeeding and breastmilk production is well below its biologically potential capacity in many countries (Smith 2012; Smith 2013). The sale or donation of surplus human milk could improve the nutrition and health of those children otherwise deprived of it. Lactating women might gain health and financial benefit from increased breastfeeding, while mothers able to secure breastmilk through trade or exchange may be more than willing to pay for the personal satisfaction as well as for better nutrition and health for their child. The commercial model for milk exchange or wet-­nursing has become uncommon in Western countries but the economic inequity of the contemporary donative market in the United States, where “everyone except the woman who donates her milk benefits,” has been questioned (Fentiman 2009: 66). Because conventional economics deems unpaid household production including breastfeeding to be a non-­economic phenomenon—and therefore excludes it from GDP— the existence of markets in human milk provides important evidence that economic rewards and market prices affect its supply and demand, strengthening the case for measuring it in GDP. Feminist critiques have long emphasized that how we measure GDP reflects a gender-­biased interpretation of economic progress and development. Rather than being “positive” or “objective,” economics reflects and privileges male experience. For example, economics has overlooked the differing experience of the female to that of the male during economic development and ignored the vital social and economic role of reproduction, care, and nurture (Boserup 1970). As Marilyn Waring (1988) famously illustrated, economic statistical conventions systematically exclude much of women’s economic activity from measurement in GDP. Feminist economists have promoted an alternative approach based on “social provisioning” (Power 2004), which incorporates domestic work and unpaid care work as fundamental to economic analysis and which evaluates economic process or performance on how well it achieves sustainable human development (Benería, Berik, and Floro 2015). However, women’s crucial reproductive and productive work remains invisible in conventional economic statistics, perpetuating bias in economic measurement and policy perspectives that disadvantages women and perpetuates gender inequality. An important weakness of economic analysis is that it takes little or no account of gender power relations and their wider social institutional context. Social institutions, public regulations, and policies perpetuate elements of deep-­rooted pre-­capitalist patriarchal systems that have served to coerce women’s availability for unpaid reproductive and productive work. Economic exploitation of women’s willingness to care for children is facilitated by entrenched false dichotomies between “altruistic” and “market” motivations for work (Folbre and Nelson 2000; England 2005). Similarly, the “breadwinner” focus of welfare capitalism during the past 200 years is not well designed to respond to economic risks to women in the modern economy arising from their investments in child-­raising (Orloff 1993). As Nancy Folbre (1994) has pointed out, children have features of “public goods.” As the benefits of investing in children are increasingly socialized, parenting becomes a public service. 118

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Breastfeeding exemplifies the need to account properly for women’s unpaid caring and reproductive work in economic statistics, and for the households’ creation of human capital. Although all commodities including human milk are within the scope of GDP as defined by international agreement since 1993,1 standard national accounting practices exclude measurement of human milk production. An important reservation by national accountants is about whether “economic pricing” is important for demand and supply in these markets—that is, whether breastfeeding and trade in human milk meets the test of “sensitivity to economic rewards” (Kravis 1957). This chapter explores the potential for the contemporary emergence of markets in breastmilk and breastfeeding to improve the recognition of women’s unpaid breastfeeding work, by reviewing whether economic rewards influence breastfeeding, and using contemporary market prices for breastmilk to compare the economic value of breastmilk and milk formula for selected countries in Asia, Europe, and North America.

Do economic rewards influence breastfeeding and markets in human milk? Economic studies of the decline in breastfeeding duration in developing countries during the 1960s identified many ways in which infant and young child feeding practices change in response to economic drivers. As infant care, particularly exclusive breastfeeding, is time-­cost intensive, changes in after-­tax returns from paid work can affect breastfeeding; increased returns may either reduce breastfeeding by drawing maternal or older siblings’ time resources towards augmenting market earnings or using hired help, or the higher family income may instead make maternal home production and longer breastfeeding a more affordable choice. Similarly, the time-­preparation and health costs of introducing breastmilk substitutes may be offset when travel times to shops are reduced, and commercial weaning foods and milk formula become cheaper. The relative costs and risks of different infant feeding methods is also influenced by public regulation of food standards, cheaper or less timeconsuming access to complementary goods and services such as refrigeration or cooking stoves and to modern infrastructure services like electricity and potable water, child health services and childcare centers. Finally, analysis of demand factors and consumer preference shows how market proximity and promotion of milk formula and modern contraception can alter the values consumers place on breastfeeding, and shift preferences to favoring consumption of market products, rather than home-­prepared foods, breastfeeding, and traditional service providers (Butz 1978; Akin et al. 1986). Moreover, individual women do not necessarily make decisions about lactation work (Cohen this volume). Patriarchal institutions have long controlled women’s property rights and the economic rewards from their productivity, including their reproductive work—fertility, lactation, and child-­raising. For example, elite or newly affluent males in nineteenth-­century France or in the US at the turn of the twentieth century maintained their sexual access and virility or demonstrated social status by controlling decisions on infant feeding and fertility; this included sending infants away to rural wet nurses or 119

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directing they be hand-­fed by servants (Wickes 1953; Fildes 1988a; Palmer 1988; Wolf 2003). Today, patriarchal rhetoric and legislative controls effectively work to prohibit or constrain breastfeeding in many public and private contexts. Trade in mothers’ milk in the twentieth century has been driven in part by economic incentives; breastfeeding and breastmilk remain scarce due to an ongoing epidemic of “lactation failure,” while the advance of medical science showing its importance has increased market demand for human milk. Markets—by offering products such as personal breast-­pumps, or creating websites for milk sale or exchange—have responded to consumer demand. However, these markets also arise from the reluctance of the state to address women’s needs for economic support during child-­raising; Ambrosia can source milk cheaply from Cambodian mothers and sell it profitably to US consumers because few women in either country have paid maternity leave or lactation breaks as a condition of employment, and because the US dollar is more expensive than the Khmer riel. The substantial displacement of human milk supply by commercial breastmilk substitutes in the past century is a significant and ongoing loss of food production with major economic, environmental, and health significance. However, women’s experience of economic development is poorly documented (Boserup 1970; Benería 1996). Women’s unpaid household production has been categorized by economic statisticians in Europe and North America as “unproductive” from the late nineteenth century (Folbre 1991). The declining scale of women’s production of breastfeeding and breastmilk within the infant and young children (IYC) food economy over the past two centuries remains unmeasured. Until the 1970s, the large economic losses involved in commercial milk formula displacing breastfeeding passed unremarked. Not until 1973 did World Bank nutrition expert Alan Berg warn of a “crisis in infant feeding” in economic terms (Berg 1973: 9). Drawing on data from countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, Berg estimated that Singapore had lost over US $1.8 million worth of breastmilk a year in 1960 compared to US $0.8 in 1950. In the Philippines, the value of lost production had nearly doubled in a decade, to US $32.8 million by 1968. Calculations for Indonesia by nutritionist Jon Rohde highlighted the economic significance of milk provided by mothers for children in the second year of life, as well as in infancy (Rohde 1982). Economic production losses due to formula use were later estimated for India and countries in South America (Gupta and Khanna 1999; Aguayo et al. 2001) and Africa (Aguayo and Ross 2002; Almroth, Greiner, and Latham 1979). It took until the early 1990s for the economic value of human milk to be estimated for a high-­income country, Norway (Oshaug and Botten 1994). Norway remains the only country to count breastmilk production in its food statistics, having failed in the early 1970s to convince other countries in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization that this should be standard practice. Comparable estimates of the economic value of human milk production were later published and updated for Australia, the US (Smith 1999; Smith and Ingham 2005; Smith 2013), and selected other countries. Globally, it is estimated that women produce around 23,313 million liters of human milk a year, valued in 2010 at around US $1,983 billion (Smith 2012). 120

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Norway is the only country in which annual data on breastfeeding has been compiled for the decades prior to 1900 (Liestøl, Rosenberg, and Walløe 2008). This data series shows that the decline in breastfeeding during industrialization took the form of reduced breastfeeding duration rather than lower initiation of breastfeeding. Breastfeeding duration in Norway declined slowly after 1860, then more sharply throughout the country after 1920. While over 60 percent of Norwegian mothers and infants breastfed at six months in 1860, fewer than 20 percent did so in 1967. The proportion that had ceased breastfeeding by twelve months (40 percent) increased greatly between 1920 and the late 1960s, when virtually all Norwegian women had weaned their babies by twelve months of age. Return to employment contributed to shorter duration of breastfeeding by unmarried mothers in the decades from 1860 to 1920 (Liestøl, Rosenberg, and Walløe 2008). Restrictive hospital and maternity care regimes sharply reduced breastfeeding rates during the 1950s and 1960s, with increased hospitalization of deliveries, medicated birth, and strict feeding regimes all hindering the establishment of breastfeeding and reducing maternal milk supply (Liestøl, Rosenberg, and Walløe 2008). Milk formula company marketing within health facilities during the 1970s also led to unnecessary supplementation and disrupted lactation (Helsing 2005). The return to breastfeeding arose from maternal activism from the late 1960s, regulation of marketing of breastmilk substitutes in the 1980s, and systematic introduction of “breastfeeding friendly” hospital practices in the 1990s (Rosenberg 1989). Breastfeeding initiation remained high and milk banks remained viable during the post-war decades in part due to national policies that all infants should receive human milk during early infancy. Norway provided for twelve weeks of paid maternity leave from the late 1960s (forty weeks from 1994), which helped increase breastfeeding duration to around 40 percent at twelve months (Helsing 2005). Several historical studies provide valuable insights into economic drivers of breastfeeding and human milk production trends by detailing changes in infant feeding practices (Wickes 1953; Fildes 1988a; Apple 1987; Palmer 1988; Baumslag and Michels 1995; Golden 1996a; Wolf 2003; Thorley 2008a). Discussed below are three of these economic influences: the disincentives and barriers created by labor markets and unresponsive social institutions during nineteenth-century industrialization; the low valuation of human milk and lactation work by medical institutions and employers of wet nurses during the nineteenth and early twentieth century; and the twentieth-century alliance between public health regulators, medical science, and the dairy industry to create vast markets in commercial breastmilk substitutes rather than resourcing women’s non-­market infant care and lactation work.

Economic opportunity costs of breastfeeding: how incompatible industrialized work systems constrain women’s economic productivity Rising maternal employment reduced breastfeeding in Europe during industrialization; artificial feeding was particularly unavoidable among the working poor in the UK due to requirements for early return to work (Fildes 1988b). Increasing urbanization and 121

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industrial employment meant that women’s economic activity was at a separate location from their infants or other family caregivers. The need to juggle spatial issues with more rigidly organized and intensive work schedules (such as in factory work or plantation agriculture in colonized countries) reduced women’s productivity in combining market and household work. Contemporary studies in diverse countries likewise demonstrate lower breastfeeding among employed women (Mirkovic et  al. 2014). Recent economic development in Asia has provided employment and wage opportunities for women, but in conditions where lack of maternity protection and extended separation from their infants has prevented working women producing milk for their children (Tsai 2013, 2014). Lack of suitable regulation of employment conditions during the period of industrialization created widespread challenges for women in working-­class families to sustain breastfeeding as the main food system for infants and young children; many resorted to hand feeding with fatal consequences (Palmer 1988; Van Esterik 1989). Among working mothers in the US, immediate return to employment after childbirth, together with arduous outdoor work, debilitated mothers’ health and hindered establishment of lactation and breastfeeding. Conversely, temporary factory closures due to shortages of cotton supplies in Europe during the 1860s were accompanied by reduced infant mortality attributed to increased maternal breastfeeding among laid-­off textile factory workers (Fildes 1995). The design of social insurance systems from the late nineteenth century targeted economic risks facing male breadwinners, especially in unemployment and retirement. A “family wage” was seen as sufficient for women, even though marriage and maternity is a key source of economic risk and inequality for women (Bergmann 1981; England 2005). Feminist scholars have identified how the welfare state has been resistant to recognizing women’s needs for economic support while engaged in reproductive and childcare work (England 2005). Closing the gap in social protection for maternity is central to addressing the contemporary problems of population aging and gender inequity (Orloff 1993; McDonald 2000) and the epidemic of diet-­related chronic disease. Although countries declared the first International Labour Organization Convention on Maternity Protection in 1919, such protections as paid lactation breaks and maternity leave remain unavailable to many women (Addati, Cassirer, and Gilchrist 2014; Atabay et al. 2015).

Wages for wet nurses: how labor markets undervalue women’s work There is a long history of “markets” involving exchange for money of mothers’ milk, namely wet-­nursing (Fildes 1988b). Though wet-­nursing may support breastfeeding (Greiner 1977), in societies where breastfeeding is not valued, wet-­nursing has been a pathway to its further displacement (Wolf 2003). Although market prices are often seen as impersonal and “objective,” social values impinge heavily on such exchanges (Appadurai 1988). Social ideas devaluing care work are cited as a source of gender inequality in wages (England 2005). By the late nineteenth century, the declining availability of breastfeeding 122

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and breastmilk in Europe and North America might have increased the value of human milk and created job opportunities for wet nurses. Instead, as illustrated in US cities, denigration of breastfeeding by medical scientists and relatively poor remuneration of wet nurses resulted in the disappearance of wet-­nursing as a profession (Wolf 2003). Before industrialization, wet-­nursing was a “decent job” employing mainly middle-­ class women in their own homes. Wet nurses were also well paid into the 1860s in the US (Golden 1996a). By the mid-1880s, mothers could earn more from factory work than by working as a wet nurse, and the availability of suitable wet nurses declined (Wickes 1953; Thorley 2008a). Medical advice during the 1800s was that the milk of a wet nurse was contaminated by her moral failings, and wet-­nursing became stigmatized in the eyes of employers (Wickes 1953). It became an insecure, short-­term occupation, with onerous working conditions and intrusive supervision (Wolf 2003). An electric breast pump was developed by a US milk bank in the 1920s to better control the availability of milk for hospitalized infants (Wolf 1999). However, hospitals and other employers increasingly experienced wet nurses as hard to find and difficult to manage (Golden 1988; Wolf 1999). Where milk sellers were paid well, breastmilk was forthcoming. The costs of purchasing breastmilk from sellers increased from 5 cents in 1938 to 9 cents in 1944 and to 13 cents by the early 1960s (Golden 1996a; Wolf 1999). Nevertheless, as women’s employment opportunities increased during the Second World War, human milk supplies diminished rapidly; milk banks offered the same price from 1948 to 1978 (Pineau 2011). Post-war, hospitals discouraged the onset of lactation through widespread use of lactation suppressant drugs and informal milk sharing by new mothers in hospitals also contracted (Swanson 2014). By 1955 only seven milk banks were operating in the US, and human milk was being priced out of the institutional market by free supplies of commercial milk formula. Medical interest in milk banking had also waned from the 1920s. The transition from wet nurses to modified cows’ milk as a norm for infant feeding had been assisted by new technologies and public regulation between the 1860s and 1920s. These included tinned condensed milk, milk powder, and rubber teats, as well as public health regulation, refrigeration, and pasteurization of urban milk supplies (Wickes 1953; Palmer 1988; Baumslag and Michels 1995). In the US, new proprietary foods were marketed directly against wet nurses (Golden 1996b). With the discovery of germs as a source of infectious illness, and emergence of technologies such as refrigeration, pasteurization, and antibiotics in maternity wards by the 1930s, medical scientists gave up on wet nurses and milk sellers, focusing on “humanizing” cows’ milk for the consumer market (Golden 1996b; Wolf 2003; Albanesi and Olivetti 2015; Ryan this volume). Over the course of the nineteenth century wet-­nursing and milk selling, remunerative and productive work that was unique to women, disappeared. They were replaced by modified cows’ milk, formulated on immature scholarship and an unjustified confidence in scientific management of infant feeding. Women were seen as troublesome and scarce, more costly and less manageable suppliers of milk than cows (Swanson 2009). As Gabrielle Palmer (1988: 16) writes, “Cows and machines are easier to deal with, because they do not ask for justice.” 123

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Figure 7.1  “Her Desperate Plea for Help,” 2015, Australian abattoir specializing in slaughtering spent dairy cows in Tongala, Victoria. Courtesy of Tamara Kenneally.

“Surplus milk,” medical marketing, and cheap cows’ milk Obstetric anesthesia during childbirth and “scientific management” of infant feeding contributed to a growing epidemic of “lactation failure” from the early twentieth century (Deacon 1985; Mein Smith 1988; Gartner and Stone 1994; Wolf 2000; Reiger 2001). With rising infant mortality rates during the late 1800s, sterilization and pasteurization of cows’ milk, as well as the spread of technologies such as refrigeration and improved understanding of germs and hygiene control, reduced the perceived hazards of artificial feeding (Wolf 2003; Stevens, Patrick, and Pickler 2009). From the 1950s, advertising of milk formula emphasized its safety, healthiness, and scientific formulation, suggesting its superiority over breastfeeding (Smith and Blake 2013). In France, the UK, and the US, as well as in British colonies such as Australia and New Zealand, cows’ milk or powdered milk formula was provided to mothers at low cost for infants and young children, while new “scientific” schedules for formula feeding were applied to breastfeeding in ways which speeded its decline (Palmer 1988). In the 1930s the push for safer alternatives to modified cows’ milk led to a formal alliance of the newly established pediatric profession with the US milk formula industry (Apple 1987). By the mid-1950s, as post-war import controls were lifted and markets opened up to trade, food and pharmaceutical companies aggressively promoted milk formula in health care systems around the world. With milk formula freely available on 124

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maternity wards as a medically endorsed solution for newborn feeding, the establishment of lactation in human populations was severely disrupted; the supply of breastmilk dried up, and a retail market for milk formula sales was guaranteed. Rapid declines in breastfeeding initiation and duration followed during the 1960s. The price of breastmilk substitutes fell sharply around the middle of the century. By the 1950s, formula was priced at a third of its pre-­war levels and remained there during subsequent decades (Albanesi and Olivetti 2015). Rising incomes made it ever more affordable, and it was often subsidized by government. By the turn of the twenty-­first century, the US government paid for more than half of all formula sold in the country through purchases under the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (Kent 2006). Despite a rebound in breastfeeding in industrialized countries from the 1970s, lactation remains well below pre-­industrialization levels. In high-­income countries, the prevalence of continued breastfeeding at twelve months remains below 20 percent (Victora et al. 2016), ranging from less than 1 percent in the UK, to 16 percent in Sweden, and 27 percent in the US. The rebounds turned industry attention to new and growing markets among the expanding middle classes in Asia from the 1990s (Euromonitor International 2008). Between 2008 and 2013, global milk formula sales rose by 41 percent from 5.5 to 7.8 kg per infant/child/year, growing much faster than GDP (Baker et al. 2016). Only around two-­thirds of children between six months and two years now receive any breast milk even in developing countries (Victora et al. 2016). Around 57 kg of milk powder feeds a child for the first two years of life (Almroth, Greiner, and Latham 1979). From 2008 to 2013, sales grew from 9.8 kg to 16.9 kg per infant/child in the East Asia and Pacific region; in China sales doubled whereas in India they remained stagnant. In Scandinavian countries, where breastfeeding rates are high, milk formula sales average 5–6 kg per infant/child per year, comparable with the limited market in India (3 kg) (Euromonitor International 2014). In China, sales reached 15 kg per infant/child in 2013. These sales trends in Asia and the related displacement of breastfeeding reflect an unbalanced prioritization of trade liberalization over human rights implementation and improved social and maternity protection, at the expense of population health. Media and industry reports identify rising affluence, high maternal employment participation, and weak regulation of marketing, which have combined with poor quality or corrupt maternity care facilities to “create” consumers and profitable markets where previous practice was breastfeeding (Harney 2013). In India and the Philippines where public health regulation of IYC food marketing is stronger, market growth was minimal or negative (Euromonitor International 2014). The public health and environment costs of the Asian “white gold boom” (Correy 2013) have been identified by human rights and health experts (Galtry 2013; Rollins, et  al. 2016). As well as undermining infant and young child nutrition, health, and development, and increasing acute illness and later life chronic disease risk (Victora et al. 2016), displacement of breastfeeding by milk formula harms maternal reproductive 125

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health. For example, post-­partum hemorrhage, excessive fertility and childbearing, and maternal breast cancer risk are heightened by lack of breastfeeding and are important causes of maternal mortality and morbidity (Labbok 2001; Victora et al. 2016). Economic studies also document the additional health cost externalities from this displacement, which are not paid by the milk formula industry but by the wider human and animal community (Smith, Thompson, and Ellwood 2002). The value of the stock of human capital is also depreciated by the loss of women’s traditional skills and knowledge on breastfeeding (Smith and Ingham 2001), a loss which requires investment of economic resources to reverse and rebuild. Through its effect on child cognitive development and future achievement and earnings, the dominance of milk formula in the IYC food market has detrimental effects on human capital. The global economic cost of productivity losses from IQ deficits associated with milk formula feeding was estimated in a study published in The Lancet (Rollins et al. 2016) at around $300 billion annually. For the US, it was recently calculated that if half of all US infants born each year were better breastfed, the total increase in the present value of future earnings would be $40 billion annually (Hafstead and Lutter 2016). The market price of commercial milk formula has fallen below its economic cost in other ways. Methane gas emanating from dairy herds is one of the most potent forms of greenhouse gas. The environmental costs of manufacturing cow’s milk formula are substantial (Dadhich et al. 2015).2 Milk formula sales of 720,450 tons (CO 2 equivalent) in 2012 generated greenhouse gas emissions for just six Asia Pacific region countries (Australia, China, Malaysia, India, the Philippines, and South Korea) of around 2.89 million tons. The largest generation of these emissions is from sales in China, with emissions of 2.2 million tons (CO 2 equivalent) in 2012, forecast to rise to 4.2 million tons by 2017. Valuing mothers’ milk in economic statistics Why is it that when we pay for childcare and house-­cleaning, when we eat out, when we buy milk for our babies, or when we call in the mechanic or the plumber, these add to GDP and count toward economic growth and progress; but when we look after our own children, clear our own house, cook our own meals, breastfeed our babies, tune up our own cars, and fix our own leaking faucets, these have no value in our current measures of progress? Collas-Monsod 2011: 98 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a widely used concept for measuring the economy. Since the Second World War the “System of National Accounts” (SNA) has been the agreed international statistical framework for all countries to define and measure GDP, and national economic activity. Economists have long been aware of the limitations of measuring economic activity and material wellbeing using conventional GDP and related economic statistics. Influential early national accountants warned about the bias introduced by excluding 126

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Figure 7.2  “Breastfeeding Filipina.” Courtesy of Jonahmar A. Salvosa from the Philippines.

127

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household production (Kuznets 1941). From the early 1970s, the SNA came under increasing criticism for providing a narrow, inaccurate, and misleading measure of economic wellbeing, as well as for its treatment of environmental degradation (Nordhaus and Tobin 1973). Since the 1980s, feminist critiques have also emphasized that GDP provides a gender-­ biased interpretation of economic progress and development. Particularly by underreporting subsistence and household production, this economic accounting framework ignores the pivotal economic role of women, makes some countries seem poorer than they are, and overstates economic growth and progress by valuing market activity but not the unpaid household production that it displaces (Boserup 1970). In the 1980s, Marilyn Waring’s damning critique of the UN SNA (Waring 1988) showed how the unpaid work traditionally done by women has been systematically excluded from measurement by national economic statistical systems, alongside a comparable non-­measurement of environmental pollution and depreciation or the depletion of environmental assets. Furthermore, macroeconomic modeling and policy assumes that the labor force (human capital) comes from nowhere (Walters 1995); it is increasingly recognized that national accounting practice makes invisible the crucial economic contribution to human capital building made by families’ provision of health care and education services to children (Smith and Ingham 2005; Folbre 2012). Many countries now collect household time use data, which would facilitate the inclusion of unpaid household work in GDP. Australia has produced experimental accounts for environmental and human capital assets, from as early as the 1920s (Treadgold 2000). However, women’s crucial reproductive and productive work and investments in human capital remain unmeasured and invisible in economic statistics such as GDP. In 1990, the Australian Government was advised that unpaid work should continue to be excluded from GDP because the market sector was the primary concern for macroeconomic policy and because unpaid household work was not related to market forces as directly as goods (Australian Bureau of Statistics 1990: 6–7). It is incorrect to apply this argument to human milk. Production is closely related to market activity, with direct competition from companies selling and profiting from sale of infant feeding products. Labor market participation and breastmilk production compete directly. It is also questionable whether other conventional arguments for excluding unpaid work from GDP apply to human milk production. For example, Collas-Monsod (2011: 95) has identified arguments that excluding unpaid work is necessary to maintain the usefulness of the accounts to policymakers. It is said to avoid “overburdening or disrupting the central system” (Commission of the European Communities et al. 1993: para. 21.4). This means that by excluding human milk production from GDP, policymakers focus on promoting the activities of commercial firms producing less than $500 million of infant food products per year, whilst giving no importance to protecting household production of human milk worth $2 billion a year or more. It is difficult to see why “disrupting” the system by comparing these values is undesirable, or why it “overburdens” policy analysis to show the large magnitude of non-­market production of infant food. Likewise, including breastfeeding in GDP would surely enhance monitoring 128

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and analysis of long-­term productivity trends and patterns in the food, nutrition, childcare, and health sectors. Another reason that women’s work is still not measured in key economic statistics is said to be the costs involved in changing the collection and use of national accounts (Fraumeni 2010: 30). Experience in the Philippines suggests only “demand driven advocacy” will improve national accounting practices (Collas-Monsod 2007: 5–7). Unfortunately, few understand how such statistics can be used for better decision-­making, or how to use them for advocacy. Without such pressures, statisticians will do little about introducing them—though “what we don’t know could hurt us” (Abraham 2005: 1). In a sharp contrast to the lack of resources devoted to better measuring the very large household production sector, national accounting standards in Europe now require sexual services to be included in GDP (Abramsky and Drew 2014), even though this is extremely difficult to measure accurately and relatively small compared to household production.3 Countries’ continued exclusion of unpaid household work reinforces concerns that an important reform agenda laid out by Waring’s critique of national accounting as “applied patriarchy” remains largely unimplemented (Saunders and Dalziel 2016).

National accounting methodology on breastfeeding The established international guidelines for the system of national accounting are commonly referred to as SNA93 (Commission of the European Communities 1993). Partly in response to feminist argument and advocacy, SNA93 took better account than its predecessor of “subsistence” production; GDP should include all “own account” production of goods by households. This included agricultural subsistence production such as sowing, planting, tending and harvesting field crops; growing vegetables, fruit, and other trees and shrub crops; gathering wild fruits, medicinal and other plants; tending, feeding, or hunting animals mainly to obtain meat, milk, hair, skin, or other products; and storing or carrying to some basic processing of this produce. SNA93 also provided for any agricultural produce consumed on-­farm to be included in GDP. The national accounting framework thus includes within the GDP production boundary all non-­marketed goods, including the production, processing, and storage of food by households. Reflecting these guidelines, for example, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) includes the value of homegrown fruit, vegetables, eggs, beer, wine, and meat in estimates of final private consumption expenditure and therefore GDP. Australian core accounts now include “the own account production of all goods retained by their producers for their own final consumption or gross capital formation” where these are quantitatively significant, thereby following the practice set down in SNA93. Since changes to international guidelines on national accounting in 1993, women’s production of breastmilk (though not breastfeeding) has come within the scope of GDP measurement (Smith and Ingham 2005; Smith 2013). Breastfeeding is similar to other unpaid household production highlighted by feminist economists, although it is unique in that the female body is the production unit. While 129

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breastfeeding is a childcare activity classified by national accountants as an unpaid household service, to be included in “satellite accounts” (separate from the “core” measures of GDP), breastmilk is a commodity that meets the official criteria for inclusion in GDP. That is, human milk is a good within the SNA93 core production boundary (Smith and Ingham 2001, 2005) because, in national accounting language, it can be produced, stored, sold on markets, and thus be valued. The fundamental criterion for inclusion of a good in GDP is that it can be traded in a market. The existence of markets in human milk means there are prices of a closely related or analogous product—a shadow price—from which to impute its economic value. Despite these changed guidelines, national accounting practice is to continue to exclude human milk production from national economic accounts. This practice, of including dairy industry output such as cows’ milk and milk formula but ignoring milk production by women, results in GDP misleadingly measuring a rise in economic activity when breastfeeding declines and milk formula sales rise, and a decline in productivity when breastfeeding increases (Smith and Ingham 2005). Women’s reproductive work of nourishing children with human milk is also rarely considered in discussions of global or national food systems, food policies, or food security. Hence, the problem of valuing breastfeeding in official economic statistics remains unaddressed, and the implications ignored in public policy formulation. Several studies since the 1990s have already shown the practicability of estimating the economic value of human milk production, and its substantial value in relation to GDP (Oshaug and Botten 1994; Gupta and Khanna 1999; Smith 1999; Aguayo et  al. 2001; Smith and Ingham 2001; Aguayo and Ross 2002; Smith and Ingham 2005; Smith 2013). From a national accounting methodological perspective this involves either using an “input cost” based approach, or using the “market value” of the output. The different economic valuation methodologies within national accounting practice were first discussed in a study of Australian human milk production in 1999 (Smith 1999). The preferred approach to valuing production in the national accounts system is using “market values” of output. The 1999 study estimated that human milk production in Australia in 1992 was 33 million kilograms. Using a “market value of output” approach to valuing this production, human milk production in Australia had a market value of $2.1 billion a year at that time. This 1992 estimate for Australia was based on a price of US $50 per liter paid by milk banks in Norway, which had been used for estimating the economic value of breastfeeding in that country (Oshaug and Botten 1994). It illustrates that the value of human milk in Australia is qualitatively important compared to other goods produced for own consumption by households that were valued at $1 billion in 1997 and are counted in GDP by the ABS. This means that the production and value of human milk should be included in core account estimates of national food production, consumption, and GDP. In Norway, human milk is sold for kr.130 (US $100) per liter, after covering a payment of US $20 for donor “expenses” (Grøvslien, Anne Hagen, and Morten Grønn 2009). Human milk offered on internet milk trading sites such as Only the Breast also typically seeks around US $3 per ounce for mothers with health certification (Only the Breast 130

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2013). Human milk-­based commercial infant feeding products in the United States are sold at US $1,183 per liter or more (Ganapathy, Hay, and Kim 2011). The price of milk supplied by North American milk banks to hospitals may be challenged as a proxy for the value of human milk. Human milk in this market may be more highly valued as it is used for premature or vulnerable infants rather than healthy, full-term, or older infants. Using a market price for expressed breastmilk may also underestimate the economic value of breastfeeding. There are distinct, additional values for the process of breastfeeding and for using the mother’s own milk rather than another mother’s milk, such as for promoting maternal attachment and for strengthening the immune system (Bertino et al. 2009; Strathearn et al. 2009). The price that individual consumers are willing to pay for breastmilk may be lower than its economic value from a societal perspective, for example, because consumers are not fully informed about its health and development importance, because the optimal feeding of the child is not the only consideration in infant feeding decisions, or because personal valuations may not take into account wider societal cost impacts. It may be argued that the price of formula, which is lower, should be used to value the lost economic value when human milk production is replaced by formula feeding, as the mothers who formula feed may not value breastmilk as highly as breastfeeding mothers. However, market prices for formula only show that consumers value bovine-­based milk or plant-­derived formula milk products at this price, not how much they may be willing to pay for human milk. The price of formula may be low because women consider breastmilk substitutes to have a lower economic worth. At present, some formula-­feeding mothers may not be able to purchase breastmilk. The price of milk sold by North American milk banks may reflect the particular economic and institutional characteristics of a specific, small, and restricted market. The market for human milk is admittedly still small, and most human milk production is not bought, sold, or donated. Some countries may not yet have significant trading in human milk especially for older infants; in Norway for example, milk is usually only supplied by milk banks for infants under three months old. Pricing mechanisms may be relatively undeveloped in these markets and price may be little used in supply or demand decisions. However, it has been shown that prices of human milk derived using other valuation methods (such as using time input or wage costs) are consistent and comparable with the level of milk bank prices (Smith 1999). This suggests that valuing expressed breastmilk using milk bank prices is a reasonably valid representation of the market value of human milk. Table 7.1 summarizes relevant available information on economic characteristics of several key markets in human milk in 2012. These include milk banks, internet trading, commercial infant feeding products, and women’s employment as wet nurses. In 2009, a major review of GDP as a way of measuring economic progress was conducted for the French President. The review was led by Nobel prize-­winning economists Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz, and a leading French economic advisor (Stiglitz, Sen, and Fitoussi 2009). They cited human milk production as an example of how current practices for measuring GDP devalued women’s unpaid work and biased policymaking. In their reflections on measuring economic progress, they concluded that, 131

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There is a serious omission in the valuation of home-­produced goods – the value of breast milk. This is clearly within the System of National Accounts production boundary, is quantitatively non-­trivial and also has important implications for public policy and child and maternal health. Stiglitz, Sen, and Fitoussi 2009: 39 Estimated market value of human milk production in selected countries The argument that mother’s milk production should be included in GDP measurement in line with existing international rules on national accounting was considered at the 2012 conference of the International Association for Research on Income and Wealth, an important international expert forum on national accounting practices (Smith 2012). The paper estimated the economic value of milk production for a number of high-­ income, middle-­income, and low-­income countries, as well as global estimates. Estimates for the United States, Australia, and Norway were subsequently published in a peer-­ reviewed journal (Smith 2013). Table  7.2 presents the estimated economic value of breastfeeding for these latter countries using the United Nations SNA methodologies in place since 1993. Total baby food sales including commercial milk formula sales in these three countries in 2012 was much less, estimated by Euromonitor International to be US $108 million, US $643 million, and US $6,782 million respectively in 2012 (Euromonitor International 2014). India and China are large middle-­income countries in Asia that provide interesting case studies. The annual economic value of human milk produced in India and China for 2008–2012 is presented below, again estimated using United Nations SNA guidelines and conventional economic valuation approaches to measuring economic production in GDP, but for these countries using comparable indicators of breastfeeding from the

Table 7.1  2012 market prices for human milk, US $ per liter Online milk sharing1

Internet trading1

US, UK, US AU $0

Wet nurse

UK

US

Human milk banks

Commercial human milk products5

China HMBANA Norway Human milk

$28–$85 $57–$227 $71–$2862 $1212,3 $85–$128

$1004

$1,183

 Purchase price varies depending on quantity, packaging, and shipping distance; offered at prices of $1–3 per oz. in the US and $2–8 per oz. in the UK (excluding shipping costs). 2  Based on an assumed 700 ml daily intake. 3  2008 price. 4  Milk banks in Norway pay donors a US $20 per liter expenses allowance. 5  For in-­hospital use only, charged to hospitals or medical insurance and distributed through a “co-­promotion” with a major formula manufacturer. 1

132

Fortifier $6,250

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Table 7.2  Annual production of human milk for infants, 0–24 months, 2009–2010, selected countries Country

Quantity produced1

Value produced Potential value

“Lost” production value

US$ millions2

US$ millions2, 3

US$ millions2

Lost production (as % of potential)2

Norway

11

907

1,505

598

40

Australia

42

3,584

7,601

4,016

53

United States

526

44,774

107,887

63,113

58

 Million liters.  2012 prices. 3  Optimal breastfeeding prevalence of 95 percent from 0 to 24 months. 1 2

UNICEF global database on breastfeeding, rather than individual country data. Human milk is valued at the 2012 market prices prevalent in North America. Current reports suggest this is an underestimate, with a higher price of $4 to $5 per ounce charged to hospitals by donor milk banks in North America (Builes and Reuters 2015), a price which is also prevalent in Asian countries such as the Philippines where official milk banks provide it at a cost of around Php 180 (around US $4) an ounce (Santos 2015). In Cambodia in late 2015, mothers were reportedly being paid $0.5–1.0 an ounce for milk that would be sold in the US for around $3 an ounce (Wood 2015). Breastfeeding rates are much higher in India than in China. Breastfeeding in India is near universal, with more than 90 percent of mothers still breastfeeding at twelve months, and almost 77 percent continuing through to two years. Exclusive breastfeeding is considerably lower, though still high by international standards. There is a growing affluent middle class in India, with an increasing number of births in hospital, and a growing number of employed professional women becoming a target for marketing of breastmilk substitutes. The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative accreditation is also not widely implemented. However, India is a lower middle-­income country, most births are not in health institutions, and maternal labor force participation is very low. While maternity protection policies support breastfeeding, their implementation is weak. On the other hand, India has a comprehensive, legislated WHO Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, which is applied including through strong and high-profile NGO activism in the courts. Breastfeeding has traditionally been very high in China, but the use of breast milk substitutes became widespread during the 1970s, and breastfeeding fell to a low point in the 1980s. The breastfeeding rate in China started to increase again in the 1990s responding to efforts to promote breastfeeding including in hospitals. Since the mid-1990s, rates of “any breastfeeding” at four months in most cities and provinces (including minority areas) are above 80 percent (Xu et al. 2009). However, breastfeeding has declined dramatically in China in the past decade. UNICEF expressed concern in 133

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2013 that exclusive breastfeeding prevalence for children from birth to six months has fallen from 67 percent in 1999 to around 28 percent (Hou 2014). After a period of rapid economic development, China has become an upper middle-­income country, with strong growth of household incomes including from high rates of female labor force participation. While maternity leave policies provide for twelve weeks of paid leave, this entitlement may not be fully accessible or enforced (Hou 2014). Although China has partially implemented the WHO International Code through legislation, it has limited scope and there is evidence to suggest that it is not effectively enforced (Liu et al. 2014). On the other hand, the decline in breastfeeding in China since 1999 has resulted in a dramatic but unmeasured deterioration in unpaid household production, with a loss of around 700 million liters of breastmilk per year arising solely from the decline in exclusive breastfeeding of infants from birth to six months from 67 percent to 28 percent since 2008 (Shen 2016). The replacement of breastmilk in the diet of infants from birth to six months thus amounts to a loss of economic production value of around US $77 billion a year. Data is unavailable for breastfeeding among older infants and young children, but measuring a proportionate decline for the six months to two years age group, the annual loss of production represented by declining breastfeeding in China since the 1990s is of the order of US $335 billion a year. Based on the parameters in Table 7.3 it can be estimated that mothers in India produce over 7 billion liters a year of human milk, double the levels estimated in 1999. Potential production from increasing breastfeeding to biologically optimal levels would be valued at US $335 billion a year. The value of human milk produced in China was much lower, at around 2.3 billion liters in 2012, with estimated market value of some US $248 billion. This estimate is broadly consistent with the unpublished study by Ross and colleagues Table 7.3  Quantity and economic value in US $ of human milk, 0–24 months, India and China, 2005–2012 Country

Current value Potential value “Lost” Current quantity Biologically (million liters) feasible quantity (US$ millions) (US$ millions) production (US$ millions) (million liters)

India

7,003

10,169

741,123

1,076,155

335,033

China

2,344

7,319

248,030

774,509

526,479

Table 7.4  Commercial baby food sales, 0–36 months, 2012 Baby food total (US$ millions)

Dried baby Toddler Milk formulas Infant formula Follow-on (US$ millions) formula (US$ formula (US$ food (US$ total (US$ millions) millions) millions) millions)

India

425

224

89

113

18

165

China

13,496

12,334

3,523

3,480

3,480

1,017

134

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(2001), which estimated about 4.2 billion liters of human milk were produced annually in China, a time when breastfeeding rates were considerably higher. Commercial baby food sales in India (see Table 7.4) totaled around $425 million a year in 2012, far lower than the value of human milk produced by Indian mothers. Currently the Indian market for commercial baby food is small at less than 1 kg per child (Euromonitor International 2014). In China, milk formula sales exceed $12 billion (Euromonitor International 2014). The Chinese market for baby food, mainly formula, has doubled in five years from 5.5 kg to 12.1 kg per child per annum. Discussion Recent studies have shown that the policy focus on the new market economy masks important unaddressed tensions between paid employment and unpaid care work for women in China (Dong and An 2015). Ignoring unpaid work burdens during this economic transition is generating gender inequality, through women’s unequal access to earnings and leisure. Despite the value of essential unpaid care work in China being between a quarter and a third of GDP, as the authors observe, the overriding concern of the Chinese government in the post-­reform period has been to improve the productivity of paid work and maximize growth of per capita GDP, assuming that the provision of domestic and care services will adjust itself accordingly . . . As a result, the role of the state and the employers as a provider of social goods and services has been eroded; responsibility for social reproduction and “care”—a domain principally of the state in the urban sector under the planned economy—has returned to the household. This process has considerable implications for the work and status of women in both the home and the marketplace. Dong and An 2015: 558 Devaluation of mother’s unpaid lactation work expands the market economy but shrinks the total economy, and at the expense of economic justice for women. Incomplete economic statistics distort public policy in important ways. Despite the importance of breastfeeding demonstrated by the 2008 melamine crisis, in which hundreds of thousands of infants were hospitalized and six infants died, public policy in China has prioritized development of the commercial milk formula industry (Qi 2014). In 2014, far too late (Correy 2013; Harney 2013; Liu et al. 2014), the national government began to focus on stemming the dramatic declines in breastfeeding since the late 1990s. Weak health, labor market, and market regulatory policies are crucial drivers of these declines (Hou 2014). It was recently estimated that health treatment costs of around US $224 million a year could be saved by small increases in breastfeeding in China, while the economic loss from cognitive deficits associated with current infant feeding practices were estimated at around US $24 billion a year (Rollins et al. 2016). This estimate represents an ongoing annual loss equal to 0.33 percent of China’s GDP. However, the economic losses involved 135

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Figure 7.3  “It’s a Management Decision. You’re Weaned,” 2004. Cartoon used with permission of Neil Matterson.

are unseen, and the implied decline in breastmilk production is framed narrowly within maternal/child health, rather than perceived more broadly as corrosive of China’s economic productivity and human capital formation. Perversely, extra health treatment costs that result from reduced breastfeeding and less healthy children and adults are measured as an addition to GDP under current national accounting practices. The environmental costs of displacing breastfeeding are also rarely made apparent. In the case of China, these are particularly large because of its large population. Greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing of milk formula sold in China in 2012 are estimated to be 2.24 million tons CO 2 equivalent (Dadhich et  al. 2015). On-­farm greenhouse gas production from milk production should also be counted and would double such estimates.

Conclusion: Vice or virtue, problem or promise? If women’s work as producers and reproducers is invisible as a contribution to the national accounts, women are invisible in the distribution of benefits. Waring 1988: 77 The recent emergence of international trade in human milk may be a “vice” or a “virtue” for women. It might, on the one hand, reinforce the valorization of market activities at the expense of non-­market economic activity including breastfeeding. Alternatively, it might motivate a renewed feminist challenge to the practice of excluding human milk from economic accounting systems. Here it is argued that by indicating market values for breastfeeding, trade in human milk could strengthen the case for its 136

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Figure 7.4  This is a mother of twins in Pakistan in 1993. The baby on the left is a healthy breastfed boy. It was not felt there would be enough milk for two babies; because boys are valued more highly than girls, the boy’s twin sister was bottle fed. She died soon after this picture was taken. © UNICEF1993/C-107/#1.

inclusion in GDP. This chapter has provided data to demonstrate the economic value of breastfeeding and breastmilk. It illustrates how increasing the visibility of women’s lactation work in key economic statistics might challenge the gender bias in policy that under-­prioritizes allocating resources to facilitate their work. It also emphasizes the importance of governments developing societal, policy, and regulatory responses to markets in human milk which enable rather than hinder maternal breastfeeding, and which promote the beneficial rather than harmful aspects of milk trade and exchange. This chapter has argued that milk and money are intricately related—lactation is economic work and is not just maternal altruism. To ensure that the development of markets in mothers’ milk is beneficial to the welfare of mothers and babies, human and bovine, it is crucial to promote the opportunity—and the urgent need—for better measuring and valuing the economic contributions of women via their breastfeeding work. This in turn may advance economic justice for women, as well as improving the efficiency of resource allocation in the IYC food economy. 137

PART III QUEERING MILK: MALE FEEDING AND PLANT MILK

CHAPTER 8 THE LACTATING MAN Mathilde Cohen*

In man and some other male mammals (the mammary glands) have been known occasionally to become so well developed as to yield a fair supply of milk. Darwin [1871] 1874: 186 Introduction Lactation and breastfeeding are quintessentially mammalian, sex-­based, heteronormative, and gendered characteristics. In coining the term “mammal” in 1758 to characterize a group of animals, Carl von Linné made the breast the icon of the class—in Latin mamma means breast (Schiebinger 1993). Yet lactation is one of the few things, along with pregnancy, that only females, defined biologically, are supposed to do. The mere suggestion of a “lactating man” is typically met with giggles and chuckles. While in several cultures, including the Vedic, Greco-Roman, and Arabic civilizations, milk itself was seen as a masculine fluid, owing its perfection to the contribution of male semen (Altorki 1980; Mahias 1987; Myers 2016), the activity of breastfeeding has consistently remained feminized and subordinated. Yet neither breasts nor lactation are exclusively female. All mammals, but for the stallion, male mice, anteater, and monotreme mammals such as the platypus, have teats. Instances of male lactation, defined in zoology as the production of milk by male mammals’ mammary glands, have long been reported in the scientific-­medical, religious, and gender studies literature, as well as in folklore, the popular press, fiction, and visual arts. To cite but a few examples, in 350 bc Aristotle ([n.d.] 1907: 522a) asserted, “from time to time [milk] has been found in a male,” marveling at a buck that produced enough milk to make cheese. A couple of millennia later, French physician and philosopher Louis de Jaucourt (1751– 1765) claimed, “breasts are the same in men and women because in both sexes they sometimes filter real milk.” Male lactation must have been such a common topic of discourse in the eighteenth century that after referring to a couple of examples, Jaucourt swiftly concluded “[b]ut as no one doubts this truth today, it is unnecessary to dwell on it.” Were these alleged cases of male lactation pathological, random, or functional? Scientists distinguish lactation in the presence of the physiological stimuli connected to

*  For helpful conversations and comments on earlier drafts, I am grateful to Amy DiBona, Elizabeth Emens, Beth Jones Connel, Yoriko Otomo, Joshua Perldeiner, and Darren Rosenblum. For excellent research assistance, I thank the University of Connecticut law library staff.

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nursing babies from “pathological” lactation or “galactorrhea” (Racey, Peaker, and Racey 2009: 354). Galactorrhea occurs in males as well as female humans and animals (Rohn 1984). It has been reported due to environmental factors, the inadvertent consumption of hormones, or illnesses causing hormone disruptions such as cancer, obesity, or starvation (Kunz and Hosken 2009). Male primates are known to lactate in association with cancers such as carcinoma (Ringler and Abrams 1972). In the wake of the Second World War, when prison camp survivors were liberated and provided with adequate nutrition, cases of male lactation were observed—the so-­called “inanition-­refeeding syndrome” (Greenblatt 1972: 33). Prisoners had suffered liver, testicular, and pituitary atrophy due to nutritional deficiencies. With better nourishment, their testes and pituitary gland regained their function, producing large quantities of estrogens and androgens that triggered lactation. Some cases of male lactation have been categorized as fortuitous, caused neither by pathology nor by infant stimuli. An Australian surgeon (Leggett 1991: 541) described the case of an air traffic controller, Mr. R. W-B, a “robust man, married with 4 normal children,” whose testes and blood work “revealed no abnormality.” However, his breasts were enlarged, producing “[q]uite profuse milky discharge. The amount was such that his wife, who was pregnant, declared that he should take his place in the feeding of the baby.” Instead, Mr. R. W-B was “cure[d]” by a bilateral subcutaneous mastectomy, illustrating the tendency to view male lactation as an anomaly to be rectified (Leggett 1991: 541). Domesticated, healthy male goats that “behaved quiet normally in all other respects” have also been observed to lactate spontaneously, without the stimulus of a suckling kid (Nair, Mathai, and Nunjikutty 1981: 146). In fact, a familial predisposition to male lactation has been noted in some breeds that are known to be high-­producing dairy goats, such as the British Saanens (Wooldridge et al. 1999: 664). Other instances of male lactation are presented as functional (need-­based or role-­ based), supposedly arising in the context of infant feeding and care. Some male mammals have reportedly produced milk to feed their young in case of need—where the birth mother died, was ill, or did not produce any or sufficient milk. Since antiquity, the trope of the lactating widower has been recurrent in European, Jewish, but also in Chinese, folklore, reflecting deep anxieties around infant feeding at a time when the absence of a mother or another female to nurse was akin a death sentence for a newborn, and the apparition of a lactating father, a godsend (Lionetti 1984). In their 1896 treatise, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, American physicians George Gould and Walter Pyle chronicle several instances of male lactation, including “a sailor who, having lost his wife, took his son to his own breast to quiet him, and after three or four days was able to nourish him” (Gould and Pyle [1896] 1990: 397). They also relay Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt’s description of a “South American peasant of thirty-­two who, when his wife fell sick immediately after delivery, sustained the child with his own milk, which came soon after the application to the breast; for five months the child took no other nourishment.” (The trope of the colonized lactating man was common in the European literature at the time. Feminizing native men was a way of marking them as inferior and subordinated.) An analogous motif is found in the animal literature. Up until the 1920s an eighteenth-­century story circulated, featuring an “importunate lamb” that “had lost its 142

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dam in early life and persistently sucked a wether which grazed in its company. The lamb obtained its milk and was maintained by him all summer” (Fitzwilliams 1925: 104–5). Still other occurrences of male lactation are presented as role-­based, with lactation being associated with a caretaking role as a form of embodied parental care. The male caregiver’s desire to nurse and be intimately involved—with or without a female partner— in the nourishment and care of an infant appears to be determinant. The eighteenth-­ century Scottish surgeon and scientist, John Hunter (1861: 238), tells the story of a Spanish father who began nursing in tandem with his wife after the birth of their twins. To soothe one of his children, he applied “his left nipple to the infant’s mouth, who sucked and drew milk from it in such quantity as to be nursed by it in perfect good health. He treated all his other children, eight in number and all alive in the same way, always dividing with his wife the business of nursing the children.” Among animals, the discovery, in the early 1990s, that male Dayak fruit bats in Malaysia lactate raised the prospect that it was in fact a normal parenting behavior for the species (Francis et al. 1994). Evolutionary biologists conjectured that male bats could be providing milk to their young due to a monogamous mating system in which males and female co-­parent, a topic to which I shall return later. Against the backdrop of this medley of science and folklore, this chapter questions the gender normativity of milk as a substance solely produced by females. My contribution is twofold. First, rather than focusing exclusively on the question of the biological production of milk by males, a rarity in the mammalian kingdom, I use the notion of male lactation as a continuum to describe a variety of physiological and socio-­cultural phenomena, from bio-­males lactating, to male-­identified parents and caregivers using human milk or suckling their children to feed them, to the role of men in supporting or hindering breastfeeding.1 Along the spectrum, I distinguish three poles: 1) “male lactation,” which denotes a biological or physiological fact; 2) “male breastfeeding,” which describes a cluster of gendered practices of infant feeding; and 3) males’ support of, or interference with, breastfeeding at the personal and societal level. From one perspective, male lactation is a non-­event. Why would we ever think of it in terms of social policies given that the physiological phenomenon is so rare that it is an outlier? From another perspective, all people regardless of gender can participate in lactation, if not literally, then by supporting breastfeeding partners, as I argue in Part III. Second, my analysis is trans- or cross-­species. Building on evolutionary biology and its critics, as well as on anthropology, gender and queer theory, and queer ecology, I examine the way in which lactation and breastfeeding produce gender relations from a multi-­species perspective. What does male lactation, male breastfeeding, and males’ involvement in breastfeeding practices tell us about sex and gender across the species line? What do they tell us about who gets to parent, and how? Humans have long used animals to tell stories and make claims about human life especially when it comes to normalizing matters of sex, gender, and parenting. While I do not profess to speak for other species, I resort to animal–human comparisons to illustrate how (human) sex and gender-­based assumptions surrounding lactation and breastfeeding are culturally constructed. To be sure, there are huge gaps in the scientific knowledge needed to describe and explain male lactation satisfactorily. The dearth of information does not 143

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signal the impossibility of any inquiry on the matter, however, since this preliminary study focuses on the social meanings of lactation. The chapter proceeds in three parts. It begins by critically examining the scientific literature on male lactation, which usually frames the phenomenon as an evolutionary puzzle. Part II argues that male lactation—the relatively rare biological phenomenon, as I am defining it—should be decoupled from “male breastfeeding”—a broader, non-­ biological notion. Finally, Part III turns to the ways men may both strive for and resist participation in breastfeeding.

I.  Biology: male lactation Why do males have nipples? That most mammalians have breasts has long been viewed as a scientific enigma for naturalists and, more recently, evolutionary biologists. Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin ([1794] 1818: 400), expressed perplexity that “no use can now be assigned” to “the breasts and teats of all male quadrupeds.” Numerous theories exist on the origin and evolution of the mammary gland and lactation. Biological explanations range from the idea that male breasts are relics of a previous utility, to the assertion that some males can still lactate to feed their babies. In 2006, molecular biologist Claudia Vorbach and her team argued that originally nipples and lactation had little to do with feeding babies, but stemmed from the innate immune system, that is, cells and proteins that are always present, providing a first line of defense against common microorganisms (Vorbach et al. 2006). She proposed that the mammary gland evolved from a protective skin gland that secreted large amounts of antimicrobial factors to shield the evolving mammalian skin, their eggs, and/or their newborns. On this view, lactation reflects an inflammatory response to tissue damage and infection. It only later evolved into a feeding role. The primary evolutionary function of milk was protective and not nutritional, explaining, perhaps, the fact that males as well as females have mammary glands. Medical doctor John Launer (2011: 79) proposes a different evolutionary scenario. According to him, mammalian nipples and lactation evolved from sweat glands such that “over a period of millions of years, infants who could cling to their parents and suckle on increasingly nutritious secretions from this source must have had an adaptive advantage.” He speculates that early on, males as well as females may have developed the same capacity for secreting nutritious sweat, only for this to become redundant as a result of later evolutionary pressures. An alternative and perhaps more convincing explanation is that the original adaptation served a dual purpose of physical attachment as well as lactation, so that it was of benefit to infants for both their parents to have this accessory on their chests. Launer 2011: 80 144

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More than a century earlier, Charles Darwin ([1871] 1874: 109) had explored the nutritional function hypothesis, speculating that in an earlier age male mammals aided females in nursing their offspring and that later, some pattern of events (such as smaller litters) rendered male assistance unnecessary. The disuse of the organ led to its becoming vestigial, and this was passed on to future generations. Why is it that once male breasts became superfluous nature did not take them away? Evolutionary biologist and historian of science Stephen Jay Gould, critiquing this type of functionalist, adaptive mode of inquiry, offers an account based on structural rules of development. In his view, it was not utility but pathways of sexual differentiation in mammalian embryology, that account for male breasts. He argues that “[m]ale mammals have nipples because females need them—and the embryonic pathway to their development builds precursors in all mammalian fetuses, enlarging the breasts later in females but leaving them small (and without evident function) in males” (Gould 1993: 83). The development of mammary glands in utero happens independently of sex because fetuses are sex undifferentiated during the first stage of their development, starting with the same body plan and basic parts. Male nipples are not vestigial traces of a former function. Nipples are so fundamental to mammalian life that they pre-­exist sexual difference. According to Gould, males have nipples simply because females do. Can males lactate? Although the scientific community as well as the general public assumes that male lactation, like male pregnancy, is a biological impossibility, it is merely a biological improbability. Mammalian males do not have ovaries and uteruses, but they have mammary glands. Many, including humans, primates, and canines, have nipples and ducts leading to the surface of the nipples—the physiological equipment required for lactation (Marieskind 1973: 124). Until recently, it could have been objected that male lactation was a “man-­made” phenomenon, only documented in humans and domesticated mammals. Yet, as noted in the introduction, in 1994 a group of biology researchers described for the first time lactation in a wild male mammal, the Dayak fruit bats of Malaysia (Francis et al. 1994: 691). A few years later, research wildlife biologist Frank Bonaccorso (1998) reported that another type of fruit bat, the masked flying fox of Papua New Guinea, presented instances of male lactation. Male lactation, therefore, could be a naturally occurring phenomenon even in animals that have not been manipulated by humans. Several of the male Dayak fruit bats examined had functional mammary glands from which small quantities of milk could be expressed. Microscopic analysis revealed similarities to female bat breast tissue. It is still unclear whether male fruit bats’ lactation represents an evolutionary adaptation to increase the survival of pups, the symptom of some underlying health problem, or an abnormal event stimulated by the consumption of phytoestrogen-­rich plants or pesticides. Yet in both the Dayak and the flying fox species, the male bats were found perfectly normal in every other way, leaving open the possibility that they provide milk to their young. The team of researchers that investigated 145

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the Dayak fruit bat noted that the “nipples of the males were smaller and less cornified than those of the females, suggesting little, if any suckling” (Francis et al. 1994: 691). But years later one of the team members, Thomas Kunz, hypothesized that “because males express less milk than females—5 μl versus 350 μl expressed from females—it is possible that some suckling occurs, but not enough to cause enlargement and cornification of the nipples” (Kunz and Hosken 2009: 83). In sum, while the adaptive function of their lactation remains uncertain, male bats appear able to produce milk in the absence of pregnancy. Even in females, becoming pregnant is not necessary to acquire the hormones that trigger lactation. These hormones, in particular prolactin, considered nature’s “galactagogue,” that is, a substance triggering or promoting milk production, can spike as the result of nipple stimulation, various pathologies, or the administration of drugs. In females, it is the hormonal change brought about by pregnancy, rather than the carrying of a developing fetus and the birth that stimulate glandular growth and milk letdown (Creel et al. 1991). Manual or mechanical nipple stimulation as well as baby-­wearing and suckling are alternative ways to release lactation hormones. These behaviors can be supplemented or replaced by the administration of hormones sparking milk production (Gabay 2002). Induced lactation is nowadays routine in a variety of situations, from parents needing to initiate lactation after the birth of a premature baby, to foster, adoptive, and intended parents in the context of surrogacy, to lesbian or gender non-­conforming couples in which the non-­gestational parent wants to breastfeed, a practice known as “co-­nursing” (Zizzo 2009; Wahlert and Fiester 2013), to friends and relatives, most often maternal grandmothers who (re-)lactate so as to breastfeed an infant in need, to people seeking to lactate for other reasons, such as to rid their body of toxins, to lose weight, or for sexual pleasure (Giles 2003: 97). Some individuals eventually produce enough milk to fully nurse a baby, while others make small quantities, requiring supplementation with formula or donor human milk. Lactation can also be induced in animals. Due to its potential economic benefit, there is a large agricultural literature on the “optimal” (human) methods to induce lactation in cows (Magliaro et al. 2004). But other animals can trigger lactation to nurse non-­filial youngsters. Induced lactation has been observed in captive dolphins whereby orphaned dolphin calves suckle females with whom they are housed, leading them to establish a full milk supply (Ridgway and Reddy 1995: 610). Wild nulliparous marsupials occasionally foster other females’ babies, nursing them fully (Daly 1979: 327). Can the standard protocol used to induce female lactation (stimulation alone and/or in conjunction with pharmacologic intervention) be duplicated in male mammals? In a 2000 study, a team of UC Davis researchers reported successfully inducing lactation in four out of thirteen male goats—33 percent—using a combination of hormonal treatment and mammary massage (Cammuso 2000). Similar to male bats that produce less milk than females, male goats produced considerably less than their female counterparts. Induced female goats secreted from 20 μl to 530 ml of milk per day while induced bucks’ volumes ranged from 25 μl to 1.5 ml per day (Cammuso 2000: 6). However, what is remarkable is that in species in which male and female milk’s compositions have been compared, no significant difference between the two has been detected. A 1981 study 146

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showed that when human males secrete milk, it is of comparable quality as “colostrum and milk of normal lactating women” (Kulski 1981: 581). The composition of male bats’ milk has not been analysed, leaving unknown whether or not it is similar to female milk. But at least some male animals’ milk is of equivalent compositional quality as females’. In the early 2010s, two separate teams of European researchers (Pilo et al. 2011; Gamboa et al. 2013) examined bucks’ milk, comparing it to does’ milk. The analysis revealed “no major differences” between the two, except for pH level and temperature (Gamboa et al. 2013: 99–100). Major constituents such as fat, protein, and lactose were the same, suggesting that when males’ mammary glands secrete fluid, it is rightly called milk. Could human males lactate as the result of an induction regimen? According to feminist breastfeeding scholar Fiona Giles (2005: 308), “[m]en can choose to lactate too, if they’re prepared to put in the required amount of nipple stimulation.” Though the blogosphere is rich with accounts of (typically failed) induced lactation in bio-­males, there is no scientific literature substantiating its (un-)feasibility. Does this lacuna indicate that lactating bio-­males are an aberration? I see this gap as a reflection of the traditional gender roles which so permeate research agendas’ fundamental analytic categories that male lactation is considered unworthy of serious scientific inquiry, even if only to be refuted. To be sure, male lactation remains an oddity. The next section conjectures explanations for this outlier status. If males can lactate, why don’t they? If lactation lies within the physiological potential of males, why don’t they lactate more commonly? Classic evolutionary theory predicts that parents should invest in their young in ways that increase their own lifetime reproductive success. Based on this premise, the absence of male lactation in mammals is explained by fitness maximization. Males’ evolutionary interests are supposedly best served by fertilizing as many females as possible and maximizing the number of their own surviving offspring. Accordingly, they would not gain any advantage by sticking around to help raise one or two of them. Male lactation, on this account, goes against the presumed fact that male mammals have no involvement with their offspring post insemination, or when they do, provide considerably less parental care than females. Evolutionary biologists attribute low male parental investment to a lack of certainty over paternity given that the degree of male care often correlates positively with the degree of paternity assurance (Trivers 1972). The mammalian mode of reproduction threatens paternity confidence due to its internal fertilization followed by a long gestation period. Providing costly care for offspring a male did not sire would be selected against, as males would incur costs for no benefits, losing out on other mating opportunities (Kunz and Hosken 2009: 80). The researchers who observed lactation in Dayak male fruit bats argued “functional male lactation would be most likely to evolve in monogamous species, in which males share in the care of the young and have high certainty of paternity” (Francis et al. 1994: 692). Yet why don’t all monogamous male parents lactate? Standard evolutionary theory explains the absence of male lactation in the rare cases where males 147

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of a species are involved in parental care through male–male competition or territory control to maximize biological fitness (Kunz and Hosken 2009: 82). Male contributions in these species include behaviors such as gathering food for the female, chasing off potential competitors, defending the territory, and looking out for predators from other species. By contrast, evolutionary orthodoxy maintains that females lactate because of their reproductive features. They sire a limited number of offspring that require a protracted and intensive period of parental care. They are unable to desert them because their fitness maximization calls for a high investment in caring for them (Trivers 1972). This brief review of the evolutionary literature on male lactation indicates that a binary sexual division of labor is seen as key to the evolution of lactation into a female task. However, other theories circulate as well. For example, biologist Charlotta Kvarnemo (2006: 144) argues for the reverse causality: “high paternity is not a prerequisite for male care to evolve but rather an outcome of it.” This may be because females are more attracted to caring males, or because male care leads to increased survival of the offspring (Seger and Trivers 1986). In other words, increased male parental investment could lead to more mating opportunities for males and/or to more numerous biological offspring. If that is the case, it is unclear why males have not invested more in lactation. An alternative explanation for the rarity of male lactation is gender-­based rather than sex-­ based. Could it be because people are socialized to view lactation as an exclusively female enterprise that it is one? Women’s health expert Helen Marieskind (1973: 124) wrote nearly half a century ago that lactation “is very much dependent on the cultural values of the society: i.e., in societies which place great importance on breast feeding, lactation is readily found amongst all age groups and parital states of women . . . in these same societies lactation in men is more likely to occur.” She based the assertion on a handful of medical authorities, calling for a more thorough investigation as to whether there is in fact support for such a cross-­cultural claim. If gender is a socio-­cultural construct, as some have argued, the gender coding of lactation and breastfeeding can shift. The paucity of scientific investigation of male lactation is arguably a symptom of the gendering of lactation. The scientific and medical establishments have refrained from probing a phenomenon—male lactation—which strains the bounds of credulity precisely because it contravenes our sex, gender, and parenting assumptions. Yet, as I argue in Part II, even if lactation is not part of males’ “normal” capabilities, or if bio-­males produce such small amounts of milk that they cannot satisfy their children’s nutritional needs, there are other ways in which bio-­males and male-­identified persons can engage in breastfeeding.

II.  Gender: male breastfeeding Definition Somewhat similar to the decoupling of sex and gender, I propose to dissociate lactation from breastfeeding. Sex typically means the biological, genetic, chromosomal, or 148

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physiological characteristics associated with males and females, while gender designates the social identities affiliated with bodies perceived as sexed in a particular way. Analogously, lactation refers to the biological and physiological ability to produce milk, while breastfeeding refers to the social practice of feeding children human milk or to latching them to the nipple while supplying them with milk. The term “breastfeeding” itself is controversial. Infant feeding advocate Alice Farrow (2015: 26) points out that “[h]eteronormative and cisnormative assumptions are predominant in the language (including images) in mainstream breastfeeding literature and the language used by providers,” most obviously, the systematic use of the female gendered pronoun when referring to nursing parents as well as the term “breastfeeding.” Though all humans have breast tissue, the word “breast” is typically associated with women. Accordingly, some trans men and gender non-­conforming parents prefer to use the expression “chestfeeding” (Wolfe-Roubatis 2015: 36). As a concession to dominant linguistic practice, this chapter uses the expression “breastfeeding,” but with the caveat that it should be understood interchangeably with “chestfeeding.” “Male breastfeeding,” I suggest, designates a cluster of practices, which sometimes intersect. Its three defining elements are as follows: 1) male-­identified parents or caregivers; 2) using human milk to feed their children; and/or 3) latching their children onto their nipples/breasts/chest while providing some nutrition—be it formula or human milk. This conception overlaps with, but is much narrower than Fiona Giles’ (2004: 301–2) notion of “queer breastfeeding,” which includes adults breastfeeding one another, long-­term breastfeeding of children, cross-­nursing (one woman occasionally breastfeeding another woman’s child), wet-nursing, cooking with breast milk for adult consumption, cross-­species nursing, induced lactation, lactation porn, and lactation art. What makes breastfeeding “male” is the self-­identified maleness of the breastfeeder.2 What makes it “breastfeeding” is one or two of the following reference points: a substance (human milk) and/or a location in the body (nipples/chest/breasts). Male breastfeeding undoes the presumption that parenting is binary, with men as fathers and women as mothers. In that sense, the expression “male breastfeeding” should not be read as reinforcing gender distinctions and dualistic systems of categorization. My goal is rather to expand the gender coding of breastfeeding by including in the practice people whose bodies, gender expression, or social role are different to those traditionally associated with “nursing mothers,” or who may not identify with any gender. As opposed to lactation, breastfeeding is defined neither by milk production on the breastfeeder side nor by milk intake on the infant side. The distinction between “male lactation” (bio-­males producing milk) and “male breastfeeding” (male-­identified parents using human milk or latching their children to feed them) is fluid, rather than all-­ornothing, allowing for overlap. This is not to say that I wish to collapse the divide between the biological and the social. But the phenomena of male lactation and breastfeeding show that, as in many other contexts, the relationship between biological and cultural processes is complex. Biology can be constructed in the sense that a phenomenon associated with biology (such as lactation) may be in reality a feature of social situations. The more bio-­male and male-­identified parents are interested in breastfeeding, the more 149

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common the physiological fact of male lactation may become. Reciprocally, as I argue below, the social situation of male breastfeeding may be just as fraught with obstacles as the biological fact of male lactation. In male breastfeeding, parents use donor human milk to bottle-­feed and/or they suckle their children and/or provide them with their own breast/chest milk if they have been able to initiate lactation. Does merely using one’s nipples to soothe an infant without delivering any nourishment count as breastfeeding? Anthropologist Barry Hewlett conducted ethnographic fieldwork in a hunter-­gathering society of the Congo Basin, the Aka, where he observed men putting infants to their nipples to pacify them, reporting: Aka infants have been observed attempting to nurse with their fathers, and fathers have been observed offering their nipple to fussy infants. We asked mothers about fathers trying to nurse and they said fathers may put the infant to their breast to try and soothe a fussy infant but they added that fathers are more likely to sing or dance with the infant or give her water before offering his breast. Hewlett and Winn 2014: 204 I would be reticent to call this practice “breastfeeding,” at least not a paradigmatic case of breastfeeding, given that no feeding is involved. Of course, breastfeeding is more than just nutrition. Whether or not milk is produced and ingested, breastfeeders and their babies experience touching and skin-­to-skin contact creating an enriched sensory environment including eye contact, lulling, soothing, and cuddling. Non-­nutritive suckling is widespread among mammals, often serving a social or emotional function— infants often suckle when distressed or alarmed. It also provides immunological benefits, as exposure to diverse strains of bacteria via skin-­to-skin contact may optimize an infant’s immune system (Martin and Sela 2013). But even non-­nutritive suckling is connected to nutrition, as it is important for stimulating milk production (Cameron 1998: 525). In sum, though breastfeeding need not satisfy all of an infant’s nutritional needs, central cases of breastfeeding should encompass an element of feeding. In what follows I outline three examples of male breastfeeding illustrating the diversity of practices encompassed by the notion. They involve people of different genders, sexual orientation, time, and place. Examples Male breastfeeding designates a range of situations that differ vastly, but are united by the male identification of the parent-­caregiver and the form of nourishment of a child. Gay fathers who breastfeed  In a fascinating, multi-­authored article titled “The Pregnant Man,” law professor Darren Rosenblum (2010) tells the story of having his daughter, Melina, with his husband, Howard, through a gestational surrogate, Beth Jones, who is also one of the article’s contributors. During her pregnancy, Beth decided that 150

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after her delivery, she would pump her milk, knowing from her previous pregnancies that it would facilitate her postpartum recovery. Upon learning about the possibility of human milk donation, she offered Darren and Howard to breastfeed Melina at birth and to donate her milk after that (Rosenblum et al. 2010: 258). Immediately after giving birth, Beth began pumping so that Darren and Howard could feed Melina themselves, using a bottle. They had happily accepted her milk donation offer, renting a breast pump, purchasing pumping supplies and accessories, and setting up a UPS shipping account. Beth sent her frozen milk on dry ice from Oklahoma to New York, where Darren and Howard would thaw it and feed it to Melina. Darren recounts that “thanks to Beth’s generosity (and UPS’s reliability), Melina had three months’ worth of breast milk” (Rosenblum et al. 2010: 276). This story raises the question of who breastfed Melina. Darren writes, “we ‘kind of ’ breast fed Melina because we gave her breast milk but did not have the intensely corporeal proximity to Melina through breast-­feeding” (Rosenblum et al. 2010: 276). Darren and Howard did not suckle her despite her attempts: “even if Melina did not—she frequently tried to feed off our hairy chests.” If Darren and Howard breastfed, does it mean that any male-­identified parent who feeds an infant expressed human milk in a bottle is “breastfeeding”? The socio-­cultural notion of breastfeeding is flexible so I would not rule out any proposal without contextual background. However, what distinguishes Darren and Howard’s story from other familiar tales of male participation in human milk infant feeding is that theirs was a sustained endeavor in the absence of a parent producing milk or breastfeeding. Unlike male-­identified people partnered with a lactating person, who may limit their involvement to the act of bottle-­feeding, taking no or little part in the storing and handling of the milk, Darren and Howard fully engaged with the corporeality of human milk—unpacking it, thawing it, preparing and cleaning the bottles. This was not an occasional undertaking as they fed Melina nearly exclusively on human milk for as long as their supply lasted. I agree with Darren that he and Howard “kind of breastfed Melina.” At the same time, Beth “kind of ” breastfed Melina too, even though she had zero “corporeal proximity” to Melina, to continue Darren’s choice of words. During her couple of months of maternity leave, Beth was engaged in another form of work—the time- and labor- intensive job of making milk—even though she was not paid for the milk she produced. This embodied work presumably entailed managing her clothing to facilitate pumping and handling leakage, continuing with prenatal regimens such as taking vitamins, avoiding restricted beverages, drugs, or smoke, as well as eating and drinking more because lactation requires extra energy and hydration. Besides, producing milk in the absence of a suckling baby imposes its own set of tasks: pumping takes a lot time and in addition to setting up, dismantling, and cleaning up the pump several times per day, it requires storing the milk in collection bottles or disposable bags which are weighed and dated, then frozen, before being packed in Styrofoam coolers to be shipped on dry ice. It is clear from the article that Beth enjoyed her surrogacy and lactation work and was able to perform it under the best possible material and emotional conditions. She makes a point of countering the common critique of surrogacy as exploitation by presenting her experience as “mutual 151

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exploitation,” whereby “any construed exploitation done ‘against’ me was equally matched” (Rosenblum et al. 2010: 256–7). Trans fathers who breastfeed  Female-­to-male Canadian trans father Trevor McDonald (2016), who became pregnant and was able to produce small amounts of milk, breastfed his baby, documenting the experience on his blog, Milkjunkies.net, as well as in a book. McDonald identifies as a man and a father, but his sex assigned at birth was female. He transitioned by taking hormones and having chest surgery, removing most of his breast tissue. He retained his female reproductive organs, hence his capacity to carry a gestational pregnancy. As two medical doctors explain (Obedin-Maliver and Makadon 2016: 6), “[s]ome transgender men defer chest reconstruction (also known as ‘top’) surgery in light of a planned desire to chest feed. Those who have had ‘top surgery’ may still be able to lactate or can engage in chest feeding with assistance of a support device.” Breastfeeding trans men may “experience dysphoria as they take on (and challenge) this traditionally feminine role” (Obedin-Maliver and Makadon 2016: 6). More generally, all male-­identified breastfeeders may feel discomfort because breastfeeding and the bodily changes it may occasion do not match their gender identity. Though McDonald’s son Jacob was able to latch at birth, he was not gaining sufficient weight after a few days, calling for supplemental feeding. Using donated human milk from friends, and friends of friends, McDonald continued to breastfeed Jacob with the help of a supplemental nursing system (SNS). The SNS includes a tube taped to the breast next to the nipple which is connected to a bottle containing formula or human milk. The infant sucks on the nipple while the tube passes milk into its mouth. The device avoids “nipple confusion”3 and provides sucking stimulation to boost milk production. McDonald’s widely publicized use of the SNS contributed to its dissemination in popular culture as the contraption that allows parents regardless of sex or gender to partake in the breastfeeding experience. It has since been emulated, with the invention of new humorous breastfeeding gadgets. “Mr. Milker” vests are now available for sale on Amazon for men experiencing, according to the product description, “breastfeeding envy.” Publicized as “the original male breastfeeding device,” the vest hides baby bottles behind “easy to clean, BPA, and lead free” artificial nipples, allowing children to latch and ingest milk simultaneously. McDonald was instrumental in exposing socio-­cultural presumptions about the gender of breastfeeding. The dominant breastfeeding subculture alternatively supports and undermines the ungendering work accomplished by male breastfeeding. While he was breastfeeding, McDonald (2013) joined a local La Leche League (LLLC) support group, which he described on his blog as “an incredible support system that I credit with helping me to nurse my baby for his first year of life.” Yet his application to become a La Leche League leader was later denied. In its rejection letter, the organization wrote that “[s]ince an LLLC leader is a mother who breastfed a baby, a man cannot become an LLLC leader,” adding that “the roles of mothers and fathers are not interchangeable” (Tapper 2012). The organization was not prepared to ungender breastfeeding by 152

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endorsing a male breastfeeder as a role model. Since then, the organization revised its policy noting, “[a]s the cultural understanding of gender has expanded, it is now recognised that some men are able to breastfeed. In the spirit of nondiscrimination and with this awareness, La Leche League International has refined the eligibility qualifications for its volunteer breastfeeding counsellors to include men who otherwise meet the prerequisites for becoming a volunteer applicant” (West 2014). Roman nurse-­fathers who breastfed  The Latin word nutritor has long been understood as a synonymous of paedagogus, that is, the tutor who took over the education of privileged Roman children once they were weaned. Referring to funerary inscriptions dedicated by couples presenting themselves as nutritores lactanei (literally, milk nurses), classicist Marine Bretin-Chabrol (2012) argues that there may have been male nurses actively participating in infant care and feeding in Ancient Rome. In imperial Latin, two masculine nouns existed in the same family as nutrix (female nurse), nutricius and nutritor, which can be translated as male nurse or foster (nourishing) father raising a child not his own. Who were the men calling themselves nurses or nourishing fathers and did they participate in breastfeeding? Bretin-Chabrol questions the dissymmetry between the roles supposedly assumed between female and male nurses. Calling a nutrix “lactaneus” was a way to signal that she was a wet nurse rather than a dry nurse (dry nurses cared for their nurslings without breastfeeding them). Analogously, by calling oneself a nutritor “lactaneus,” could a man have indicated his involvement in breastfeeding? Ceramics specialists and archeologists have established that breast pumps and baby feeding bottles were used in certain situations in the Greco-Roman world and even before (Obladen 2012). The Romans produced pumps allowing women to suck through a tube, creating a suction effect which resulted in expressing milk (Rouquet 2003). They likely mastered the manual expression technique as well, which allows milk extraction by simply using self-­massage and stroking. Male nutritores lactanei could have therefore fed their nurslings human milk produced by their wives or by other female nurses in addition to fulfilling other forms of nursing and caring, such as swaddling, cuddling, story-­telling, singing, suckling, and other traditional tasks bestowed to wet nurses. Breastfeeding men would not have been incongruous in the context of Roman family structures and child-­rearing practices, as the Roman father assumed, symbolically but also often practically, the nourishing function (Dupont 2002). As evidenced by Aristotle and Hippocrates’ biological theories, milk itself was conceptualized as masculine, a semen-­infused concoction composed of female blood heated and perfected by the addition of male seed (Myers 2016: 85–6). In upper-­class circles, children were rarely breastfed by their mothers, who resorted to wet nurses that were either slaves or servants recruited on a contractual basis (Bradley 1985). There were therefore two couples in the Roman family: the procreating couple composed of the father and mother, and the nourishing-­educating couple composed of the wet nurse and the father (often called pater-­nutrix) (Dupont 2002: 132–3). Romans did not require biological reproduction to establish filiation (Thomas 1986). The link between father and children was established 153

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through nourishment—legitimate children were those the father decided to nourish at their birth. Male breastfeeding in Rome may have been a function of slave owning in a society characterized by extremes of wealth, power, and status. The inscriptional evidence suggests that even if some male nurses were free, a steep social hierarchy often separated the infant’s parents from the nutritor (Bretin-Chabrol 2012: 191–204). In sum, if male breastfeeding was ever commonly practiced in Western society, it developed in the context of a deeply unequal polity based on the slavery system, where gender, class, and racial oppression intersected. In Antiquity, the position of men in the gender order created a scale not just of maleness but also of humanness (Myers 2016: 82–3). Being masculine was being fully human, enjoying full personhood, orderliness, and perfection, while being feminine was aligned with subordinate and less than human status. As a feminine, hence devalued activity, breastfeeding may have been acceptable for men to engage in only if they were considered as social inferiors. Similarly, dominant heteronormative norms in contemporary society may explain why today male breastfeeding is primarily claimed by sexual minorities such as gay or trans men, rather than embraced by straight and cis masculinities. Is male breastfeeding more common in the animal realm where gender repression and identity roles may be less rigidly enforced? Animals Though there are no reported cases of “male breastfeeding” among animals in the sense outlined in this Part, I would not be surprised if such findings emerged as researchers become interested in the question. Ethology suggests that lactation is a social behavior among animals just as among humans, including an important “cultural” component in the sense of learning behaviors from others (Plotkin 2002). Much like humans, animals apparently learn to breastfeed. “[S]ome chimpanzees when delivered in captivity have . . . not known what to do with their newborn babies,” while others successfully breastfed after being “taught” by their keepers (Gunther 1955: 575). In a number of species, this learning process occurs through allomothering, that is, infant care performed by a group member other than the gestational mother. “Allonursing” is an expression used by zoologists to refer to females nursing offspring that are not their own. The practice exists in the majority of human cultures (Hewlett and Winn 2014) as well as in dozens of species of cooperative breeder animals such as monkeys, wolves, dogs, and whales (Packer, Lewis, and Pusey 1992). A few studies have shown that one of the functions of allonursing is for inexperienced females to improve their maternal skills, in particular breastfeeding (Maestripieri 1994; Roulin 2002: 205). Animals’ parenting practices as well as genders and sexual orientations are by some accounts just as diverse as humans, if not more (Roughgarden 2004; Hird 2006). As LGBTIQ life gains greater visibility in mainstream human culture, we see its powerful impact on scientific studies of animals’ sexuality and mating systems. As environmental sociologist Myra Hird (2008: 227) has argued, “animals have for some time been 154

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overburdened with the task of making sense of human social relations. In most cultures, and for most people, nonhuman animals are symbolic. It matters less how nonhuman animals behave, and more how we think they behave.” She points out, in particular, that “trans” is not a distinctly human enterprise, as virtually all plants and many animal species are intersex, switch sex, have same-­sex relationships, and engage in transvestism (Hird 2006). The diversity of sex, sexual, and parenting behavior amongst species is much greater than human cultural notions typically allow. Amongst most living organisms, day care, fostering, and adoption are common, as are infanticide and incest. Female single parenting is the norm among animals, monogamy the anomaly. Nonhuman mammals may lack the technology humans possess to engage in male breastfeeding (breast pumps, feeding bottles, artificial nipples, supplemental nursing systems, refrigeration, freezing/thawing techniques, shipping), but they are known to employ reproductive and nursing strategies which are surprisingly similar to humans’. Myra Hird (2006: 40) reports, “many animals practise forms of birth control through vaginal plugs, defecation, abortion through the ingestion of certain plants, ejection of sperm and, in the case of chimpanzees, nipple stimulation.” Mammals often engage in highly cooperative communal infant care. For example, in some species of social canids, only a couple of females in the pack give birth in a particular year, and the entire pack helps care for the litter (Riedman 1982: 416). While the current scientific evidence suggests that allonursing is limited to females, another form of food sharing involves males as well as females: premastication (also known as “kiss feeding”). Adults returning from a hunt regurgitate food for the pups as well as for their caretakers (Pelto, Zhang, and Habicht 2010). If kiss feeding, allonursing, and the female use of nipple stimulation as a contraceptive are common among certain mammals, it would not be such a stretch to imagine that males too could stimulate their nipples to induce lactation or obtain milk from females to feed it to their young. In the 1970s, an adult male macaque in captivity was observed “to express a milk-­like secretion from the left nipple after self manipulation and sucking of the nipples. 5 days later the secretion was expressed from both nipples. Since then the animal has been observed to express the secretion on 36 occasions” (Trollope and Orgill 1976: 375). Though this macaque was lactating rather than breastfeeding, his example suggests that lactation self-­inducement in male animals is within the realm of possibility, opening up the potential for animal male breastfeeding. Technology itself is not uniquely human. Animals incorporate external structural materials into their bodies (such as the above-­quoted vaginal plugs used as contraceptives) and move around and store food. Perhaps some mammals have found ways to store, transport, and transmit expressed milk to infants, allowing male caregivers to partake in breastfeeding. Although more research is needed on mating behaviors and the physiology of lactation, the existing evidence does not preclude the prospects of animal male breastfeeding. After having reviewed some of the different ways in which males can be said to breastfeed, Part III turns to an even broader understanding of male lactation. 155

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III.  Society: Males and breastfeeding As noted earlier, male lactation can be seen as a continuum, from the physiological production of milk by bio-­males’ mammary glands, to male-­identified people breastfeeding, to males’ contributions to or impairment of breastfeeding at the personal and the societal level. At the further end of the spectrum, in the human realm, male involvement in breastfeeding can manifest itself in contrasting ways, from hostility toward the idea of male breastfeeding, to supporting breastfeeders regardless of their gender, to controlling other people’s breastfeeding. If men can breastfeed, why don’t they? Major socio-­cultural barriers stand in the way of male breastfeeding and male support of breastfeeders, including, most evidently, gender constructions of the body and the emotion of disgust surrounding female bodily fluids. A significant impediment to male breastfeeding is the lived experience of the gendered body, through which masculinities and femininities are constructed and enacted. Transgressions of gender-­based bodily norms such as male breasts and male lactation are read in scornful and moralized ways. Man-­breasts are typically experienced as shameful in our culture. Robin Longhurst (2005: 155) has written about the experience of “breasted men living in the contemporary West,” who try to hide their breasts, avoiding activities and spaces that require exposing their upper bodies. Her analysis shows that they find themselves quite literally out of place in societies that value muscular male torsos and represent man-­breasts as “grotesque and/or funny” and where finding a suitable bra can be an ordeal (Longhurst 2005: 163). Despite its commonness, “gynecomastia,” the growth of male breast tissue or mammary gland hypertrophy, is considered a pathology.According to a medical article, gynecomastia “is common in normal individuals, particularly in the newborn period, at puberty, and in the elderly. Around 60 percent of all boys develop transient pubertal breast enlargement, and 30–70 percent of adult men have palpable breast tissue, with the higher prevalence being seen in older men and those with concurrent medical illnesses” (Carlson 2011: 16). The aversion to so-­called “man boobs” manifests itself most dramatically in the recourse to surgery to remove “excessive” breast tissue on men. As mentioned in the introduction, some doctors recommend mastectomies to “cure” male gynecomastia and galactorrhea— while breast cancer experts use “words like ‘disfigurement,’ ‘mutilation,’ and ‘lop-­sided’ to describe the [female] post-­mastectomy patient” (Wilkinson and Kitzinger 1993: 230). Luce Irigaray (1985: 106–18) has shown that in Western ontology, firmness and solidity are coded as masculine while softness and fluidity are associated with femininity. The female body is depicted as unrestrained and flowing, lacking self-­control: women menstruate, secrete vaginal discharges, lactate, experience postpartum incontinence, and cry. In the early modern period, power was inscribed on lower-­class and female bodies through shame about these liquid bodily functions (Paster 1993: 1–22). Breasted and lactating men disrupt understandings of sexual specificity and social hierarchy because they exhibit a feminine-­fluid physique, becoming “abject bodies subject to loathing and 156

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derision” (Longhurst 2005: 153). Historian Lisa Wynne Smith (2010) analyzed medical discourse surrounding alleged cases of male menstruation in eighteenth-­century England and France, manifesting that leaky males bodies are profoundly undesirable. Uncontrolled flow goes against the ideal of the self-­contained man. Willpower was and still is “central to claims of political virtue and hierarchy”—men unable to control themselves are seen unfit to govern others (Smith 2010: 28). Male breastfeeding, therefore, goes against centuries of medical and moral theory that left us with an ideal of masculinity defined by containment and self-­discipline. Another hurdle to overcome for male-­identified people to breastfeed or to support others who do so is the negative cultural construction of female bodily fluids (Bramwell 2001). Though human milk benefits from a public health discourse in favor of breastfeeding, it is still an object of disgust (Cox et al. 2007). Many of those who find a glass of cow’s milk appetizing are repulsed by the idea of tasting, or even touching, human milk (Cohen 2017b). The offensive nature of human milk surfaces in everyday life with objects such as breast pads that “protect” against the embarrassment of leaking milk and baby bottle labels to avoid cross-­feeding in the context of day care. Familiar stories of caregivers’ lack of zeal (or outward refusal) to manipulating human milk and feeding it to children also reflect its ambivalent status. It is the gold standard of infant nutrition, yet at the same time treated as a vile bodily waste product on a par with menstrual blood, urine, saliva, mucus, or sweat. As psychologists Paul Rozin and April Fallon (1987: 28) argue, the human category of disgust is deeply connected to animals given that all animals or animal products are potentially disgusting to humans. Bodily fluids, particularly female-­coded fluids, may be perceived as disgusting because they remind us of our animalness, threatening our self-­perception as distinct from and superior to other animals. In sum, breastfeeding, especially gender-diverse breastfeeding, is subversive, disrupting dominant norms not only of gender, but perhaps also of species identity and hierarchy. What could men do instead? Men do not need to literally lactate or to breastfeed in the ways described in the case studies to participate in breastfeeding. There is now a substantial literature showing that men’s beliefs about lactation, breastfeeding, and gender roles color their interactions with the key people in their lives as well as with friends, colleagues, and strangers, thereby influencing infant feeding decisions around them (Bar-Yam and Darby 1997). Men (just like everyone else regardless of sex and gender) can support breastfeeders through a variety of behaviors, including offering encouragement and advice; participating in setting up, cleaning, and storing breast pumps, pump accessories, and expressed milk; bottle-­feeding babies with human milk; attending breastfeeding classes; supporting the resort to lactation consultants; doing more childcare and housework to compensate for the time breastfeeders spend nursing, including grocery shopping, cooking nutritious meals, and making sure breastfeeders are kept hydrated and comfortable during feeds; and moving to a more public arena, championing financial compensation for breastfeeders 157

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to make up for lost earnings; supporting breastfeeding and pumping in all spaces— whether coded as private, public, or work spaces; advocating for legal and social reform aiming at securing material and economic support for breastfeeders, including paid leaves, work place support, high-quality, subsidized childcare, affordable and competent lactation consultants, and the wide availability of gender-­neutral lactation rooms. If more widespread, these behaviors would contribute to making breastfeeding an activity that can be shared across sexes and genders and possibly beyond the family unit. In practice, however, communal and gender diverse breastfeeding is impeded, as I argue below, not only by social norms casting breastfeeding as a subordinated female task, but also by certain constructions of equal parenting. The dark side of male lactation There is a dark side to males’ involvement in lactation. Male-­dominated institutions and interest groups have had a long-­standing role in prescribing breastfeeding norms and practices in a way that typically benefits their interests, reinforcing gender dualisms and hierarchies. In what follows I discuss two examples drawn from male– female interactions, in which men hinder breastfeeding by treating female breasts as their own and by endorsing a view of co-­parenting that presents bottle-­feeding as the great equalizer. 1.  Breasts are for men  As Iris Marion Young (2005: 80) has emphasized, “male-­ dominated society tends not to think of a woman’s breast as hers. Woman is a natural territory; her breasts belong to others—her husband, her lover, her baby.” Female breasts are depicted as sexual objects for the pleasure of men rather than multidimensional body parts including nutritive, soothing, and sexual functions. According to anthropologist Kathy Dettwyler (1995), the limited view of the breast as a sexual appendage is so pervasive it has inhibited women’s ability to successfully breastfeed. Women and their partners worry, for example, that breastfeeding will make their breast ugly (Arora et al. 2000) or interfere with sex (Freed, Fraley, and Schanler 1992). At other times and places, men’s view of breasts as sources of nutrition for infants cuts the other way. In eighteenth-­century Europe and North America, the anti wet-­nursing movement was tied to male moralists and physicians’ take-­over of traditional female domains such as obstetrics and infant care, which resulted in the medicalization of women’s reproductive health, including lactation. A new medical and moral literature encouraged fathers to supervise closely infant feeding on the premise that left to their own devices, incompetent or vain women would endanger the welfare of their offspring (Schiebinger 1993: 407). Mothers were accused of sending out their children to be nursed by “mercenaries” so as to preserve their figure or not miss out on worldly pleasures. Wet nurses, typically recruited in the lowest rungs of the social and racial hierarchy— peasants, immigrants, and slaves—were vilified as indecent and dangerous creatures. Human milk came to be seen as the only “natural and most proper food for infants,” every child needing to be “suckled by its own mother” (Lindemann 1981: 381). This male 158

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control and the discourse that justified it constructed breastfeeding as a quintessentially womanly duty through which women could be policed and subordinated. This gendered and naturalist view remains alive today. The predominant assumption is that only “mothers” breastfeed, that is, only bio-­mothers who use their own milk to nurse their children, leaving out from breastfeeding advocacy and legal initiatives not only male, transgender, and non-­binary breastfeeders, but also cross-­nursers or those using donor human milk. 2.  Equal parenting  In contemporary times, men’s interest in egalitarian parenting can translate as less breastfeeding, rather than more. This is the case because formula is commended as allowing fathers to participate in infant feeding on an equal footing. Many a woman reports choosing formula from the beginning, or deciding to switch to formula “as an effort to share the labor of infant feeding” (Boswell-Penc and Boyer 2007: 561). Anthropologist Penny Van Esterik (1994) points out that the breast or bottle debate reveals contradictions inherent in feminist theory. From a feminist perspective, breastfeeding can be seen both as a form of empowerment and oppression for women— as asserting the value of women’s productive and reproductive work or as reinforcing the biological determinism feminism has sought to eschew. Reflecting this ambivalence, feminist research and advocacy has exhibited an oscillation between two poles. On the one hand, a maternalist orientation, sometimes using the language of difference feminism, identifies pregnancy and childcare as central themes of political fight for women. Liberation consists for women in empowering themselves as mothers with specific needs and interests, including breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is women’s particular embodied caregiving, which should be protected and promoted by requiring accommodations in the work place and in the family. Bottle-­feeding, in that view, is a chimera of gender equality, as it ignores women and children’s interests while furthering those of the market economy (Cohen 2017a, 2017b). Bottle-­feeding provides wealth and power to the men who control the dairy and baby food industries, perpetuating the traditional division of labor between men as producers and providers and women as reproducers economically and socially dependent on men. On the other hand, some strands of equality feminism focus on women’s self-­realization both within and outside the family, free of repronormativity, gender differences, and ideals of motherhood. A top priority on the equality feminist agenda in the family context is undifferentiated parenting. In as much as breastfeeding is seen as an aspect of maternal experience that is not shareable with men, it is repudiated as an ideological practice that maintains women’s subordination (Blum 1995). Both these discourses, however, contribute to maintaining the female gendering of breastfeeding in a way that excludes gender diverse parents and caregivers. If, as this chapter argues, breastfeeding can be ungendered, neither female breastfeeding nor bottle-­feeding should be seen as panaceas for women’s equality and empowerment. The road to equality lies in opening up breastfeeding (here understood as a social practice much broader than the biological fact of lactation) to all people regardless of sex or gender. 159

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Conclusion Mapping out different ways of thinking about lactation in a typology moving from the biological to the cultural, I have outlined some of the ways in which lactation and breastfeeding challenge sex, gender, sexual orientation, and species oppositions. To subvert the powerful female coding of lactation, a substantial part of the chapter focused on identifying “male” forms of lactation and breastfeeding—keeping in mind that actual cases of physiological male lactation are extremely rare, so far as we know. We certainly need many more studies to better understand lactation and breastfeeding in fields such as biology, medicine, zoology, anthropology, ethology, sociology, critical animal studies, gender studies, and other associated disciplines. The objective here was not to reinforce oppressive dualisms such as male/female, culture/nature, human/nonhuman, or hetero/ homosexual. Quite the reverse, my purpose is to suggest that lactation in animals, including humans, manifests itself as a phenomenon with a high degree of flexibility and variability and can be decoupled from breastfeeding, which encompasses a broader set of social practices of infant feeding.

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CHAPTER 9 “COW’S MILK IS FOR CALVES, BREASTMILK IS FOR BABIES.” ALFRED BOSWORTH’S RECONSTITUTED MILK AND THE WOMEN WHO INNOVATED INFANT FEEDING AMID AN AMERICAN HEALTH CRISIS Hannah Ryan

At the age of 77, Alfred W. Bosworth reflected on developing Similac half a century earlier: “It’s my only real contribution to the world.” He had come to be, as The Columbus Citizen put it, a “once-­renowned chemist living in obscurity,” with his contribution unknown to neighbors and colleagues (Brown 1956: 4B). How did a driven researcher, trained at Harvard and Yale, end up a high school chemistry teacher in small town Ohio? And while Similac is today a $1.5 billion global brand synonymous with formula, why did Bosworth distance himself from his crowning achievement? Early in his career, Bosworth studied the chemistry of milk and cheese, and in particular their chemical and bacterial makeup, at the New York Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, New York. According to The Citizen, Bosworth was “living in a house where two babies were experiencing intestinal trouble,” and were “fed modified cow’s milk” (Brown 1956: 4B). The papers of his son from many years later reveal that Bosworth married and had two children while in Geneva; the two children he “lived with” were likely his own. He noticed that the babies only experienced intestinal distress when fed cow’s milk; on breastmilk, they were quite healthy. As a milk researcher, bacteriologist, and father of two small children, Bosworth was in a unique position to address infant feeding. He realized that the composition of cow’s milk was meant to support the growth of calves, and thus contained much more calcium than a human infant needed or could handle. In order to explore human ingestion of milk further, he left Geneva to attend Harvard Medical School, where he received an M.A. in 1913, successfully eliminating components of cow’s milk that made it difficult to digest for children, and later studied physiological chemistry at Yale. He returned briefly to Geneva, but he soon left his work on cheese, and his first family, permanently. Histories of infant feeding are full of innovating male scientists; this is not one of them. I investigate Bosworth because ultimately, as I shall explain, he elects to extricate himself from the history of formula (as it came to be known) as his invention became corporatized. Although it resembled breastmilk in composition, the way in which it was commoditized to replace breastmilk, which he revered, was unthinkable. Further,

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Bosworth serves as a conduit to access little-known histories of maternal and affective labor: mothers who donated and sold their breastmilk, nurses who collected and administered it to infants, and women who served as wet nurses during a health crisis of staggeringly high infant mortality. Thus, through Bosworth, this is a story of maternal labor, which traditionally goes unacknowledged, unseen, and unpaid.

A living laboratory Endeavoring to render the chemical composition of cow’s milk to be like that of human milk, Bosworth turned his attention to the Boston Floating Hospital (Figure  9.1), effectively creating a living laboratory for his research. A barge that traversed the Boston Harbor, the Floating Hospital enabled doctors and nurses to care for around 300 ailing young children and infants. It originated as a pleasure cruise for sick children, but as the children, removed from the heat and filth of the city, thrived in the unique atmosphere of sunshine, fresh air, progressive medicine, and compassionate care, it became first a hospital and then a teaching hospital specialized in pediatrics. The Floating Hospital responded to what was known as “Summer Complaint,” infant mortality spiking during the summer months in Boston, attributed to heat, humidity, improper bottle feeding, and bacterial contamination of cow’s milk, culminating in severe gastro-­intestinal

Figure 9.1  The Boston Floating Hospital. Digital Collections and Archives, date unknown, Tufts University. 162

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distress and four times more infant mortality than in the other seasons. The medical community pushed for increased breastfeeding and clamored for safer alternatives to breastmilk (Cone 1976: 80); many innovations in these areas took place aboard the Floating Hospital. Milk was central to the hospital’s mission. In observing the various illnesses on board, doctors, chemists, and bacteriologists had the opportunity to calibrate variations of milk to treat various sicknesses. By 1913, each infant was first “examined for the bacteriology of his or her digestive tract and many cases of intestinal infection without symptoms were greatly benefited by early diagnosis and treatment,” as reported by resident physician Robert B. Hunt. During the early part of the twentieth century, the Floating Hospital amassed the “largest masses of data in existence on infant feeding and the medical results . . . our success in the collection and use of breastmilk (is) a marked advance in the treatment of the digestive tract in children” (Boston Floating Hospital 1913: 7). Bosworth rented a small laboratory nearby and experimented with breaking down the various components of milk. Eventually, he succeeded in separating the cream, evaporating its water content, and adding acid to the skim milk to isolate the casein; to preserve the whey, he added lime and milk sugar after the milk was strained, and added olive oil to increase the fat content. He then developed a machine he dubbed “The Iron Cow,” which applied pressure to the substance to break up the fats, mixing it twice to ensure heightened digestibility, and removed excess calcium quite accidentally by letting it rest overnight (Brown 1956: 4B). Finally, his reconstituted milk resembled breastmilk. Under physicians’ supervision, Bosworth tested his formula on a selection of ailing infants and they showed marked improvement, generating significant enthusiasm. Two substantial onshore laboratories were dedicated to his new research, through which he furthered his study to develop a powdered version of his formula for increased shelf-­life (Boston Floating Hospital 1919: 7). One of the lead physicians, Dr. Bowditch, expounded in the report, “Our laboratories have so far solved the milk problems which have been under study for some years as to put us in possession of the best substitute for breastmilk so all-­important in infant feeding.” Not inconsequentially, it was cost effective at a mere fifteen cents per quart, in comparison to breastmilk, which could be purchased in Boston for around $32 a quart (Boston Floating Hospital 1919: 8–9). But the enthusiasm was not to last, and in 1921, under hazy circumstances and heated correspondence with other chemists in Bosworth’s labs, the Trustees no longer “felt justified to stretch the hospital’s resources in support of Bosworth’s work.” In 1922 the patents were relinquished for the public good. Bosworth left for Kellogg, then Moores and Ross Milk and Ice Cream (later called R & M Laboratories), which invested $300,000 to reinvigorate Bosworth’s quest for a breastmilk substitute, and to produce it in large quantities. Bosworth updated the formula: “Fresh skim milk (casein modified) with added lactose, salts, milk fat and vegetable and cod liver oil.” First called Franklin Infant Food, for the street on which it was manufactured in Columbus, it was later named 163

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Similac, as suggested by Dr. Morris Fishbein, the president of the American Medical Association (AMA) and the firm’s sales manager, to showcase its resemblance to breastmilk (Runders 1968: 4–5).1

Affective labor Very few women’s names appear in the records, yet these innovations were made possible by women: their bodies, breastmilk, and labor, and in organizing complex milk collection and distribution systems. In order to care for 300 infants aboard the Floating Hospital, Head Nurse Martha H. Stark implemented an intricate and vast network to collect breastmilk from women around Boston. According to a 1921 feature in The Boston Sunday Advertiser (see Figure 9.7), she coordinated a “corps of nurses” to “call at chosen homes, rich and poor, of Greater Boston and collect a few quarts of human milk to save the lives of poor and sickly babies whose only hope for life rests in this extraordinary feat of charity. ‘You would be surprised,’ said G. Loring Briggs, manager of the hospital, ‘how much a few ounces of mother’s milk can do to enable a sick child to assimilate nourishment’ ” (Bowman 1921: 7–8). Stark’s system began with combing public birth records and contacting new mothers of healthy babies, asking them to express milk, screening the milk, and paying the mothers $1 per quart—though some mothers insisted on donating their milk, in some cases to thank the hospital for rehabilitating infants. In any case, the act of expressing milk for other infants was heralded as a virtuous one. Nurses then administered the milk to the infants on the ship deck, noting the combination of breastmilk and fresh air helped the ailing infants to thrive (Bowman 1921: 7–8). While the women have scant presence in the archive and textual history, these women do appear in the visual record, and some photographs of the ship deck particularly underscore the importance of their work and how they nursed the infants back to health. Theoretically, a visual investigation of affective, maternal labor relies upon foundational texts on domestic labor by Anne McClintock and infant feeding as labor in art history by Linda Nochlin. McClintock (1995: 48) astutely defines domestic workers as women on the “imperial divide,”“boundary markers and mediators like nurses, nannies, governesses, prostitutes, and servants.” I argue that wet nurses and milk donors powerfully embody the boundary marker as well. This type of feminized labor can be described in terms of affective labor in how it is valued for its immaterial product, over a material good that enters the marketplace. Michael Hardt situates affective labor as a form of immaterial labor and argues, “Given the role of affective labor as one of the strongest links in the chain of capitalist postmodernization, its potential for subversion and autonomous constitution is all the greater” (Hardt 1999: 93). It is in that spirit that I invoke the idea of affective labor here, to activate the many women whose work supported infant feeding in a surprising variety of ways. To do so is to subvert the dominant perspective that privileges a patriarchal history of individual men helming scientific and corporate innovations. I 164

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situate these female laborers who worked to innovate, to care for, and to feed infants as affective, and also among what Robert Reich considers “symbolic-­analytical services,” such as “problem-­solving, problem-­identifying, and strategic brokering activities” (Reich 1992: 177). Reich recognizes symbolic-­analytical services as the most valuable in a post-­industrialized economy; certainly women who care for babies have not been recognized within this framework, but I argue that they should be, particularly through the complex system of collecting, screening, and administering breastmilk.2 Hardt (1999: 95) emphasizes affective labor as one of human contact and interaction, labor that connects people, citing health services as relying “centrally on caring and affective labor.” “Affective labor,” he writes, “is better understood by beginning from what feminist analyses of ‘women’s work’ have called ‘labor in the bodily mode.’ Caring labor is certainly entirely immersed in the corporeal, the somatic, but the affects it produces are nonetheless immaterial. What affective labor produces are social networks, forms of community . . .” (Hardt 1999: 96). Yet the labor discussed here is not entirely immaterial; through their corporeal work, valued substances, and valuable commodities are produced: breastmilk and breastmilk alternatives. In collectively and individually producing these substances, they also create what Hardt (1999: 99) denotes as biopower: “the power of the creation of life.” The female workers who fed and cared for infants, and in doing so made the development of breastmilk alternatives possible, are largely neglected in archival data, but they appear visually. Reading these early photographs of the women aboard the Floating Hospital ship deck as affective laborers, in concert with extant data, can nuance our understandings of their work and the vital roles they played. In a 1920 photograph (see Figure 9.2), a young nurse holds two newborns, one in each arm. In her crisp, white uniform, she is seated against the wooden wall of the barge’s infant ward. Her embrace is protective, as she gazes down upon her sleeping charge, swaddled in a white blanket. Her second charge looks past the photographer, perhaps toward the noises and light of the harbor outside. It is a peaceful scene in which this capable nurse has cared for and calmed the babies. An annual report for the hospital underscores the difficult work of the nurses: “Few realize the constant attention, the harassing character of the many small details, the infinite amount of patience that must be part of the nursing of very sick infants. Most of the nurses seriously felt the effect of our short season but harmony and efficiency has characterized the work of the nurses this year as heretofore” (Boston Floating Hospital 1901: 7). An element of this affective labor, beyond caring for the infants, was to maintain an atmosphere of harmony and efficiency, as demonstrated visually in this image. In Western art, affective laborers like laundresses and prostitutes are rendered frequently in French Impressionism; Nochlin (1988: 235) identifies their commoditized bodies and labor disguised as pleasure. Mothers, unpaid and their work understood as “a natural function” were excluded from this visual category of laborers, but were nonetheless also depicted undertaking their work with pleasure. This inversion of feminine labor is evident too in the photograph of the nurse aboard the Floating Hospital. 165

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Figure 9.2  Nurse holding two babies, T.E. Marr and Son, 1920. Digital Collections and Archives, Tufts University.

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Figure 9.3  Toddlers on the Boston Floating Hospital ship’s sundeck, 1920. Digital Collections and Archives, Tufts University.

By 1914, the Floating Hospital was a teaching hospital, training doctors and nurses in pediatrics, specializing in the care of premature and sick babies. Notes from one such nursing student, Celia Frances Bartey, reveal that maintaining a sense of calm, in all of the senses, was critical to the pedagogy. They held swaddled babies and prepared temperature-­controlled beds, shielding them from bright lights and loud noises. Recognizing breastmilk as critical for premature and ailing infants, if the mother could not breastfeed or was deceased, the staff worked to secure a wet nurse, first reaching out to family members. Nurses were trained to facilitate breastfeeding for mothers and wet nurses alike; they were trained to assist in expressing breastmilk and feeding it to infants through a variety of vessels. They were also trained to support mothers emotionally during a stressful time, again underscoring the component of affective labor that regulates emotions. Babies were meant to enjoy their time aboard the ship, encouraged to take in the sights and sounds of the harbor, to get fresh air and sunshine and play together (Prinz and Van Schaik 2014: 56–8), as seen in the cheerful image from 1920 (Figure 9.3), in which naked toddlers pull up on a railing to take in the view. A 1906 photograph (Figure 9.4) captures the interaction between mothers and nurses, as babies are checked in before coming onboard the barge. Two nurses, clearly identifiable in white, amiably await their charges, both smiling. A young mother in the background stands on deck, holding her baby and patiently waiting her turn to board and check in at the table, managed by a doctor and nurse. The ship is clean and orderly; the nurses are well groomed, confident, and compassionate. As the baby crosses the threshold, she transitions from one maternal caregiver to another, mother to nurse.3 One such child peeks into the bottom-­left corner of the image, already comfortable in the arms of a nurse, blurry from motion as she’s swept aboard. The nurses were trained to treat a wide variety of illnesses that impacted Boston children: measles, diphtheria, polio, scarlet fever, cleft palate, spina bifida, clubbed foot, syphilis, impetigo, and eczema, and to assist in many types of surgery, such as umbilical hernias, femoral hernias, and appendicitis. A cohort of twenty-five to fifty nurses was employed each season, working together on the ship during the day and 167

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Figure 9.4  Boston Floating Hospital ship: check-­in time for mothers and babies before coming on board, T.E. Marr & Son, 1906. Digital Collections and Archives, Tufts University.

living together in a boarding house, the Maverick House. This arrangement continued until 1931, when the hospital was effectively grounded and the institution moved to 20 Ash Street in Boston. A 1906 photograph (see Figure  9.5) of the Floating Hospital captures the nurses hard at work. A dozen or so cribs are arranged around the periphery of the room, with the head nurse seated in the center, devoted to her managerial duties. Freshly cut flowers decorate the desk. Two nurses, identifiable by their hats and crisp, long pinafores, tend to infants. In the foreground, a young nurse bends to view her charge, lifting mosquito netting to rearrange the blanket. Sunlight streams through the windows, and along with the sea breeze, is carefully controlled with curtains and windows. Uniform patient charts are attached to each crib, to record the care of each infant. The linens are clean and crisp, holding the infants tightly. All is ordered and calm, the picture of rehabilitation. As the barge gently moved throughout the harbor, the head nurse organized and implemented a system to collect milk from donors, ensuring these sick infants could get the breastmilk they needed to survive and thrive. In the onshore milk lab, scientists studied the breastmilk, to which they gained unprecedented access. 168

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Figure 9.5  Boston Floating Hospital ship: nurses tending to babies, T.E. Marr and Son, 1906. Digital Collections and Archives, Tufts University.

Dual purpose The milk collection system provided Bosworth with samples critical to his endeavor to replicate breastmilk. Each day, as the fresh milk came from around Boston to the pier, he collected samples, while the rest went out to the babies on the Floating Hospital (Figure  9.6). Taking them to his onshore laboratory, he analyzed the breastmilk and worked toward rendering cow’s milk more like it, explaining, “Cow’s milk is different in character from human milk. The calf doubles its size in the first year of life; the child’s growth is much slower. Cow’s milk, therefore, has a large proportion of calcium to give the young calf bone and tissue rapidly. This, the baby cannot assimilate well in infancy. I am beginning to believe that 50 percent of bottle-­fed baby trouble is due to the calcium in cow’s milk. Now, by studying and analysing the food the child has eaten, we can determine what elements the infant’s stomach absorbed as nourishment, and what elements it threw off as poison . . . by our analyses we hope to eliminate these harmful elements in cow’s milk so that it will be proper food for all babies” (Bowman 1921: 7–8). During this time, Bosworth remarried and had two more children. Decades later, his son Orley remembered his father’s persistent insistence, “Milk is nature’s food. Cow’s 169

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Figure 9.6  Boston Floating Hospital ship: bottling of mother’s milk. T.E. Marr and Son, 1906. Digital Collections and Archives, Tufts University.

milk is for calves, breastmilk is for babies . . . any manmade substitute for breastmilk may never be a completely satisfactory substitute. Therefore, the makers of any substitute for breastmilk must be eternally vigilant with continued research. Where man plays with God’s work, he must be very careful” (Bosworth n.d.). Bosworth clearly understood the weight of his project, and time and time again insisted that what he labored to create was not a substitute for breastmilk; rather, he attempted to render cow’s milk to be as similar to breastmilk as possible. Indeed, what he first considered “reconstituted milk” was later called Similac, simi for similar and lac for milk. Bosworth never intended to replace breastmilk. It is clear that he held great reverence for the substance, especially as a bacteriologist; he understood the power of bacteria in breastmilk to gut health. It could be said that in reconstituting the chemical composition of cow’s milk, he endeavored to 170

“Cow’s Milk is for Calves, Breastmilk is for Babies.”

Figure 9.7  The Boston Sunday Advertiser, March 20, 1921. Alfred Bosworth Papers, #22-2-3998. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

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create breastmilk. It is no wonder, then, that he considered it “playing with God’s work.” In his report to the Academy of Pediatrics, Bosworth wrote, “Breast milk, without question, is the best food for the infant and any artificial food used in its place must furnish, as nearly as possible, the same food constituents. In order to make comparisons, the following analyses of normal breast milks are given. These milks were collected and analysed by the author and the samples were obtained by completely emptying both breasts. The mothers, in each case, were successfully nursing their children which were developing in a normal manner” (Bosworth 1921: 5). Examining the fat and calorie content of breastmilk from mothers whose children thrived, he notes “Cow’s milk is nature’s food for the offspring of the cow and is not properly balanced as a food for infants. It must therefore undergo some form of modification before it can be used for infant feeding. The most common modifications consist of dilution with water and the addition of carbohydrates.” He goes on to discuss the specific adjustments that can be made to cow’s milk to emulate breastmilk and concludes, “It seems strange that there is no published clinical data upon the subject to be found in American medical journals. The author hopes, however, to be able to accumulate such data for publication in a future paper” (Bosworth 1921: 14). In Bosworth’s meticulous and expansive archives, the report is followed by much enthusiastic correspondence from institutions throughout the US and Canada, hoping to learn more about his reconstituted milk. Fervor The enthusiastic institutional and corporate response was matched by that of families in desperate need of milk substitute. Bosworth’s archives are haunted by letters from mothers, fathers, and grandparents of infants who were unable to nurse, had lost their mothers in childbirth, or did not thrive on breastmilk. Most are written by advocates for the mothers, on behalf of them. As an art historian, I approach these letters not just for their textual content, but as visual objects that through their esthetic elements underscore the desperation for a viable alternative to breastmilk. Doing so further accentuates Bosworth’s drive to create something like breastmilk as the healthiest option for distressed babies; this alternative was not meant to be a replacement. This visualized desperation is perhaps best exemplified by a long, handwritten letter from a grandmother frantic to obtain samples of the “reconstituted milk” she heard about for her daughter (Figure 9.8). With its sweeping cursive script tumbling and arcing to the bottom right corner of four pages, she asks for help with urgency, the long lines of script visually emulating the despair for her daughter and granddaughter, and the hope that this miraculous invention elicits in her. She details the problems, underlining important words and phrases such as premature, explicit directions, and mother’s milk. A century has weathered the pages slightly, discoloring the edges, but the delicate sheets have been meticulously stored; Bosworth clearly understood the fervor for his reconstituted milk was important to document. It is a visual plea. And it is one of hundreds of such letters in the archive. It reads: 172

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Berlin New Hampshire, March 28, 1921. Dear Sir, I am much interested in the mother’s milk manufactured or prepared by you and hope you will kindly write me how to obtain this milk for my daughter who lives in Mexico Maine, a country town near Rumsford Falls Maine. My daughter lost a little baby daughter last December, it was one year old and had always been sickly as she was unable to nurse her baby as she is a woman of 40 had not given birth to a living child for 20 years when this little one came. She had a daughter nearly 21 years of age, and she done her best to keep this little one, but it was never strong seemed to grow tall and more and more spiritual looking . . . she seemed to us all but when her teeth came she could not bear the pain and slight fever that comes with teething and in four days she was gone, having cut 9 teeth all at once it seemed and as this child was at first fed on Mellens food then cow’s milk modified but given with a little lime water as usual and I have wondered after reading about your milk if that extra lime water added to the . . . was perhaps the cause of her death. I am very anxious to learn all I can about your mother’s milk which I know must be very near like the real mother’s milk, and as my daughter has another little baby daughter now, is sick and nervous herself from caring for the first child that was so sickly and from grieving so about losing her, when she had reached an age that was so interesting, I am anxious to have her try your mother’s milk as I fear when hot weather comes on she may lose this baby, and if she does I fear the poor mother will not live herself for her age (41 now) is a critical age for women anyway, and her heart seems set upon these little ones which she says will be the children of her old age meaning that they will brighten her life in old age she fondly hopes. Now I have written this long confidential letter to try to interest you in a mother who has lost several children by premature birth and who fairly worships children and whose husband is fond of children as his wife is, both were heartbroken over the loss of the little sickly baby, and when another came to them I knew it was a godsend to both, and now Mr. Bosworth I do hope you will send this milk to them with explicit directions so the mother can use this safe good milk instead of cow’s milk which she wrote me she thought she must try soon for her baby as she has been advised not to feed condensed milk any longer, this baby girl is over 2 months old now seems strong and well is fat perhaps too fat for I believe condensed milk fattens babies more than any other artificial baby food and I would like to have this milk you prepare the mother’s milk. If you will send it to my daughter, please let me know as soon as you receive this letter if you will send this milk to my daughter, if you will I will gladly pay you for all baby needs weekly as I suppose it must be sent fresh each week please write me if this child can have this milk regularly this coming summer and as my daughter is the wife of a poor man who is at present out of work on account of the closing down of the large paper mills at Rumford Falls Maine, I will gladly pay you for this milk myself rather than have this little one fed on cow’s milk as the other was. I am a poor woman myself a working man’s wife myself but as my own husband has employment I can assure you of reimbursement for this wonderful baby food, kindly write me at length about this milk and the juice as I hope it will save the life of a sweet little baby 173

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Figure 9.8  Letter to Alfred Bosworth from Mrs. Peter Anderson, Berlin, New Hampshire, March 28, 1921. Alfred Bosworth Papers, #22-2-3998. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

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girls and perhaps her mother as well. From an anxious grandmother. Address. Mrs. Pete Anderson, 589 Burgess Street, Berlin, New Hampshire This letter, like many others, positions breastmilk, and Bosworth’s substitute, as not just nutritious or healthy, but as actively healing. The medicinal nature of breastmilk is another primary way in which it can be posited against cow’s milk in the letters of request. In March 1921, having read about Bosworth’s milk in The Boston Sunday Advertiser, a Mr. Stephen V. Carroll of Fall River, Massachusetts, typed a lengthy request for a sample. To preface his plea, he detailed his circumstances: in spite of his wife being a “large strong healthy woman,” she unfortunately had a “small pelvis, and had to undergo a ‘Caesarian operation’ in order to bring my baby into this world alive.” Because she underwent the arduous operation, she was unable to establish breastfeeding with her infant, and though they tried Horlick’s Malted Milk, baby foods, and even water, the baby was unable to digest any of it successfully, resulting in stomach pain. “He gets crying spells frequently of every twenty of thirty minutes, even the water (warm) that he gets which is given to him between every feeding. If you could only see your way clear to send me some of your ‘Mother’s Milk’ so I could try it on my baby, You would be doing me a great favor. For if it did so much for the others it ought to accomplish a great deal for my baby.” In this case, Bosworth’s reconstituted milk is aligned with, even conflated with, breastmilk as a medicinal cure for indigestion—and posited against cow’s milk, in the form of Horlick’s Malted Milk, which is made from evaporated cow’s milk plus milled malted barley and wheat flour. This paradigm reinforces the idea that Bosworth’s reconstituted milk was created as, and perceived to be similar to, breastmilk in its medicinal properties, which cow’s milk lacked, for human infants. The influx of letters at this time reflects the publicity Bosworth’s reconstituted milk received, including The Boston Sunday Advertiser feature titled “Mother’s Milk Made By Machine: Problem of the Ages Solved by a Boston Chemist; Cow’s Milk ‘Cracked’ and Put together without the Harmful Salts” (Bowman 1921: 7–8). The headline alone underscores the notion that Bosworth had created breastmilk, not a substitute for it. To do so, he fixed the problems of cow’s milk. Indeed, the article elicited much hope for desperate families, like the Davis family of Willimantic, Connecticut: 95 Crescent Street Willimantic, Conn. March – 23 – [19]21 Dear Sir, I have read the article about the machine made milk which you claim is as good as mother’s milk. I do not expect to get any of that milk, but if I could I will be very glad to have it for my baby. He is four weeks old and is being fed on cow’s milk, for I am not able to nurse him. So there is nothing else to give him but cow’s milk and that isn’t any too good. And the baby does not gain hardly any weight at all since he was born, for he is not feeling well. 175

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So if I can get any of your milk, I would be glad to have you write and let me know the cost and if I could get it regularly every week. So, hoping to get answers from you soon. I remain,   Yours truly,    Mrs. Peter S. Davis P.S. I do not know to whom I should write about this so am writing to you personally. Bosworth promptly responded: 3/26/21 My dear Mrs. Davis: Your letter of March 23rd is received and I have sent same to the Manager of the hospital who will give you further information about the milk. Trusting that you may hear from him very soon, I am   Very truly yours,      AWB-M One year later, amid increasing fervor for his product, Bosworth dedicated the patent for reconstituted milk to public use. Detractors and competitors Not everyone was thrilled with Bosworth. The laboratory director of the Floating Hospital took issue with the process through which the reconstituted milk was created, and in particular, the claim that it was as good as breastmilk. Additionally, he felt he deserved more credit for its development, as the director of the lab. He wrote to the Board of Trustees, As a scientific investigator I cannot stand back of [behind] this reconstructed milk which I have invented [my emphasis] until I have more accurate data than has been collected in connection with the 129 cases so far studied. In this connection I might say that the data collected this year in connection with our studies of breast fed metabolism is to give the accurate scientific data necessary to supplement the purely clinical observations required to determine the value of this reconstructed milk as a food. He goes on to protest how the Trustees demanded it to be developed quickly and without regard for its nutrition. Concurrently, a visiting physician at the Floating Hospital, Dr. Paul Emerson, positioned dehydrated and canned breastmilk from donors as superior to Bosworth’s reconstructed milk. He was credited with perfecting the technique of “powdering” 176

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breastmilk, and in 1922 described the societal need for such a substance in the Journal of the American Medical Association: When we consider the high value of human milk in the feeding of infants, especially those who are losing weight steadily on artificial feeding, it is strange that there have not been more attempts to preserve it. In cases in which the mother’s milk has failed, wet nurses can be employed by the well-­to-do; but wet nurses are trouble makers, and perhaps it is just as well that the number is limited. In Boston either wet nurses or human milk are obtainable at the Directory for Wetnurses, and this institution is of the greatest value. Such drawn breastmilk must be necessarily used within a very few hours’ time. This method, therefore, is open to the objection that, in addition to its being expensive, the supply is inelastic. Ordinarily, human milk, when needed, is obtained only with difficulty and after delay, and even then the supply is often maintained with much inconvenience. The source of supply seems always to be on the far side of the city, and any trifle, such as the state of the mother’s feelings, may be enough to cause her to refuse quite suddenly to sell any more milk. At times, on the other hand, a mother has more than enough milk for her new baby and asks her physician whether he does not know of some baby who would be benefited by it. Frequently he can find no baby who needs it, for at that moment all his feeding cases are doing well. Emerson 1922: 641 In addition to the Directory of Wetnurses, the Massachusetts Infant Asylum (MIA), heralded for its very low infant mortality rate, served as a hospital for ailing infants and employed wet nurses to feed them. The MIA’s methods were so successful that they were displayed at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. MIA staff visually chronicled the great strides infants gained through breastfeeding. One such image in the 1912 MIA annual report (Figure  9.9) juxtaposes two photographs of the same baby, the first when he was admitted, clearly malnourished and ailing, and the second, a bright-­eyed, rosy-­cheeked boy after “Six weeks in Hospital and eight weeks at board.” Once infants had been nursed back to relative health, they were secured foster homes to complete their rehabilitation. In another image (see Figure 9.10) from the annual report, nurses and their charges enjoy the outdoor pavilion at MIA. Here, like at the Floating Hospital, a combination of breastmilk, sanitary spaces, and fresh air was prioritized. While wet nurses took on this role in order to support themselves and their families, it was often at the expense of their own infants, as these primarily young and unmarried women faced the unimaginable decision to abandon their own babies to nurse others. The system created a dynamic in which breastmilk went to those who could afford it. To remedy this situation that unjustly harmed less privileged infants, the MIA began to allow wet nurses to live there with their own babies, nursing both their own babies and their charges. Matron Reports reveal that when a mother came to the MIA with a baby, it was determined whether or not she would make a suitable wet nurse. If so, she could 177

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Figure 9.9 Photographs from the 1912 MIA Annual Report: “Top – William B. when admitted,” and “Bottom – William B. When Discharged: Six weeks in Hospital and eight weeks at board,” UM ass Boston Archives. Courtesy of the University Archives & Special Collections Department, Joseph P. Healey Library, University of Massachusetts Boston: Massachusetts Infant Asylum records, 1868–1916. 178

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Figure 9.10  MIA Annual Report 1909, the Outdoor Pavilion, wet nurses and charges. Archives of UMass Boston. Courtesy of the University Archives & Special Collections Department, Joseph P. Healey Library, University of Massachusetts Boston: Massachusetts Infant Asylum records, 1868–1916.

stay with her baby and work as a wet nurse, and if not, she was sent away. Initially, when the wet nurses and their babies were given housing, their wages were halted (with the institution stating that the housing for mother and infant should be enough compensation); the wet nurses pushed for both accommodations and wages, and these were eventually granted. The Matron Reports also reveal that increased infant survival relied upon a full staff of wet nurses. One report reads, “We have kept a full supply of wet nurses so that every baby who could be made to nurse has had that privilege of some kind . . . Two wet nurses have been discharged this month, each with her child, and two others have come in” (Massachusetts Infant Asylum 1873). The Matron Reports unemotionally recount adoptions, deaths, some interesting moments in a unique social space, such as: “One nurse ran away at night and left her baby, but while we were trying to decide what to do with the baby, she returned and took him away” (Massachusetts Infant Asylum 1884). In another case, a former wet nurse returned to the MIA quite ill, and although she was unable to work, was allowed to stay and recover (Massachusetts Infant Asylum 1885). Each report includes attendance data: the number of infants and wet nurses living there, and the number of children boarded out. Each report concludes with the following lists: Admitted, Discharged, Adopted, and Died. Although the children’s names are listed, the wet nurses go nameless, this type of labor remaining unacknowledged yet again. 179

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Because the reports indicate that each month approximately three babies were admitted with their mothers who worked as wet nurses, and the majority of the admitted children have Irish surnames (Sullivan, Costello, Corcoran, etc.), it is likely that many of the wet nurses were Irish as well. Given the timeframe, coinciding with massive Irish emigration to Boston in the wake of the Potato Famine, it is poignant to consider the starving body employed to feed others, and that Irish nurses sold their milk to house themselves and their infants. Discrimination against Irish immigrants was rampant and extended to lactation industries, with red-­haired wet nurses coded as dangerous, able to contaminate their charges with wildness. Newspaper advertisements in Boston at the time emphasize “Protestant” as a desirable characteristic, subtly marking non-Irish milk as more desirable and thus valuable (The Boston Daily Atlas 1854). Information about the wet nurses is hard to come by, beyond a general description of troublemakers in need of moral reformation. Because the MIA largely employed young, unwed mothers, a secondary goal emerged: the moral reformation of the mothers, connoted as “wild” (Golden 1988). In the visual record of Europe and America in the early twentieth century, the wet nurse is portrayed as a dangerous figure in need of vigorous supervision. McClintock positions wet nurses as boundary markers in that they were both closely regulated and highly suspect—the fear of contamination was very real in the case of wet nurses, and their diet and manner monitored so as only to pass on favorable characteristics to the vulnerable infants. Through these domestic workers, McClintock (1995: 96) articulates a doubling of class within the domestic sphere, of the waged domestic worker and unwaged mother. This mirroring is perhaps nowhere more palpably rendered than in Berthe Morisot’s 1879 painting Wet Nurse and Julie, which Nochlin (1988: 231) hails as extraordinarily unique: “a woman painting another woman nursing her baby.” Two women face each other while engaging in labor and “a product is being created for a market, for profit” (Nochlin 1988: 233). Morisot produces a painting, while the nurse produces milk, and further, it could be said that the nurse produces milk so that Morisot can produce the painting. It is thus also a painting about the limitations of late nineteenthcentury women, in that the roles of mothers and painters were understood to be mutually exclusive, and through the laboring body, Morisot transgresses these societal boundaries. It is also a painting about separation, in that wet nurses such as this one were necessarily separated from their own children in order to care for those of upper classes. This sense of separation and a stripping of maternal identity are underscored by the wet nurse going nameless and her face obscured, while the infant is named and fully articulated. Nochlin positions this painting among other turn-­of-the-­century scenes of labor and, revolutionarily, the wet nurse as a worker. Within this genre, labor was most often rendered as the activity of rural men, reflecting the agricultural work and national identity of France at the time. Nochlin (1988: 233) notes that when women appear in these paintings of agricultural labor, they do not represent the productive labor of their male counterparts, but rather a mode of labor that assures survival and nurtures their young. Nochlin underscores the wet nurse as an anomaly, in that she sells her body (and a product of her body) for both profit and “the satisfaction of her client, but unlike a 180

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prostitute, she sells her body for a virtuous cause.” She functions as both a mother figure and an employee, and performs what is understood as her body’s natural function, as her occupation. The wet nurse is a threshold figure; one that bridges and transgresses highly regulated spheres. As wet nursing declined, scientists increasingly understood the value of breastmilk, and the challenge remained: how to get the substance to infants who needed it. Physician and bacteriologist Francis Parkman Denny held positions at both the MIA and the Boston Floating Hospital, and believed that the bacterial composition of breastmilk was so beneficial to infants that “even a small amount would benefit them greatly,” prescribing as little as a few ounces a day and recording notable improvements in health of previously ailing infants (Golden 1988: 590). Recognizing the social troubles of wet nursing and the danger to infants, he developed a system of collecting breastmilk, later known as “the Denny Plan,” and was implemented through the Floating Hospital, led by Nurse Martha H. Stark. Emerson describes the system of collecting milk via the Floating Hospital, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in 1922: For many years the Boston Floating Hospital, through its onshore nursing staff, headed by Miss Martha H. Stark, with the cooperation of the Lying-In Hospitals and obstetricians, has collected human milk daily in the mothers’ homes. In the summer of 1915, in the eighty days in which the Floating Hospital accepted feeding cases, 368½ quarts (358.7 liters) of human milk were thus collected. A complete social and medical history of the mother is first obtained and a blood Wassermann test done (this was occasionally omitted at first if the mother’s physical examination as done by a physician was negative and her baby obviously thriving, but since 1918 every case has had the Wassermann examination). The mother is instructed in the care of her breasts, and in the method of obtaining the milk in a cleanly fashion. She is provided with a breast-­pump or taught the technique of manual expression as used by Sedgwick and each day sterile bottles are brought to her. As she fills a bottle it is placed on ice. When the mother does not possess an icebox she is shown how to construct one cheaply, large enough to hold several 8 ounce (236 cubic centimeter) nursing bottles. Much of this milk is contributed gratis by the mothers. Occasional instances of diluting the milk with water were found at first, and had to be summarily dealt with; but after twelve years of experience with the same nurse to supervise the collection, we have found this factor practically negligible. The nurse carries an ice-­cap filled with ice in her bag in this way keeping the milk cool while taking it to a convenient drug store, where the clerk obligingly places it on ice while she goes out to collect more. When ready to return, she gathers her collection and carries it directly to the hospital, where all the milk is mixed, pasteurized, and placed in the refrigerator. JAMA 1922: 642 Milk collection in Boston was inherently seasonal due to weather, stockpiling in the summer and dwindling through fall and winter. The treacherous conditions of harsh 181

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winters in the Northeast made milk collection difficult. For that reason, Emerson endeavored to create a process to “powder” the human milk so that it could be used throughout the year, citing Bosworth’s success in drying human milk, and Emerson’s successful attempts to feed infants dried cow’s milk as well. The primary challenge, he noted, was “drying enough human milk so that its value as a food can be determined” (Emerson 1922: 642). Additionally, the process was slow, and milk compromised by contamination. Obtaining enough human milk to create a commercial operation was not surprisingly the primary barrier, yet Emerson forged ahead, exploring two options to preserve human milk: . . . evaporating milk and adding sugar as a preservative thus making a human condensed milk, [which ultimately] was not considered practicable by Mr. Bosworth. The second method, of preserving the fat alone, and homogenizing it with cow’s skim milk, we were let to try after reading Finkelstein’s experiment. Mr. Bosworth prepared a 12 percent fat from human milk. By combining this with cow’s skim milk, and adding lactose, we obtained a milk which had the formula: fat 3 per cent; sugar 7 per cent; protein 1 per cent. Emerson 1922: 642 This formula is tested with success on a seven-­week-old baby, who gained weight and increased his overall health. Emerson concludes: Human milk fat can be preserved at least a month. When combined with cow’s skim milk and fed to a baby for a short period of time, we may expect a gain in weight equivalent to that obtained with whole breast milk, as shown by the case cited. Such milk might be used to advantage with babies who have intolerance for cow’s milk fat, but the milk preserved in this way is expensive and difficult to prepare. Drying human milk, we feel, is more feasible and much less expensive. Emerson 1922 However, obtaining large quantities of human milk to process would ultimately render this option impossible. It was back to the drawing board. The Boston Floating Hospital’s method of collecting milk continued to thrive, as women were paid sixty cents a quart and screened to ensure they could feed their own babies as well as pump to sell their milk. Their health was scrutinized, as well as their character, with nurses again, like at MIA, evaluating the morality of lactating women; milk was implicated, however minutely, as a conveyor of morality. Nurses made house calls and excluded candidates perceived as “dirty.” While at MIA morality could be reformed, through the Floating Hospital system, unsavory women were summarily excluded. The socioeconomic background of the two groups of milk providers varied greatly, as wet-nursing impoverished mothers gave the opportunity to provide for themselves and 182

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their infants. Selling milk was a much more modest arrangement, appreciated as a virtuous act through which women, largely married and with homes and children, could earn additional money or repay the institution that helped their own children or others. While some insisted on donating their milk, those who were paid earned an average of $4.20 per week, roughly $56 today. According to Janet Golden (1988: 598), the unique position of the Floating Hospital as both a charitable hospital and research facility through which breastmilk could be studied by Bosworth, Emerson, et al. transformed a “domestic service into a medical commodity.” In doing so, I argue that breastmilk serves as a symbol of corporeal, maternal labor, and further, acknowledging it as a valued commodity refutes affective labor as unpaid and unrecognized. While cow’s milk is accepted as a commodity, so much so that the “price of a gallon of milk” is regularly deployed as an indicator of a broader economy, recognizing human breastmilk as a commodity is radical. Increasingly recognizing breastmilk as a medical commodity, the staff saw the potential to improve its quality, nurses working to improve the health of milk sellers, and doctors evaluating them. Nurses streamlined the collection system to maintain the quality of the product. This system ultimately negated the cultural need for wet nurses, thus eliminating the social and medical problems associated with wet-nursing. Through the joint laboratory and medical work, ultimately better understanding the preciousness of human milk and its capacity to save lives and improve health, the Floating Hospital system generated public interest in breastfeeding, and also further propelled Bosworth to create a human milk of his own.

An agricultural and economic opportunity for the nation The doctors and nurses aboard the Floating Hospital were not alone in their acknowledgment of breastmilk and its new substitutes as valuable commodities. As milk substitutes like Similac took off, in 1930, the White House held a conference on child welfare and nutrition. In it, the massive economic potential of developing the formula industry in the United States was discussed at length. In response to American industrialization and urbanization, the conference culminated in a bill of rights for American children, called the Children’s Charter, recognizing their needs and rights as inherently different from those of adults. Within the nineteen rights, health and well-­being emerge as primary concerns, such as: “protection against labor that stunts growth, either physical or mental, that limits education, that deprives children of the right of comradeship, of play, and of joy.” Health instruction and sanitary homes are guaranteed, as well as regular medical and dental exams, and “pure food, pure milk, and pure water.” Infancy and maternal health are recognized as well: “For every child full preparation for his birth, his mother receiving prenatal, natal, and postnatal care; and the establishment of such protective measures as will make child-­bearing safer” (White House Conference on Child Health and Protection 1930). In this pursuit of better health for American children, the Conference created a committee to study milk as a primary source of nutrition for infants and children. Within 183

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the resulting, confidential document, breastfeeding is mentioned four times: (1) by the maternal and fetal health committee, suggesting vitamins for breastfeeding mothers, by the public health committee; (2) the recognition of the higher mortality rate of bottle-­fed babies as a “life hazard;” (3) the suggestion to further study colostrum in humans, as it was proven to contain helpful antibodies in cattle, but was not adequately studied in human milk—furthering the popular notion of it as unhelpful and even harmful; and (4) suggesting that cow’s milk should be accessible to all American children, given that they were weaned from breastmilk earlier than children in other cultures (White House Conference on Child Health and Protection 1930: xlvii). This final point seems a missed opportunity to recommend longer breastfeeding guidelines for American mothers and children, or further, a calculated move to replace breastmilk with cow’s milk to support the American economy via the dairy industry. The report reveals that the governmental interest in cow milk (and dairy-­based breastmilk substitutes) had much to do with developing the dairy industry and thus economic potential for the country. A thorough report on the various innovations in breastmilk substitutes is included here, with evaluations of each possibility, in a section on “important facts concerning pasteurized milk, condensed milk, evaporated milk, powdered and dried milks, and malted milk, from a nutritional standpoint” (White House Conference on Child Health and Protection 1930: xxxiv). The public health service ultimately recommends that mothers’ nutrition be explored to ensure quality of breastmilk, and further study of colostrum. These recommendations are swiftly followed by a request to gain more information from pediatricians regarding which breastmilk alternatives are working best for their infant patients, and a call for “careful research on the economic aspects of replacement of liquid pasteurized milk or certified milk by milk powder, condensed, and evaporated milks is of importance” (White House Conference on Child Health and Protection 1930: xxxvii). Still within the Public Health Committee’s report, these requirements are immediately followed by a section titled “Economic Aspects of Milk.” Here, it could be argued, the American nation is conflated with the child’s body; and cow’s milk is touted as nutritionally and economically beneficial. It reads: Milk and the dairy industry are inseparably linked to the nation’s health and the normal growth and development of its people. Scientific studies have shown that the food people eat, especially during the periods of rapid growth, in early childhood, has a lasting effect on the size of the entire race. President Hoover, when addressing The World’s Dairy Congress in 1923 as Secretary of the Department of Commerce said: “The exhaustive researches of nutritional science during the last two decades have, by the demonstration of the imperative need of dairy products for the special growth and development of children, raised this industry to one of the deepest national and community concern, for, as I have said, it is not alone the well-­being of our people, but it is the very growth and the virility of our race to which you contribute.” White House Conference on Child Health and Protection 1930: xxxvii–xxxviii 184

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The dairy industry thus supported the economic health of the nation. That the report on child health and welfare includes four mentions of breastmilk and an entire section on the economic potential of cow’s milk speaks volumes about how breastmilk came to be so devalued in American culture in the twentieth century, as well as how formula, which is dairy-­based, was privileged.

A vision co-­opted Bosworth observed the economic fervor for a dairy-­based breastmilk substitute with growing unease. He had created precisely what government and industry clamored for. In the mid-1920s, amid growing contention with his colleagues and discord with his competitors, Bosworth retreated to Ohio, where, from 1924 to 1929 he worked in the laboratory of M & R Dietetic Laboratories in Columbus. There, he put the finishing touches to Similac. It is not entirely clear why he left in 1929 to become a professor in Biochemical research at Ohio State. Although he extricated himself from the race for manmade breastmilk, Bosworth’s archive reveals that he monitored it extremely closely. Among continued (oft-­heated) correspondence with colleagues and reports is a dense collection of what his “reconstituted milk” became: the behemoth, global brand, Similac. He enrolled to receive information regularly from Similac, and dozens of advertisements for physicians were sent to him, meticulously stored in his files. Many of these clever items are advertisements posing as something else. For example, a long series of items mailed to Bosworth visually emulate doctors’ notepads. Again, as an art historian, I read these objects visually, for what they can accomplish through this visual trickery. In one (see Figure  9.11), a square memo pad is attached to a longer, rectangular sheet of cardboard. On the memo pad, in cursive handwriting, it reads: “Dear Doctor: Under this pad is a suggestion for the convenient preparation of Similac feedings while travelling.” The casual script signals the familiarity of one medical authority jotting down notes to another. The cardboard includes a saturated image of a Similac can superimposed on a black and white backdrop of luggage and golf clubs, a visual cue to take Similac along on that family vacation. Indeed, the script reads, “Vacation with the Baby,” with the tagline: “Similac avoids gastro-­intestinal upsets due to varying milk supply.” Through this sophisticated advertisement, a formula corporation encourages physicians in turn to recommend that patients purchase their product to have an easier vacation. In doing so, it positions Similac as consistent in supply, and thus superior to breastmilk, which is implicated for varying in supply. It is implied that during leisure time, women can be freed from the physical and affective labor of breastfeeding, and instead can luxuriate, presumably golfing, while not worrying about milk supply or their babies feeling hungry. A vacation can provide a break even from maternal labor. In another faux-­memo pad (see Figure 9.12) the cardboard image includes “96 weight charts summarized” with Similac dominating the chart, and “Other foods” dwindling below. The handwritten note to the doctor reads, “Feeding Similac favors low initial loss 185

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Figure 9.11  Similac advertisement, date unknown. Alfred Bosworth Papers, #22-2-3998. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. 186

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Figure 9.12  Similac advertisement, date unknown. Alfred Bosworth Papers, #22-2-3998. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. 187

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and rapid return to birth weight. Reason?—Similac resembles breastmilk not only in composition, but also in its ready digestibility—its zero curd tension.” This phrasing implies that there is no need to breastfeed a newborn baby, that Similac can be administered from day one, and that in choosing this product over others, the infant will lose less weight initially and resume birth weight quickly. Breastmilk, unrepresented on the chart, is not an option. Further directions for using the product can be found by opening the memo pad. The image of the growth chart includes two male hands fingering the data, as if studying the lines; this is educated male data for educated men to consume. This particular ad directly references Bosworth’s initial vision, to create something that “resembles breastmilk not only in composition but also in its ready digestibility.” It is precisely Bosworth’s initial goal, to create something like breastmilk, that is recognized here for its medical value—but moreover, as an advertisement, its financial value. In that regard, one of the most complicated and compelling items in this file of Similac ads is an advertisement visually posing as a letter from M & R Dietetic Laboratories, dated November 21, 1932 (Figure 9.13). It is personalized, reading, “Dear Dr. Bosworth, Such an unusual amount of interest has been shown by physicians in the similarity of the curd of Similac with that of breastmilk that we are taking the liberty of directing your attention to the subject matter on the enclosed circular. The similarity of the curd of breastmilk and the curd of Similac as contrasted with the curd of cow’s milk and powdered milk is illustrated therein. We know that results in actual practice mean more than any printed statement we could make. Therefore, we ask you to give consideration to the statements made and then avail yourself of the opportunity of seeing the results when Similac is fed in your own practice.” It is signed by the Director of Sales, with a printed signature that looks very much like a real one. This advertisement mimicking a letter is part of a campaign targeting doctors, touting the benefits of Similac—in this case underscoring again that it is more like breastmilk than any other alternative. One can only imagine Bosworth’s reaction to opening this letter, as he had endeavored for the previous decade to create something most like breastmilk—and then to receive an ad for it in the mail! It also references the White House Report on Child Welfare and Nutrition, in its call to gather information from physicians about the use of various milk substitutes. As a visual object, it is quite astounding, in its intention to sell a product, in how it was sent to the product’s creator, in how he received and collected it, in how it seems not to have been opened in the ninety years since. It is clear that the marketers of Similac paid substantial attention to the White House Conference because one advertisement poses visually as the official report. Sent to doctors just a few months after the conference, the front page mimics an official report on the conference and makes no mention of Similac (see Figure  9.14). Flanked by a drawing of the White House, and under the heading “At the White House Conference on ‘Child Health and Protection’ ” it reads, “The preliminary report of the committee on milk production and control of the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection states that the committee has directed its efforts toward collecting information on milk that would be of value to the Conference in promoting and protecting the health 188

Figure 9.13  Letter from M&R Dietetic Laboratories to Alfred Bosworth, November 21, 1932. Alfred Bosworth Papers, #22-2-3998. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. 189

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Figure 9.14  Similac advertisement mimicking government report, 1931, cover. Alfred Bosworth Papers, #22-2-3998. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

190

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and welfare of the children.” It then describes four subcommittees that addressed milk: “the subcommittee on communicable diseases,” “the subcommittee on public health supervision,” “the subcommittee on nutritional aspects of milk [which] considered the nutritive properties of cow’s milk and milk products and the nutritive properties of human milk,” and “the subcommittee on economic aspects of milk [which] obtained information on the consumption of fluid milk and other milk products, the production, marketing, transportation, processing and delivery of milk and the economic importance of the sanitary quality of milk and cream.” The top page closes with the declaration, “Abstracts of the reports of the subcommittee on the nutritional aspects of milk are to be found on the inside pages of this letter.” Turning the page (see Figure  9.15), one is bombarded with visual and textual information. In the center of the two-­page foldout is a visual emulation of the report itself, reading “United States Treasury Department Public Health Reports,” including “Report of the Committee on Milk Production and Control.” First, this cover visually emulates the actual report, but it is not; the actual report was kept confidential, and thus, while the first page of the advertisement emulates the actual report, the second page of the advertisement references more available materials: how this information was thus compiled by the US Treasure department, which obviously would have a vested interest in the economic potential of the dairy industry.

Figure 9.15  Similac advertisement mimicking government report, 1931, interior. Alfred Bosworth Papers, #22-2-3998. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. 191

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Behind the report, a bottle of Similac peeks out, as if to say, “Hello, this is actually an ad! Read on to learn more about the benefits of Similac for your baby and the nation!” Around the report are excerpts regarding curd tension, unique to Similac among other alternatives, such as, “Human milk is well tolerated by infants, yet it contains fat globules of all sizes ranging from the smallest to the largest found in cow’s milk. This seem [sic] to argue against the validity of the fat globule size theory of the relation between the state of fat in a milk and its quality in infant feeding.” This issue can purportedly be resolved through use of Similac, as summarized in the text at right: “Studies on curd tension, which is a measure of the toughness of the curd formed by rennet coagulation, seem to have established a unique value of soft curd milks in infant feeding . . . From these stated facts and the parenthetical abstracts, it readily can be understood that a milk which produces a soft curd is highly desirable in infant feeding. During the development stage of Similac, the years of research demonstrated that one of the disadvantages of feeding cow’s milk was the curd that was produced when this milk came in contact with the gastric enzymes.” This text is followed by a bibliography comprised entirely of thirteen studies by Bosworth. The summary reads, in larger font: “One of the outstanding features of Similac is the production of an attenuated curd in gastric digestion,” positioning the product as superior to human milk which it denounced for variations in fat globule size, and other substitutes, in that Bosworth emphasized curd tension in his studies. And then a message to the doctor reading the faux-­report: “How well this and other phases of the modification of cow’s milk is accomplished in the manufacture of Similac can be proved to you by prescribing Similac for your next feeding case.” Finally, the doctor is invited to try the product out on his own infant patients. The message that Bosworth received in the mail was that Similac was superior to breastmilk, in fact should replace it, and doctors should experiment with it on their patients; this message is so vastly different than what he set out to accomplish, to make something like breastmilk to feed ailing infants who otherwise could not get it. As someone with great reverence for breastmilk as a substance, who believed deeply that cow’s milk was for calves and human milk was for babies, the epiphany must have been shocking: a booming dairy industry would support this corporate endeavor: ultimately industrialized cow’s milk would be the basis for his formula and was positioned to replace breastmilk. While the archive does not reveal whether he explicitly voiced his disdain for how his vision was co-­opted, it is telling that he left the industry at that moment. He retreated first to academia and then to a small town to teach chemistry.

Obscurity Bosworth’s drive to create something like breastmilk, and the nearly religious responsibility he felt to do so with caution, was co-­opted to the degree that it resulted in a global brand synonymous with formula, and, further, contributed to breastfeeding rates dipping to 26.5 percent by 1970 (Ross Products Division of Abbott Laboratories 1970–2003). Now 192

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owned by Abbott, a $20 billion health care corporation, Similac is largely produced in Mexico in factory dairy farms. Much like the ways in which Similac visually emulated medical and governmental materials, the corporation provides free samples and logo-­embossed baby toys to families in maternity wards worldwide. In 2015, Mexico banned the practice of providing samples to families in hospitals, “because it is a commercial practice that may discourage breastfeeding,” in response to studies revealing one in seven women in Mexico breastfeed for six months (Associated Press 2015). The practice is widely considered predatory but pervasive nonetheless. Ultimately, today’s baby formula industry can be held in sharp contrast with Bosworth’s early vision. That it was his dream of a reconstituted milk that became Similac goes unnoticed, in histories of infant feeding and the corporation’s official history, which credits M&R Laboratories, the ice cream company who hosted him during the development phases, with the innovation. He does not appear in the history of formula and his meticulous archives suggest that is exactly what he desired.

Conclusion Within the context of our collective project on cow and human milk, some important comparisons can be made. Wet nurses, like dairy cows, were separated from their own infants in order to produce a valuable substance, with little regard for the well-­being of either the mothers or their offspring. While the milk producers are valued and commoditized for their product, they go nameless: the wet nurses’ names do not appear in the Matron Reports, though their children’s and charges’ do, while dairy cows are given numbers and/or identified by the bull that inseminated them in order to stimulate lactation. In each case, the labor goes largely unacknowledged, and the product valued, examined, altered, replicated. And while wet-nursing and pediatric barges may seem relics of a distant past, a century later, many issues are quite timely today: the purchase and donation of breastmilk, the commoditization and exploitation of disenfranchised maternal and lactating bodies to feed and care for the privileged elite, the stubbornly unacknowledged, unwaged, maternal labor, and the continually evolving appreciation for breastmilk and what it can do. Similac has, of course, gone on to thrive globally as a brand synonymous with formula, still presenting itself visually through sophisticated advertising as nutritious and medical. Today, Similac remains Abbott’s most profitable line of products, earning $1.5 billion in 2014 (Mintel 2014), and ranks among the top three formula brands, with Gerber produced by Nestlé, and Beingmate, a Chinese formula manufacturer. As formula feeding rates decrease in the United States, China is seen as a growing potential market, and in 2014 Abbott invested $400 million to develop the brand there. In 2015, Abbott was the world’s fourth largest baby food manufacturer, and first in the United States. In its 2016 business report on Abbott, Euromonitor International4 identifies the primary threat to the corporation: “Abbott’s future growth in milk formula in emerging markets could be hit by health campaigns to promote breastfeeding.” To buffer that loss, 193

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Euromonitor suggests, “Facing a potential decline in its customer base in developed markets, due to stable birth rates and a likely rise in breastfeeding rates, Abbott may seek to widen its customer base by focusing not only on toddler milk formula but also on products targeting children after they stop using baby food” (Moreau 2016). Indeed, new powdered milk-­based products are currently being introduced to the market for a newly diversified audience including children and the elderly. At the time of writing, I received a free sample of a new Similac product in the mail; I had been identified as a mother of small children. The brochure assures, “Toddlers can be particular,” and directs, “Make sure they’re getting the nutrients they need.” Go and Grow Mix-Ins by Similac are intended to be stirred into meals, “a secret weapon for adding nutrition to food.” Throughout the packaging, the most prominently showcased food is macaroni and cheese. The first ingredient of this new product is whey protein concentrate: processed, powdered cow milk. Through the pairing of text and image, Abbott suggests that to “balance your toddler’s diet,” one should stir a powdered dairy product into a processed dairy product. One can only wonder what Bosworth would think of what became of his reconstituted milk. It could be said that in spite of this industry, and because of his unwavering reverence for breastmilk, Bosworth succeeded in creating a substance that saves the lives and eases the distress of countless infants who are unable to nurse, or experience a variety of ailments. If he succeeded, he certainly did not do so alone. His project was made possible through the labor of scores of women who go unrecognized for their labor: milk donors and sellers, nurses, wet nurses, system managers, grandmothers of the sick and deceased, mothers who brought their ailing babies to the ship each day, and certainly many others who remain unknown. While they go largely neglected in the written history, in the visual record their contributions and affective labor can be seen.

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CHAPTER 10 PLANT MILK: FROM OBSCURITY TO VISIONS OF A POST-DAIRY SOCIETY Tobias Linné and Ally McCrow-Young

Introduction: a visit to the oat drink factory We walk along the production lines of the Oatly factory in Landskrona, Sweden, where oat drink cartons roll by in an endless stream. On the other side of the wall we can hear the sound of a milling machine grinding the oats. It is a small factory; there are only three or four people on the factory floor, and one person up in the control room monitoring the processes on big computer screens. We walk through a corridor with windows and doors into other rooms, meeting rooms with business people listening to presentations and lab rooms with people in white coats pouring liquid into little bottles. Everything is done here, from the designing of the packaging to the testing of new product flavors, to the researching of consumer behaviors. And of course the production of the oat drink. Our guide, who has been employed with the company since its founding more than twenty years ago, stops as we walk past a huge pile of oat drink cartons standing in the corridor: So you see, this is like a dairy factory, we do the same things as they do, almost, we heat the milk up, we add the nutrients, we package it—but you know, the dairy industry is so envious of us! We can ship our products to Spain or any other country and it can take two weeks, three weeks it doesn’t matter, because our products will keep for that time, and dairy won’t. We don’t even have to refrigerate it, it can just stand outside like this, so this really is a superior product! Bengt, International Sales Director of Oatly That plant milk is superior to dairy milk is an idea that has emerged in different fora during the last decade. The idea of plant milk as superior to dairy milk is particularly interesting given that for decades dairy milk was considered the ultimate food, a food product that was understood as an “embodiment of the politics of American identity” (DuPuis 2002: 8). In many European countries and the United States during the first half of the twentieth century, dairy milk was promoted by powerful propaganda associations driven by dairy producers and given a veneer of legitimacy through engagement with politicians and experts in medicine and nutrition (Martiin 2010; DuPuis 2002).1 Dairy milk was celebrated as a drink that improved public health; it was claimed to be a perfect food from a nutritional perspective, and was served free of charge to school children in

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many countries from the 1920s onwards (Wiley 2011: 55). Not only was dairy milk seen as the cornerstone of a healthy diet, but it was also a food that promised to improve farmers’ livelihoods, ensuring the economic survival of the countryside. In Sweden, it was the grazing of dairy cows that helped keep the landscape open and in a Western context, cows and dairy farming have long been associated with calmness, tranquility, and country life, while being symbolically opposed to industrialization, urbanization, and the mass production of food (Stevens, Kearney, and Maclaran 2013; Molloy 2011). If dairy milk is indeed considered in Western cultures to be the ultimate food, it follows that any alternative to dairy must be considered inferior. The perspective taken in this chapter is that plant milk and dairy milk have developed in parallel and share a common social history (Fu 2014). However, while a growing scholarship exists on the social and cultural history of the production and consumption of dairy milk (DuPuis 2002; Jönsson 2005; Atkins 2010; Nimmo 2010), plant milk occupies a much more hidden place in the history of food (Du Bois, Tan, and Mintz 2008). The purpose of this chapter is to re-­inscribe plant milk into the social, political, economic, and cultural history of food, primarily with a focus on the twentieth and twenty-­first centuries. In doing so, the chapter engages several different fields and subject areas such as food and agricultural politics, ecology, animal rights activism, identity politics, health politics, food sociology, gender studies, and post-­colonial studies. Our scope is plant milk in general, ranging from more traditional soy-­based milk to the newly launched pea-­based milk. With the term “plant milk” we refer to all beverages with a primarily plant origin that can be perceived of as milk analogs, alternatives, synthetic milk, and/or substitutes to dairy milk, even if these milks are not always named as milk or as alternatives to dairy milk. The chapter is divided into three parts. The first part chronicles the history of plant milk and in particular the narrative of a “free-­from” product tailored to people with food allergies such as lactose intolerance. It also recounts plant milk’s obscure and marginal role during the heydays of dairy milk in many Western countries. The second part describes plant milk’s rise in the past decades from a niche product marketed for the dairy-­averse to a mainstream beverage comparable to dairy milk in most respects. It discusses some of the tensions and conflicts that surfaced during this process. Our analysis focuses on the case of Swedish oat drink producer Oatly, which after being sued by the Swedish dairy lobby in 2014 became the center of attention in a national discussion on milk. The chapter draws on original qualitative data in the form of interviews with eight key informants at Oatly, conducted between January and April 2016.2 The final part of the chapter focuses on the future of milk alternatives, offering visions of a post-­dairy society. It argues that plant milk has moved from an alternative to cow’s milk to an alternative milk, a food rich with political and symbolic meaning, and an integral part of animal activism. Notions of plant milk are permeated by the complex dynamics of race, gender, class, and species, thereby shaping food production/consumption and dietary regimes. The different plant-­based milks (rice milk, soy milk, oat milk, almond milk, etc.) embody various social and political identities, reflected in mainstream media, advertising, and social media. They also bring to the fore questions relating to developments in food 196

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technology, such as scientific advancements within the field of synthetic biology. With these technological developments, plant milk also challenges many of the legal frameworks surrounding dairy milk, generally considered one of the most heavily regulated food commodities (DuPuis 2002: 7), and calls into question the economic and political models that inform state regulation of dairy milk.

A brief history of plant-­based milk Plant milks have a long history. The earliest document that mentions a plant-­based milk—almond milk—dates back to a 1226 cookbook from present-­day Iraq. Almond milk was also the first plant milk to become popular in the West, with the first English mention dating back to 1390 (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2013). Soy milk, originally a by-­ product of the manufacturing of bean curd (tofu), has roots in the Han Dynasty in China (206 bc to ad 220), in particular the early years of the Dynasty (202 bc to ad 9) when soybeans were ground and mixed with water to make soy milk (Huang 2008: 51). In Chinese texts, soy milk is mentioned with increasing frequency in documents from the fourteenth century onwards. Shurtleff and Aoyagi (2013: 5) date the first mention of soy milk back to 1365, noting that it was probably not until the sixteenth or seventeenth century that the consumption of soy milk became more widespread in China. Traditionally, soy milk was served hot, “ladled from a caldron for breakfast, at the place where it was made either sweetened or as the base of a salted soup” (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2013: 5). The common everyday consumption of soy milk is a more recent phenomenon. As Huang (2008: 51) notes, the raw milk resulting from the production of bean curd still suffered the same defects as those associated with the raw bean. It was hard to digest and very different in terms of taste and texture from today’s products. Soy milk did not become a central part of the Chinese diet until the eighteenth or nineteenth century when it was discovered that prolonged heating made it more palatable and digestible (Huang 2008: 51; Fu 2014). The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw major developments in the production and consumption of plant milks. With the rising popularity of soybeans and knowledge of their nutritious properties in the Western world, soy milk became the first plant milk to turn into a global commodity (Fu 2014). In the late nineteenth-­century United States, soy milk saw increasing mention in nutritional scientific texts and the first soy-­based infant formula was developed in 1909 (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2013). The following decades saw the beginning of the production and consumption of bottled soy milk. The first soy dairy, named Caséo-Sojaïne, was founded by the Chinese biologist and engineer Li Yu-Ying in Paris in 1910 (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2013). He also secured the world’s first patents for soy milk production. Shurtleff and Aoyagi (2011: 5) describe YuYing as playing a key role in the circulation of soy milk from East to West and the popularization of commercial soy milk in Europe. In 1917, under the brand name Soy Lac, soy milk became the first commercially produced plant milk in the United States (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2013). 197

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In December of 1956, the English Plantmilk Society held its inaugural general meeting in London, generating the first English-­language document containing the word “plantmilk” (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2013: 8). It was around this time that plant milks became more widely consumed beverages globally. By then, soy milk was sold in bottles akin to soft drinks in China and Japan. In Hong Kong, Vitasoy was one of the pioneers of this packaging innovation. In the 1960s, Beanvit, a Singaporean soy milk producer, introduced aseptic packaging of plant milk in Tetra Pak cartons, allowing it to be stored without refrigeration for several months (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2013). In 1966 Cornell University researchers identified the enzyme that gives soy milk its “beany” flavor, subsequently developing a process to eliminate it (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2013). This was a crucial step as soy milk had been considered “not very palatable” in the Western world, eliciting strategies such as adding sugar, cinnamon, cocoa, or banana to mask its taste (Fu 2014: 4). The 1970s saw experiments with production and marketing of plant milk in many countries. In Brazil, for example, soy milk was produced by a machine referred to as “the mechanical cow” (de Sousa and de Cassia 2008: 250).3 The Coca-Cola Company tried to develop a soy drink for the Brazilian market during the same decade without success. However, the Brazilian National school food program, one of the biggest in the world, achieved success in introducing school children to soy milk in different flavors such as chocolate, vanilla, banana, coconut, and pineapple (de Sousa and de Cassia 2008: 250). To this day, the use of soy milk in Brazilian schools is more significant than grocery sales of the product. The 1980s marked the decade when plant milks became established as a mainstream commodity in the Western world. The first two brands sold nationwide in the United States were Vitasoy and Edensoy, both aseptically packaged so as to eliminate the need for refrigeration (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2013). In Europe, around the same time, Alpro, which was to become a major brand on the plant milk market, started the production of soy milk. In New Zealand and Australia, the Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing Company, owned by the Seventh Day Adventist Church, introduced their soy milk brand “So Good” to the market in 1985 (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2010). In 1990, Rice Dream, the first widely popular rice milk, was launched by Imagine Foods of Palo Alto, California (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2013). Soy milk is still the most commonly known and popular of the commercial plant milks worldwide, followed by almond milk, rice milk, and coconut milk. Other commercially available plant milks include oat milk, hazelnut milk, flax milk, sunflower milk, quinoa milk, cashew milk, and sesame milk (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2013). The uses of plant milk vary throughout the world. Tan (2008: 112) regards the popularity of soy milk in Hong Kong, especially as a snack food, as a sign of a growing concern for food that is healthy and low in fat. In many Western contexts, plant milks are also marketed and consumed as part of a health-­conscious lifestyle. In Hong Kong, Shurtleff and Aoyagi (2013) note that soy milk has long been considered a popular soft drink, second only to Coca-Cola, and the Hong Kong market for soy milk has seen innovations such as ginger juice soy milk and flavored soy milks of different varieties (Tan 2008: 112). Investigating soy milk in the Vietnamese context, Nguyen (2008: 192) 198

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describes it as “the favourite Vietnamese drink,” ahead of increasingly popular soft drinks, reporting that some families continue to make their own soy milk at home. Soy milk has also been a very popular drink in Indonesia (Sidharta 2008: 203).

The perfect and the imperfect milk When evaluating plant milk, the comparison to dairy milk is inevitable. In a Western context, plant milk during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was first and foremost an alternative to dairy milk for individuals unable to digest cow’s milk for reasons such as lactose intolerance or milk allergies. Most of the scientific debate around plant milk in the early and mid-­twentieth century revolved around the nutritional comparison between plant and milk, especially in relation to children (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2013; Glaser 1953; Rittinger, Dembo, and Torrey 1932; Omans, Leuterer, and György 1963). Notably, when the enzymes that would become a crucial component in Oatly’s oat milk were first discovered at Lund University, it was as part of a research project in the department of nutrition studying why people could not digest cow’s milk (Dahlqvist et al. 1963). The original aim of Oatly’s product, which was developed at a time when the company was owned in part by the dairy industry, was to provide an alternative for people unable to digest dairy milk. This focus is evident in Oatly’s early marketing campaigns. The UK was chosen as the first market to launch Oatly’s products because it was the country in Europe with the largest concentration of individuals unable to digest cow’s milk due to the large number of immigrants belonging to populations genetically prone to lactose intolerance or malabsorption. To understand the position of plant milk as an alternative to dairy milk, it is necessary to situate the position of dairy milk in food politics and culture in many Western countries during the turn of the century. DuPuis (2002: 107, 113) discusses the rise of the nutrition ideology in the early twentieth century. She shows that the Western nutrition campaigns that often took place in schools were guided by the dairy industry’s interests and gave the industry a wide mandate to define infant health. In Sweden, the United States, and other Western countries, dairy milk symbolized modern progress. It was portrayed as a “natural” food that could be improved through modern technological development (pasteurization, homogenization, and standardization) (DuPuis 2002). The idea of dairy milk as a healthful, modern food was tied to the politics of a healthy and modern nation state (Jönsson 2005). As described in detail by DuPuis (2002), Wiley (2011), and Nimmo (2010), dairy milk in many Western countries was portrayed as white and clean, a beverage for modern people. Milk was the perfect food, symbolizing the story of the march to progress, a flawless world of industrial production and managerial bureaucracy. In Sweden, milk was explicitly involved in the construction of the welfare state, as illustrated in the “Milk Days” held in schools starting in the late 1920s. As part of these “Milk Days,” children were encouraged to drink milk and take part in competitions celebrating the importance of milk. During the 1920s and 1930s, influential lobbying organizations funded and supported by the state were formed in order to promote milk 199

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consumption (Jönsson 2005). The free school milk reform of 1946 presented milk as a democratic drink associated with ideas of equality and progressive school politics (Jönsson 2005; Martiin, 2010).4 In comparison, plant milk appears to be the imperfect milk, given that any drink pales in comparison with perfect dairy milk. As DuPuis (2002: 4) shows, the perfection of society goes hand in hand with the perfection of the body through dairy milk drinking. Stories about perfection are also acts of power. In contexts where certain people have greater privilege than others, the social contingency of ideas tends to be replaced with one particular idea, a “perfect” idea of what society should pursue as a goal and how people should live their lives (DuPuis 2002: 10). Plant milk, the imperfect milk, was, and to some extent still is, a product for people who fail to conform to the model of the perfect (white, healthy, meat-­eating, milk-­digesting citizen). The relation between dairy milk and plant milk can thus be understood as a relation through which ideas about food, race, gender, and nation intersect, similarly to how meat-­eating contributed to the Western world’s pre-­eminence. Adams ([1990] 2010: 54) describes how “the racialized politics of meat” worked to split the “world into intellectually superior meat eaters and inferior plant eaters,” accounting for the Western conquering of other cultures. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a racialized politics of milk manifests in discourses about social perfection and white racial superiority. Dairy milk was the food of northern white Europeans, which American rhetoric made a nutritional symbol of white supremacy, the food of an imperial nation and a superior race (DuPuis 2002: 1). This discourse around the superiority of dairy milk excluded people—mostly people of color—who tend to be genetically lactose intolerant. The perfect whiteness of the food and the white body genetically capable of digesting it in large quantities became linked, and as DuPuis (2002: 11) notes, “By declaring milk perfect, white northern Europeans announced their own perfection.” At the same time, plant milk was linked to inferiority and inabilities, associated as it was with Middle Eastern, South East Asian, and Chinese cultural traditions. Interestingly, Fu (2014: 3), who analyzes the social meanings surrounding food and national development in China during the republican period, notes that Chinese nutrition and biomedicine scientists too stressed the linkage between the nation’s health and the nutritional state of its people in the 1930s and 1940s, developing an ideology similar to the one DuPuis (2002) describes apropos dairy milk. In China, soy milk was considered analogously to cow’s milk in Western countries: a highly nutritional drink, which had the potential to improve the nutritional state of the Chinese people (Fu 2014). During the 1930s, attempts were made in China to develop a domestic soy milk industry, making the introduction of dairy milk production redundant. During this time, many drew explicit parallels between soy milk and dairy milk, juxtaposing them as biological counterparts in both function and form (Fu 2014: 4). The advocacy of soy milk over dairy milk was premised on soy milk being a distinctly Chinese food. However, as Western ideas of dairy milk as a modern and techno-­scientific product spread, dairy milk came to signal China’s conscientious striving for success in the West, leading to dairy milk gaining in popularity in the Chinese context (Fu 2014). 200

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An analogous drink The economic ties between the production of dairy milk and plant milk have historically been strong. For example, when Oatly was launched, the company was owned by one of the major Swedish dairy companies, Skånemejerier. Vitasoy, one of the world’s leading brands of plant milk, is a joint venture between Vitasoy International and Lion, a group with multiple brands ranging from alcohol to dairy products. In the summer of 2016 French dairy giant Danone finalized the purchase of WhiteWave Foods, which makes plant milk brands such as Silk and Alpro. The $10.1 billion deal was called the “biggest deal to date in the natural and organic foods industry,” solidifying plant milk’s newly acquired mainstream status (Woodyard 2016; Kowitt 2016).5 The company that was to become Oatly was initially called Mill Milk in the UK, highlighting the dependent relationship to dairy milk through the need to reference it and be branded as an analogous product. Similarly, in 1984 when Vitasoy introduced its first soy milk, the flavor was described as “original” (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2013: 8), meaning a unique, dairy-­like taste. This signaled a shift in marketing towards presenting plant milks as direct dairy substitutes. The majority of plant milk cartons borrow their design from dairy milk—they share the same Tetra Pak packaging, display images of white liquid splashing on the front, and green fields in the background. Silk, introduced by WhiteWave in 1996, was the first brand of plant milk to migrate to supermarkets’ refrigerated case, right next to dairy milk, presented in familiar, milk-­style cartons (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2013: 9). The move to the dairy case in supermarkets was a huge success, leading other brands to follow suit and contributing to making plant milk even more directly analogous to dairy milk. Plant milks attempt not only to replicate the taste and texture of dairy milk, but also to mimic the production process (Tuomisto and Teixeira de Mattos 2011). When Oatly’s former CEO and co-­founder, and the patent-­holder for oat drinks, describes the steps required to produce his drinks, he relies on comparisons with cows producing milk: We developed a process that works similar to what cows do; our process uses enzymes just like a cow uses enzymes when it transforms what it eats into milk. Rickard, co-­founder of Oatly The marketing of plant milks as analogous to dairy milk is not an entirely new phenomenon. A precedent can be found in the 1920s in the life and work of John Harvey Kellogg, the breakfast cereal pioneer, and other Seventh Day Adventists as part of their vegetarian lifestyle (Golbitz 1998: 6; Messina, Messina, and Stechell 1994: 37). With his wife Ella Kellogg, John Harvey Kellogg wrote book chapters and editorials on the nutritional benefits of plant milks, comparing the vegetable casein in tofu to the animal casein in milk. The couple also created recipes to make “bean cheese” (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2014). Other Adventists, such as Harry Miller, in the 1930s and 1940s were involved in the production of the first widely successful soy milk in the United States, Soya Lac, which was also used as an infant formula (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2014). 201

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However, the late 1970s saw the US marketing and development of dairy milk analogs elevated to a new level with the dramatic growth of the plant milk market (Du Bois 2008: 221), which had evolved into a $745 million, mainly domestic, industry. By 2006, three-­ quarters of soy products purchased in the United States were sold in mainstream supermarkets (Du Bois 2008: 221). The worldwide market for plant milk has grown from a little over $6 billion in 2009 to a projected $10 billion for 2016, with plant milk making up 24 percent of all new milk product sales in Europe and 31 percent in North America (Gustafsson 2015). Since 2010, US retail sales of almond milk have grown 250 percent to more than $894.6 million in 2015. Soy milk, which once dominated the plant milk market, sold $297.7 million in US retail in 2015, followed by coconut milk at $61.3 million, rice milk at around $18 million, and other plant milks (cashew, hemp, macadamia, hazelnut, oat, etc.) at a combined $50.2 million (Crawford 2016). In Sweden, Oatly’s success, with a net turnaround increase of 250 percent during the last ten years, paints a similar image. The recent success of plant milk is particularly striking compared to the drop in dairy milk sales during the same period. While sales of almond milk grew by 7.8 percent from 2014 to 2015, dairy milk sales fell by 7 percent in the United States (Crawford 2016). This follows a pattern established in 2012 and 2013 when sales of almond milk grew by 59.8 percent and 50 percent respectively, while dairy milk fell by 0.7 percent and 1.7 percent in the same years. Dairy milk still dominates the total milk market with almond milk accounting for about 5 percent, but it suffers an undeniable decline in many European countries. In Sweden, the consumption of dairy milk per person has halved since 1960 (when 177 liters of dairy milk per person were consumed as opposed to 89 liters in 2013). The European dairy sector, and in particular the Swedish dairy industry, underwent what has been described as a crisis, caused in part by increased international competition and reduced demand for dairy products (Swedish Board of Agriculture 2012; Statistics Sweden 2013). Growing public concern over the environmental impact of dairy farming may also explain this plunge (Weis 2007; Steinfeld et al. 2006).6 The success of plant milk indicates that these concerns around the health benefits and environmental impacts of dairy milk are no longer a fringe issue, but have gone mainstream. What was once a product primarily catering to lactose-intolerant individuals and vegans is now viewed on a par with “real” milk, fueling a rapidly growing consumer market. For the dairy industry, plant milk’s growing popularity represents a serious economic threat. Fresh daily consumer products such as dairy milk represent a market segment with high profit margins, and therefore it is a segment the dairy industry would rather keep to itself (Ben-Achour 2013). In sum, plant milk’s ascent has opened the door to growing conflict between dairy and plant milk producers.

Milk wars and revolutions When Chicago-­based cheese-­maker J.L. Kraft developed a sterilized cheese in 1916 which could “be kept indefinitely without spoiling, under conditions which would 202

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ordinarily cause it to spoil” (Warner 2013), the cheese industry split over the place of novel cheese-­production technologies. While Kraft’s advertisements celebrated the modernity of their product, more traditional cheese-­makers declared it “unworthy of being called cheese,” referring to it as “dead mass,” “embalmed cheese,” or “renovated cheese” (Warner 2013: 42).7 Geoffrey Miller (1989) has suggested that today’s antagonism between plant and dairy milk replays the war that took place over a century ago between dairy butter and vegetable butter substitutes. According to Du Bois (2008: 227), the dairy industry is “clearly threatened by the still small but rapidly growing soy milk industry.” The friction is particularly visible in the debates over the status of soy milk in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) dietary guidelines. Some organizations have argued that for the significant portion of the US population that is lactose intolerant, soy milk should receive government endorsement as a valid source of calcium in lieu of dairy milk. The US dairy industry rejected this argument, and while in 2006 the USDA added soy milk as a nutritional option, it did not have the prominent place some had campaigned for (USDA 2006). In Sweden, similar debates have taken place in relation to the Oatly case. When Oatly was partly owned by the dairy industry, the then-CEO Rickard and one of his colleagues, Carina, recall how they were called to meetings with their parent dairy company to discuss their marketing and what claims where made about the oat drink: Carina: We were sort of partly dependent on the dairy industry. And we had a bit of a difficulty telling the story of our products in a way we wished. Some of us were very frustrated we could never sort of speak out. Rickard: And I remember actually how Svensk mjölk [Swedish Dairy Association] or whatever they were called, they came down to us and we sat very politely at the table and they said “you can’t say this” and they decided everything. And we’re sitting there “uh ha, okay, yes, yes.” Carina: Because this was when we’d just launched and we had launched also a website of course. So they had been reading everything we wrote and then took printouts on that and came down and went through it with us and “you can’t say this and you can’t compare like that, and you shouldn’t do this and this sounds like milk is not good, so you shouldn’t.” Rickard: It’s interesting afterwards, for us it was almost the truth coming down. It was reality. And everything else we were doing was something relative to milk . . . At the most fundamental level, plant milk challenges what milk is. By definition what milk is differs between regions of the world. The definition used by the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is: “the lacteal secretion, practically free from colostrum, obtained by the complete milking of one or more healthy cows” (Food and Drug Administration 2015). In the European Union, the definition is slightly different, as milk is defined as “exclusively the normal mammary secretion obtained from one or more 203

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milkings without either addition thereto or extraction therefrom” (MacMaoláin 2007: 126). In the United States, the dairy industry petitioned the FDA to disallow soy milk containers from using the word “milk,” pointing out that soy milk’s nutritional profile differs considerably from that of dairy milk (Skrzycki 2006). The FDA, however, has continued to permit use of the word milk on containers of plant milk. A recent court case (Amy Gitson et al. v. Trader Joe’s Co. 2016) confirmed that calling soy milk “milk” is not mislabeling. To question dairy milk is to challenge the narrative of cow’s milk as the perfect food, which has played a pivotal role in the construction of the modern nation state (Atkins 2010; Nimmo 2010; Otomo 2014; Wiley 2011). In 2014, Sweden saw LRF Mjölk (Federation of Swedish Farmers) sue oat milk producer Oatly in what became known as “the milk wars” for using lines such as “No soy, no milk, no badness” and “It’s like milk, but made for humans,” in their marketing campaigns. LRF Mjölk claimed that such slogans mislead consumers into believing that dairy milk is bad for humans (Pierrou 2014; Lööf 2015). One of the most high-profile episodes in these wars was Swedish music festival Way Out West partnering with Oatly for the campaign “72 hours without milk.” The main aim was to get as many people as possible to sign up to swap dairy milk for oat milk over the festival’s 72 hours. In 2015, a Swedish court ruled against Oatly, ordering the company to remove the contentious slogans from their packaging or face charges of 2 million kronor ($235,000). Oatly was also prevented from using similar language in future marketing that would suggest that cow’s milk products are bad or unsuitable for humans (Mansouri 2015; Kvist 2015). On the one hand, the controversy over Oatly’s marketing slogans results from cow’s milk position in society as the ideal food and, on the other hand, it reveals a shift in public discourse, which increasingly questions this position. DuPuis (2002) sees this type of controversy as evidence of growing food-­based social movements prompted by nutritional scientists and scientific organizations, vegans, and animal rights organizations, as well as population groups that tend to be genetically lactose intolerant (the Congressional Black Caucus, for example, has challenged the prominent role milk plays in the USDA’s food pyramid). As animal products have become primary points of discussion on sustainability and dairy-­based diets are acknowledged as causing negative environmental impacts (Steinfeld et al. 2006; Gerber et al. 2013), it has become increasingly difficult for the dairy industry to find politicians and nutritionists to speak on their behalf as in the early and mid-­twentieth century (Jönsson 2005). Plant milk has played a significant part in this evolution.

“Dairy-­free. As it should be”: the superiority of plant-­based milk In the past few decades, plant milk has come to occupy a position as an alternative, almost countercultural food product, challenging traditional Western norms. Du Bois (2008) describes how the countercultural movement among youths of the 1960s and early 1970s made Asian philosophies, medical practices, belief systems, and foods better 204

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known in the United States. She notes that within this context, soy milk appeared as an exceptionally healthful, spiritual, and cleansing food, which was morally correct and pure for both the individual and humankind (Du Bois 2008: 220; Fu 2014). More recently, these ideas of the superiority of plant milk seem to have become more mainstream. With the slogan “Dairy-free. As it should be,” plant milk producer Ripple launched their latest innovation in early 2016: a pea-­based milk. The claim to the superiority of plant milk is premised on the idea that it is a scientifically engineered food that can be tailored to achieve pre-­defined characteristics. Milk that is not derived from mammary glands is presented as superior due to its ability to be fine-­tuned, although dairy cows are also nowadays often engineered to produce milk with certain characteristics such as more protein or less lactose. Like other plant milks, pea-­based milk is a product of synthetic biology, as is reflected in the language used to describe its production process: a “novel technology that strips out unwanted components from pea protein isolate to yield a neutral-­tasting protein that can be incorporated into foods and beverages in high quantities” (Watson 2016). The image is that of a highly scientific process, perfecting the drink by adjusting its components, enabling producers to increase the protein content, decrease the sugar level, and create an allergen-­free beverage (Watson 2016). Rickard, the co-­founder of Oatly, and professor in applied nutrition and food chemistry, describes “knowledge” as “the most important ingredient in Oatly’s products.” Soon after its founding the company endeavored to move away from being “just” a food company, defining itself instead as a company in the field of “Sustainable Nutritional Health” (Byttner 2015). Soy milk producers use a similar rhetoric. Alpro describes itself as driven by “curiosity” (Alpro 2016). The technological development of plant milk is also often referred to as a process of purifying. For example, the process of producing pea milk is described as having “the ability to clean [the pea milk] up to different levels of purity (whiteness and blandness)” (Watson 2016). More significantly, what is implied in these discourses is that dairy milk is no longer an ideal drink. When the co-­founder of Oatly described the processes of producing plant milk, he emphasized that they did not want dairy milk ersatz: And one critical moment was also when we were thinking of all the composition of the macronutrients, should they be like cow milk or something else. And if you look at the composition of our mother’s milk it’s completely different when it comes to the proportion of the macronutrients. I think that says a lot. It’s maybe three times more protein [than] in cow’s milk. So cow’s milk is definitely made for calves whatever the milk industry says, it’s a fact right? So when we observed this we thought, okay we should not copy the cow’s milk. It’s not suitable, that was not an ideal copy. Rickard, co-­founder of Oatly When Oatly began marketing their oat-­based cream and crème fraîche they presented them as upgrades of their dairy-­based counterparts. On their webpage, Alpro uses a similar argument, presenting plant milk production as more resource-­efficient: “Cows 205

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turn soya into ‘milk.’ But what if there was another, better way?” (Alpro 2016). The same move can also be seen in Ripple’s promotion of pea milk. As Ripple’s CEO explains, the goal is not to replicate the taste of cow’s milk, since market research shows that many people prefer the taste of almond milk. Furthermore, a growing number of consumers claim that whether a product was made from vegetables or fruit is “very important” in their purchasing decisions (Nielsen 2015). After being sued by the Swedish dairy lobby, Oatly published a text on their webpage, resisting the comparison to dairy milk: Please don’t compare us to cow’s milk. Seriously, we mean it. As long as we remain a substitute for people who don’t like the taste or concept behind cow’s milk we will never be accepted and validated for who and what we really are: an oat drink. That’s right, an oat drink. There we said it, made from real oats grown tall and strong in the soil of the earth, naturally containing fibers called betaglucans that are good for your heart. Perfect to drink from a glass, pour on your cereal, add to your coffee or cook something up with. Why would we ever need to refer to milk to explain this in the first place? Oatly 2016 The retreat from the attempt to emulate dairy milk is visible in the packaging of newer plant milk. For example, both US plant milk producers Califia and pea milk producer Ripple use plastic bottles that no longer resemble classic dairy milk cartons. This move towards highlighting plant milk’s superiority to dairy milk, as opposed to replication, commonly cites health and nutrition as an advantage (Lanou 2009; Fang et al. 2016; Jacobs et al. 2009). Other advantages often mentioned include plant milk’s lower environmental impact compared to dairy milk (Hedenus, Wirsenius, and Johansson 2014; Cederberg et al. 2013), and how it represents a superior alternative in terms of ethical food production (Berreville 2014). Advertising campaigns for different brands of plant milk are primarily focused on advantages of health, diet, and nutrition, targeting young and primarily female consumers (Narins 2016; Kirkova 2016). The international sales director of Oatly even describes how their products have been marketed as medicine: Our products are sometimes even seen like a medicine; it is like that they were marketed in the early days. But we are also now working on exploring how oat drinks can improve the health of, for example, school children, and not just school children that are lactose intolerant, but all school children. Bengt, International Sales Director of Oatly Another justification for claiming the superiority of plant milk lies in its lower environmental impact (Hedenus, Wirsenius, and Johansson 2014; Cederberg et al. 2013). In pea milk marketing the focus is placed on the carbon footprint of dairy milk. News coverage of Ripple’s plant milk claims: “Cow’s milk demands from 125% to 200% as 206

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much water as almond milk” (Kirkova 2016). Oatly’s representatives too emphasized the environmental benefits of oat milk to dairy: We have been doing these lifecycle assessments so we did a comparison between cow’s milk and our oat drink from cradle to grave, to get numbers for greenhouse gas emissions, light use, energy and everything, just to see the difference there. Then we have figures, so one-­third of cow’s milk leads to greenhouse gas emissions, and land use is one-­fifth. And energy use is much less for oat drink as well . . . to get into and change the farming system, that is a challenge and that is really exciting. That is where you can make a big difference. Carina, Sustainability Manager at Oatly Plant milks are also frequently presented as being morally superior to dairy. In Oatly’s commercials, “the Oatly way,” that is, oat milk’s production process, is contrasted with the outdated way of producing milk “through” a cow. Oatly’s slogan “It’s like milk but made for humans” draws on the idea of plant milk as a superior alternative in terms of ethics, as does the slogan “Wow no cow!” Similar ideas have been used by animal rights activists who claim that dairy milk is infected with suffering, while plant milk represents a compassionate choice. Finally, plant milk is presented as superior to dairy milk in that it is more “democratic” as it can be consumed by everyone, regardless of intolerances, or even religious beliefs, as the former CEO of Oatly explains: There is the religious problem for example because we tried to understand what limits milk consumption of course it’s the fact that some people have lactose intolerance but it’s also other things like religion. And also you have Kosher who you know they can’t mix even the spoon you use for milk and something else. So anyway so we were aware of the limitation with cow milk and so we started to think of an alternative. Because Sweden has more and more immigrants, in those days and the observations around lactose intolerance became more and more common so we started to think in that direction. And it was also about the production capacity is lower in some parts of the world, so you can’t really produce milk so that’s another reason why we saw an opportunity for a milk alternative in addition to the other reasons. Rickard, co-­founder of Oatly

Post-­dairy utopias The recent controversies over the definition and content of dairy versus plant milk have been preceded by many others as discussed above. There is, however, a difference between earlier discussions and the present one. The current conversation on plant milk adds novel normative challenges to the consumption of dairy milk, illustrating what 207

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environmental humanities scholars Bradley and Hedrén (2014: 1) describe as “cracks in the ‘capitalocentric’ regime . . . signs that the nexus of liberal capitalism and the AngloEuropean domination of ‘other’ genders, peoples and species is entering its decline.” Bradley and Hedrén (2014: 2) emphasize that contemporary socio-­environmental movements with roots in ecofeminism, deep ecology, and ecosocialism do not only formulate societal critiques and dreams about an alternative future, but also attempt to articulate and practice alternatives, showing that change is both possible and necessary. Plant milk exemplifies this trend. In January 2016, Swedish animal rights organization Djurens Rätt worked with the feminist party Feministiskt Initiativ at the municipal level to formulate a proposition to make plant milk the norm in city schools. The proposal not only described how this would improve children’s health, reduce the environmental impacts, and further more ethical and empathic relationships to animals, but also noted “that the support of dairy milk in schools is ideologically motivated.” Djurens Rätt went on to argue that: To let plant milk become the norm is easily motivated by health and environmental reasons, but even more important are the ethical reasons. We can challenge the societal structures that subject cows to unnecessarily suffering. The choice between animal exploitation and empathy should be evident. Anderberg 2016 Although the proposal was not supported by the city council, the initiative illustrates how activist engagement with plant milk is becoming politicized via a critique of dairy milk as normative and “ideologically motivated.” Thus the vision of schools where plant rather than dairy milk would be the norm functions as a utopia, providing space for speculation and critique in the interest of change as well as representing concrete steps towards a future free of animal exploitation (Bradley and Hedrén 2014: 2, 7). In his seminal work Animal Liberation, Peter Singer ([1975] 2002: 176) already notes the way plant milk can replace dairy milk as a cruelty-­free alternative. Today, on blogs and social media, the growing vegan movement uses plant milk to make statements about veganism as a political cause and plant milk as a playful way of investigating alternative ideas and alternative socio-­environmental orders, or as Bradley and Hedrén (2014: 9) define it: “heuristic devices for exploring and evaluation what might be possible or impossible.” The utopias developed around plant milk refigure social relationships between humans and other animals. These utopias in which plant rather than dairy milk is the norm might be fictive and illusionary, but they can nonetheless serve as positions from which to engage in a critical exploration of institutions in contemporary society, and “as a means for destabilizing and relativizing the present, setting it in a context in which its fundamental elements must compete with alternative orders” (Bradley and Hedrén 2014: 9). Activist engagement in the promotion of plant milk alternatives can be seen as part of a larger series of trends in food politics and food activism aiming at how food is produced and consumed. The goal is to address the increasing disconnect between people and the 208

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food they consume which has resulted from a highly industrialized food system (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010; Alkon and Agyeman 2011). For Oatly, 2014 saw a relaunch of the company as a “value-­based” brand, centered on key values of sustainability, transparency, and honesty, but also explicitly adopting a political position in support of plant agriculture, and engaging in what could be described as “commodity activism” (Mukherjee and Banet-Weiser 2012) where political identities are forged through consumers identifying with brands and products. The new CEO of the company, who played a decisive role in this shift, explains his transformative role as follows: So I thought “well, here’s my NGO.” Because how we can make a difference, we have a huge strategy when it comes to sustainability but, at the end of the day what it is about, it’s about, our biggest effort is to get people to change from dairy to plant. . . . because we want to change the world, right? And then it comes down to what this company is about. Because what I want to create, and have created now, is that, it’s so, it’s 100% value-­driven. Toni, CEO of Oatly Oatly’s founder describes the company’s re-­branding in similar ways, highlighting its connection with personal values and adopting a political stance, and then suggesting that drinking oat milk products means that “you take a position in life, you stand for something.” The promotion of plant milk in the rhetoric of companies like Oatly is based on societal change, raising consciousness, and promoting a plurality of visions of what the food system could be like. As the CEO of Oatly explains: The fact is that we’ve been fooled all these years right . . . by the authorities and the industries . . . because to be honest the food system is fucked up. It’s broken right? So this system needs to change . . . from my perspective, what we should do in our industry and down the stream is, we should just ask ourselves, “what does this society need?” “What is necessary right now?” And for the future. From a health point, and from an environmental aspect, what do we really need, you know? And all innovation should be created around that. From that angle. Not from “what factory do we have, or what do we grow here today?” Toni, CEO of Oatly What the CEO is describing is a “fundamental change” to “the whole system”—plant milk has an important role to play in this transformation: The biggest thing we can do . . . is moving from animals—meat and dairy—to plant. That’s the single one action that we can changes things. You know, we talk about everything else, but do that. So from that perspective we think that we’re a global solution. Toni, CEO of Oatly 209

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Here, plant milk production is framed as opening up alternative possibilities and challenging dominant human–animal relations. It introduces a possibility for disrupting what is taken for granted and exploring alternative socio-­environmental arrangements (Bradley and Hedrén 2014: 10).

Conclusion While plant milk can be understood within a utopian framework it should also be remembered that despite their visionary rhetoric, producers like Oatly are commercial actors. The formal connections between the dairy and meat industry and plant drink manufacturers are manifold, as demonstrated in the Vitasoy and WhiteWave examples mentioned earlier. Much like the dairy industry, the plant milk industry includes numerous examples of large companies purchasing smaller firms, creating joint ventures and buying each other out (Du Bois 2008). As noted by Kowitt (2016), the purchase by French multinational dairy corporation Danone of WhiteWave may seem contradictory (a dairy milk producer investing in plant milk). However, from a business perspective a merger like this makes sense for the dairy industry—to take over the very sector that is trying to disrupt the dairy market. This strategy is comparable to that of dairy corporations selling organic products, which, in addition to plant milk, satisfy consumers who want a product perceived as more healthful and environmentally friendly. Thus economic and human interests continue to operate at the core of most plant milk brands, as opposed to the ethical consideration of non-­human animals. Mergers between the dairy and plant milk industry call for consumers to critically assess brands if they want to engage in ethical consumption. Applying a critical perspective on race, gender, and class to plant milk highlights other problematic aspects. Veganism is still a predominantly white diet in most Western contexts. The social justice, food movement opposed to dairy and meat has tended to be animated by people from privileged backgrounds that are not as constrained as others by the social and cultural networks they finds themselves in (DuPuis 2002: 202). The pea milk produced by Ripple was introduced at a price that is four times as high as the price of regular dairy milk, making it unaffordable for many consumers (Kirkova 2016). Within the plant alternative milk sector, discussions about the environmental impact and social and ecological sustainability of different plant milk have begun to surface. Each product not only has its own distinctive environmental impact but also its own economic geography. Inputs are sourced from particular places and ownership structures vary. While dairy milk is primarily a regional or national-­scale industry (Jönsson 2005),8 81.7 percent of the world’s almonds are grown in the United States with considerable detrimental environmental consequences, in particular for the drought-­ravaged state of California (USDA 2015a).9 Almond milk is thus a decidedly global food product. Acknowledging this aspect accentuates questions of social and economic sustainability. Future developments in the plant milk sector pose new ethical, social, and cultural challenges. Some companies are planning to use artificially produced “animal free” dairy 210

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milk (O’Callaghan 2014), raising concerns similar to those that have emerged vis-à-­vis the production of in-­vitro meat. Others, like pea milk producer Ripple, claim they are open to “use a variety of raw materials” and “other on-­trend ingredients in future” (Watson 2016). What are the implications of a future where synthetic biology opens up to producing human milk on a bigger commercial scale, for instance, the sale of human milk products by US company Medolac (Cohen 2017b)? And if cow’s milk, as Oatly’s founder claims, is not the ideal model or original for the oat milk they produce, then what is? Would it be possible to imagine plant milk that explicitly attempts to replicate human milk? On an ontological level, the development of plant milk raises many questions. It signals the emergence of a post-­dairy generation in the sense that milk is no longer defined as the substance secreted by mammary glands. Non-­dairy milk belongs to a new post-­animal food movement that is gaining strength.

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CHAPTER 11 CRITICAL ECOFEMINISM: MILK FAUNA AND FLORA Greta Gaard

“What is it?” In the English language, indeterminables and inanimates are referred to as “it.” The table, a stone, the beautifully arranged luncheon buffet, a bird, the person crossing the street wearing a dress and high heels, long hair, earrings, and a beard. “What is it?” Through binary gender identification, some of these indeterminate “its” come into focus—a female cardinal, for example—but others do not. Gender dualisms organize Western culture’s perspectives on identity, relations among allegedly discrete entities, and the larger order of the world. Unless entities can be forced to conform to these gender dualisms, binary thinking offers little information for understanding the table, the meal, the bearded person in a dress. “What is it?” New materialist philosophies assure us that all matter has agency, a capacity for acting in the world according to its own telos. According to material feminists, all matter takes shape intra-­actively (Barad 2007): no single entity exists apart from the influence or connection with another. All bodies are transcorporeal bodies (Alaimo 2010), emerging from and co-­constituting them/ourselves in relation to one another. These material feminisms give a new spin to earlier feminist psychologies (Chodorow 1978; Gilligan 1982) which found that many (Euro-American) women’s (and some men’s) self-­identities are constructed within and emerge from relationships, whereas dominant-­group men’s self-­identities are constructed in conformity with autonomous individualism, an identity that underlies Western culture’s disconnected thinking about economics and ecology, people and place, humans and other animals, and the more-­than-human world. Relational thinking—whether ecofeminist, new materialist, or indigenous—understands matter as dynamic, as flow, recognizes the bubbling of volcanic lava in a now seemingly inert stone (Cohen 2015; Gärdebo, Öhman, and Maruyama 2014; Plumwood 2007), or sees the clear-­cut forest still present in the oak table, the birds and deer and raccoons scattering from the chainsaws and logging trucks, a hillside covered with dry and dismembered tree branches, a stagnant stream and gasping fish. Simultaneously this perspective recognizes diverse humans seated around the table, each intra-­acting with their own past and present relations to material beings both internal and proximate, all raced/classed/gendered, passing plates or platters on which other beings—pigs, turkeys, cows, broccoli, and onions—have been separated from their communities, their soils,

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their offspring, or mates, confined, dismembered, and killed. This table, these diners, this meal: which perspectives halt, finding the table or the luncheon too bleak to be named, preferring the objectifying and de-­animating “it”? At what point does naming the flows of matter transgress the academic, get cat-­called as the equivalent of polemics, and beat a hasty return to “it” as the preferable choice for saving social graces, scholarly opprobrium, and human appetite? What is it? In The Politics of Reality, feminist philosopher Marilyn Frye (1983) uses the image of the birdcage to explain the interlocking systems of oppression. The wires of the cage seem so thin, and there’s so much air between them; why can’t the bird escape? Frye’s analysis explains the oppression of marginalized groups, and the ways the different systems of oppression weave together and become mutually reinforcing. But Frye’s analysis does not include the bird herself, except as metaphor: the bird is an “it” to Frye, making the bird’s oppression not visible, even in Frye’s intersectional feminist analysis. This is typical of humanist feminism, which continues to regard other species—birds, broccoli, birch trees—as “it.” From vegan feminism, ecofeminist animal studies, and their nextgen eco-­anarchist hybrid, critical animal studies, the animacy of more-­than-human animals (the fauna) comes into focus as not a matter merely of agency but of power as well. The gender of other species matters to these feminist perspectives in their analyses of oppression, as females are exploited for their sexual, gestational, and reproductive capacities in ways that males are not—and this exploitation is not limited to nonhuman species, but blows back onto humans, adding layers of gendered animalization to the many types of intra-­ human oppression (Adams [1990] 2010; 2010). Looking at the luncheon from this standpoint, the milk, cream, and cheese come into focus as displaced nursing materials, taken from mammal mothers who would use this material to feed their own offspring, analogous to the enslaved and superficially free black women who were hired to nurse the babies of white middle-­class women, leaving these “wet-­nurses’ ” own infants to feed on poor nutritional and affectional substitutes (DuPuis 2002). Feminist animal studies and allied perspectives recognize the denied telos and animacy of the turkey and her artificially enlarged breast, which caused her legs to break before slaughter; recognize the pig’s intelligence that was no safeguard against a life of confinement, misery, and death. But these views do not say much about the broccoli or the birch trees. Critical plant studies research confirms that plants have many of the same capacities as animals—a finding that puts terror in the hearts of vegan and vegetarian activists, who are well accustomed to the carnivorist taunt that “plants have feelings, too!” This heckling is not a signal of greater compassion for all beings, but rather a “to-­hell-with-­it-I-have-­ to-eat-­something” attitude that dismisses all interests of the more-­than-human world, and favors the interests of insatiable humanist overconsumption. And yet, malice apart, plants do have sentience, and this research-­based claim raises a more significant question: “without creating a moral underclass, how do we make ethical food choices in light of the fact that all potential ‘foods’ are sentient beings?” (Gaard 2016). What if critical plant studies research could be drawn into conversation with material feminisms, with vegan 214

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ecofeminism, queer ecologies, and critical animal studies? Could we then develop a clearer understanding of our relations to those plant–animal border-­crossers, the algal mixotrophs (University of Kalmar 2007), or the rather queer relations observed among penguins, mallard ducks, bluegill sunfish, bonobos, and butterflies (Bagemihl 1999; Dunkle 1991; de Waal 2001; Roughgarden 2004)? What is it—and what is our ethical relationship with it? Look—here comes the bearded lady at last. Queer and transgender studies are catching up to these questions of more-­thanhuman agency. Special issues of the Journal for Critical Animal Studies (Grubbs 2012), Gay & Lesbian Quarterly (Chen and Luciano, “Queer Inhumanisms,” 2012), and Transgender Studies Quarterly (Hayward and Weinstein, “Tranimalities,” 2015) have recently devoted attention to the sometimes-­overlapping intersections of queer theory and antispeciesist praxis (JCAS), queer theory and posthumanisms (GLQ), or transgender theory and animal studies (TSQ). Indeed, transgendered people, captive Africans, indigenous North Americans, African (“exotic”) animals, and carnivorous plants have long populated the zoos, circuses, and/or freak shows of colonial empires. What alliances among the liberatory perspectives on these captivities have yet to be explored, beyond the many ways these beings are eroticized and exoticized, animalized, objectified, and instrumentalized by the Master Model (Plumwood 1993)? Distinctions between the activist-­oriented critical animal studies, postcolonial studies, and vegan ecofeminism contrast with the highly theorized and more academically focused orientations of posthumanisms and human–animal studies (Gaard 2012)—and also between the radical potential of transgender studies, on the one hand, and the more assimilationist movement that gay and lesbian (aka “queer”) studies has become (Conrad 2014; Stryker 2004). What is it? And who are we, in relation to it? These questions use milk—in its many scientific and cultural constructions—as a lens for exploration, bringing together intersections of queer ecofeminist, transgender, material feminist, postcolonial, critical animal, and critical plant studies perspectives to articulate a more critical ecofeminism.

Milk fauna In vernacular English, to “milk” something is to take it for everything you can get—but this is an adult’s slang. For newborn mammals, mother’s milk is a priceless gift: it offers nutrition, hydration, and affection, ecologically packaged at the right temperature. But these benefits are not equally utilized by all populations across race and class, nor have they been measured in breastfeeding relationships that are commodified to cross race and class boundaries.1 Exploring the economic value of breastmilk, Mothering magazine founder Peggy O’Mara (2012) did the math, bringing together the $4 billion a year in US formula sales, the $1 billion annual health care cost-­savings from breastfeeding, the number of mothers (549,378) nursing through the recommended first six months postpartum, and the costs hospitals pay for handling donated breastmilk—$96–160 a quart in the US. O’Mara concluded: this small percentage (13.3 percent) of nursing mothers generates $7 billion 215

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in Gross Domestic Product. In just six months, these breastfeeding moms outstrip the economic value of two years of formula sales (O’Mara 2012). The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) (2012) estimates even higher, suggesting the lives of 900 babies would be saved along with $13 billion in health care if 90 percent of US women would breastfeed for the first six months of life. But today, only 12 percent of mothers follow AAP guidelines. Who are they, and why do the other 88 percent of moms stop nursing? (Smith this volume). According to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2010), there are racial and ethnic differences in breastfeeding, with educated middle-­class Asian/Pacific Islander mothers breastfeeding at the highest rates (52 percent) at six months, followed by Hispanic mothers (45 percent), Euro-American mothers (43 percent), then American Indian mothers (37 percent) and African American mothers (26 percent). Predictably, economic pressures make these percentages even lower. Histories of racism and colonialism in the US legitimating the rape of indigenous and African women, the theft and sale of their children in boarding schools or in slavery, and the requisite nutritional and affectional neglect of African infants when their mothers were used as wet nurses and “mammies” for white slaveowners’ children all provide some historical context for today’s low breastfeeding rates (Collins 1990; Smith 2005). For all women, the US cultural hostility to the material realities of motherhood can be seen in the (1) stigmas around welfare for single mothers and their children; (2) workplace policies restricting maternity leave and flexitime; (3) women’s persistently lower wages; and (4) the lack of national legislation both correcting these phenomena and protecting breastfeeding in the workplace. Unpaid female caregiving is the lifeblood of families, and the heart of neoliberal economies. Including child-­rearing, cooking, managing household finances, resolving emotional conflicts, and chauffeuring, Edelman Financial Services estimated a mother’s worth at $508,700 a year, not including retirement and health benefits (Crittendon 2001: 8). The US has the lowest rates of maternity leave of all industrialized nations, offering only twelve weeks of unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, or six weeks under the California paid family leave law, as compared to Germany and Sweden’s forty-seven weeks of full-­time-equivalent paid leave, Norway’s forty-four weeks, and Greece’s thirty-four weeks. Under these conditions, Crittendon calls the AAP breastfeeding guidelines “a sick joke” (2001: 258). She explains, In economics, a “free rider” is someone who benefits from a good without contributing to its provision: in other words, someone who gets something for nothing. By that definition, both the family and the global economy are classic examples of free riding. Both are dependent on female caregivers who offer their labor in return for little or no compensation. Crittendon 2001: 9 But when women’s breastmilk is introduced as a market commodity, it fares poorly. In 2010, New York Chef Daniel Angerer produced his wife’s breastmilk cheese at Klee 216

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Brasserie and was promptly shut down by the New York Health Department (Inbar 2010). A year later, a Covent Garden store in London, Icecreamists, had begun selling human breastmilk in a champagne glass and labeled the product “Baby Gaga.” Allegedly the woman who donated the first 30 ounces of breastmilk was not paid for her time or bodily fluids, but she did have to undergo health screening; thirteen more women had volunteered to donate their breast milk as well. Reporting on his experience of eating human breastmilk cheese in the Village Voice blogs, Robert Sietsema (2011) reported “it feels like cannibalism,” arguing “Women are not farm animals.” If eating women’s breastmilk “feels like cannibalism,” how does it feel to eat other females’ milk? And what does it feel like to be a “farm animal”? For an animal whose natural lifespan is twenty to twenty-five years, cows in dairy production now survive only four to five years. The cow’s milk output has increased from 2,000 pounds/year in 1950 to up to 50,000 pounds of milk in 2004, thanks to bovine growth hormones, putting enormous pressure on the cows’ bodies (Keon 2010: 192–6). Artificially inseminated at fifteen months of age, a dairy cow suffers an endless cycle of pregnancy and lactation, milked two to three times daily by electronic milking machines, conditions that cause mastitis and other infections that must be treated with antibiotics. Fed an energy-­ dense food, she may spend her whole life confined in a concrete stall or standing on a slatted metal floor. Her calves are taken from her within hours after birth, with females kept to replace their mothers in the dairy, and males sent to veal farms, where they are confined in crates so tight they cannot move, and fed an iron-­deficient diet until they are slaughtered at fourteen to seventeen weeks of age (Robbins 1987: 112–17). Predictably, the larger dairies also produce more manure and methane, polluting the air and water. Using Crittendon’s critique of unpaid caregiving, the industrialized dairy system is also a “free rider,” profiting at the expense of the cows, the small dairy farmers, and the dairy consumers as well. Since the late 1960s, this system has been exported globally, most notably in Nestlé’s powdered milk campaign in Africa, and later in India’s own Amul corporation (Gaard 2013). Since the Great Depression in 1930s America, dairy cows have been producing more milk for humans than the market could handle, and when government programs to purchase and store the excess could not keep up with the costs, the United States Department of Agriculture instituted a Dairy Diversion Program and then a Dairy Termination Program, and most recently a “herd retirement” program that slaughtered more than 500,000 dairy cows between 2003 and 2010 to raise the price of milk, making dairy industry profits of over $11.7 billion, raising prices for American dairy consumers, and driving more small family farmers out of business (Mannix and Mullen 2012). Whereas in the 1980s there were at least 8,500 small dairy farms in Minnesota, by 2007, that number had dropped to 2,000. What is the embodied experience of a dairy cow, and how can we know it? To date, this question has been addressed primarily from the standpoint of the animal sciences. Acknowledging the well-­known role of the hormone oxytocin (OT) in pregnancy, birth, and lactation, these animal scientists examine OT specifically in terms of milk production and maternal behaviors. One study compares milk production when mother cows are milked in the presence of their calves, and then allowed to nurse their calves, versus cows 217

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that are exclusively machine milked without their calves (Kaskous et al. 2006); this study finds that the bodies of mother cows release more OT in the presence of their calves, and thus they produce more milk even though they nurse the calves after machine milking. Without their calves, mother cows produce little or no OT, reducing the milk production (“ejection”) to such an extent that dairy farmers regularly rely on “tactile teat stimulation, either manually or by the milking machine,” and dairy scientists believe “it is necessary to elevate oxytocin blood concentrations either by exogenous oxytocin or by applying nervous stimuli such as vaginal stimulation which are strong enough to induce endogenous oxytocin release” (Bruckmaier 2005: 271). In the diction of these dairy scientists, humanities scholars will readily note the passive voice, a mode of diction that neatly sidesteps the question, “who is stimulating this cow’s teats and vagina, and for whose pleasure or purpose?” Linking heterosexism and humanism, pattrice jones (2011: 47) observes: “A primary tenet of gay liberation is that what consenting people do with each other’s bodies is nobody else’s business. And, of course, eating meat is something you do to somebody else’s body without their consent.” jones’ observation about consent clarifies the power relations in this animal-­science-initiated and uninvited sexual abuse of “dairy” cows. Studies of “weaning distress” find that this distress can be reduced by “disentangling” the various aspects of weaning—cow–calf separation and the act of nursing (Jasper, Budzynska, and Weary 2008; Weary, Jasper, and Hötzel 2008). Acknowledging that OT is involved in nursing for both the mother cow (as a response to the presence of the calf and teat stimulation, OT promotes lactation) and her calf (OT is released in the calf ’s body “only when calves were nursing from the cow and not when drinking milk from a bucket”) animal science researchers then propose that OT is comparable to other “opiate-­like substances in milk” rather than a material produced through and reinforcing attachment, and thus “young mammals develop an addiction to milk and without that source of opiates, they become like addicts craving their drug of choice!” (Weary, Jasper, and Hötzel 2008: 29). Pathologizing OT—the biological foundation of the mammal mother–infant affectionate attachment, a material and relationship crucial to species survival—these animal scientists strive to construct their own role in separating mother cow–newborn calf dyads as simply hastening an act of healthy separation required for adulthood in liberal cultures, where autonomous individualism (evidently) can be extended from humans to lactating females of diverse mammal species, all without providing for their enfranchisement. A cornerstone of animal science scholars’ arguments is the theory of “parent–offspring conflict” first described in Robert Trivers (1974) and persistently cited as a fact supporting the commercial dairy farmers’ practice of separating mother cows and calves within two to six hours after birth. According to this theory, “weaning conflict” arises from the fact that while mammal infants benefit from continued mothering and nursing, the “level of maternal investment” decreases with age, and the mammal mothers “do better” or “benefit” from investing in future reproduction and new offspring, leaving the older offspring to forage for themselves. Yet all their data point to the fact that severing the mother cow–calf relationship—a complex relationship that involves a constellation of maternal behaviors responding to the co-­presence of mother and calf (licking, sniffing, 218

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nursing, calling, and bio-­behavioral synchrony)—is what causes emotional, behavioral, and biological distress. Instead of focusing on the material of milk production, studies of OT in human mammals tend to focus on relational behaviors of attachment, nurturance, empathy, and happiness—yet material and relational elements are present for both bovine and human mother–infant pairs. In the special 2012 issue of Hormones and Behavior addressing “Oxytocin, vasopressin and social behavior,” scholars suggest that these hormones “modulate human social behavior and cognition,” “enhance interpersonal trust,” and “have been linked to attachment, generosity, and even pair bonding in humans” (Young and Flanagan-Cato 2012). As with other animal studies, these studies of human relations showed that OT release is behaviorally influenced, promoted by the mother’s breastfeeding, her physical proximity (which includes touch, odor, movements, and body rhythms), her affectionate gaze and vocalizations, which together create the bio-­ behavioral synchrony that lays the foundation for such social, emotional, and cognitive competencies as self-­regulation, empathy, social adaptation, and a reduced risk of depression, as well as supporting more secure romantic relationships in adulthood. Most interesting for gender equity is the study assessing OT levels in first-­time parents, which found “comparable levels of baseline OT in fathers and mothers,” indicating that “active paternal care provides one pathway to activate the OT system in bi-­parental mammals, which in mothers is triggered by birth and lactation” (Feldman 2012: 385). Animal science research can thus be used to undermine or to advance animal industry and technology, and influence interspecies relations. The dance of infant cry and maternal milk letdown is biologically and behaviorally encoded, but the code can be broken; in 2012, animal scientists are selectively breeding cows who seem indifferent to separation from their newborn calves—a separation that undermines dairy production and profits, as cows separated from their calves bellow and appear to grieve for days afterwards, sometimes ramming themselves against their stalls in attempts to reunite with their calves. News articles report the “amazing” feats of cows returning across miles of countryside in order to nurse calves from whom they were forcibly separated (Dawn 2008: 162–4). To conceal this relational ontology, the US Dairy Industry promotes advertising that presents milk as a commodity, an object of liquid-­in-a-­glass that can produce “milk mustaches” and “strong bones/bodies” while concealing the fate (veal for males, future dairy cows for females) of those calves for whom the mothers’ milk was created to feed. No wonder that the viewing public has conveniently forgotten the fact that “milk” comes from teats and not cartons; such elision enables industrial dairy sales and production. But inside each glass of milk is the story of a nursing mother separated from her offspring; to foreground this story, Lisa Kemmerer (2011) proposes the term “nursing milk.”

Queering critical frameworks: Flora But why exclude the milk of species beyond mammals from this interrogation? Queering the critical framework here can offer a clearer analysis of the term “milk” as a category, a 219

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commodity, a relationship, and a verb articulating material intra-­action. The similarities between animal studies and plant studies are one impetus for proposing this intersectional analysis; those between queer ecofeminism and transgender studies, another. As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1993: xii) has explained, “The word ‘queer’ itself means across—it comes from the Indo-European root—twerkw, which also yields the German quer (transverse), Latin torquere (to twist), English athwart.” In their Introduction to a special issue of GLQ on “Queer Inhumanisms,” Dana Luciano and Mel Y. Chen (2015: 189) explain that “the encounter with the inhuman expands the term queer past its conventional resonance as a container for human sexual nonnormativities, forcing us to ask, once again, what ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ might look like apart from the anthropocentric forms with which we have become perhaps too familiar.” Augmenting Sedgwick’s explication of “queer,” Eva Hayward and Jami Weinstein in Transgender Studies Quarterly (2015: 201) propose “trans*” and specifically “tranimalities” as terms that utilize humanism’s exclusion of transgendered and more-­than-human animals from consideration, and “enmesh trans* and animals in a generative (if also corrosive) tension leading to alternate ways of envisioning futures of embodiment, aesthetics, biopolitics, climates, and ethics.” Just as Donna Haraway has claimed “we have never been human” (Haraway 2008: 1) and Monique Wittig ([1992] 2002: 32) has written that “ ‘woman’ has meaning only in heterosexual systems of thought and heterosexual economic systems,” it is time to trans* “milk” exploring its meanings not only among mammals but also working within, across, into, and through the analytical frameworks of gender, sexuality, and species. The new field of plant studies offers rich foundations for this exploration. Sprouting up through journals such as Quanta (McGowan 2013), Mother Earth News (Angier 2013), Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts (Miller 2012), Societies (Gagliano 2013; Ryan 2012), and even The Journal for Critical Animal Studies (Houle 2011), plant studies emerged into popular culture with the publication of Michael Pollan’s (2013) “The Intelligent Plant” in The New Yorker. There, Pollan reports the findings of biologists— molecular, cell, plant—confirming capacities that new materialists call agency (Coole and Frost 2010) and suggesting paradigm-­shifting parallels to animal capacities as well (see Table 11.1). Not surprisingly, there are at least two dissenting branches of the field. Anxious to safeguard their work as legitimate science by avoiding anthropocentrism and animism, conservative (read “hard science”) plant scientists interpret their data in very humanist ways that preserve the animal/plant species hierarchy, rejecting the terms “plant communication” and “plant neurobiology” for “plant signaling,” and “learning” for “adaptation” (Pollan 2013). More progressive (read “humanities”) plant studies scholars, however, suggest not only that we should “stop anthropomorphizing plants” but actually “try instead to think like them, to phytomorphize ourselves” (McGowan 2013). Challenging evolutionary biology’s misuse of the concept, “survival of the fittest,” Monica Gagliano concludes that even “the very competitive evolutionary process of natural selection involves cooperation,” and “cooperation and competition can coexist” because among plants, more cooperative, “collective associations are indeed an ecologically common state of affairs” (Gagliano 2013: 153). “Thinking plant-­thought shoves us in a 220

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Table 11.1  Behaviors confirming agency in plants and animals Behaviors confirming agency

Plants

Animals

Senses: apparatus and ability to sense and optimally respond to environmental variables

A vine or root “knows” when it encounters a solid object, and vines grow toward supports Plant behavior suggests plants hear the sound of flowing water, and respond to potential threats by generating defense chemicals Fifteen to twenty distinct senses: •  sense and respond to chemicals in the air or on their bodies •  react differently to various wavelengths of light and shadow

five senses: •  smell •  taste •  sight •  touch •  sound

Communication

Plant “signaling” occurs through the release of volatile chemicals, or the production of predator-­repelling toxins

Vocalizations, body movements, postures, scents

“Intelligence”

Plants know their environment, location, and other plants nearby

Brain, neurons, nervous system, consciousness

Root tips gather and assess data from their environment and respond in ways that benefit the plant community, kin, and beyond

Ability to reason, judge

Store information biologically, through molecular wrapping around chromosomes (epigenetics)

Memory and learning: laying down new connections in a network of neurons

Self-­identity

“Distributed intelligence” through root networks; know their environment; may use fungal networks to nourish seedlings and even trade nutrients across subspecies

Self-­awareness as individuals, family, and species members

Arguments for uniqueness (and hence, moral standing, moral consideration, and possibly “rights”)

Can lose up to 90% of their bodies without being killed

Ability to feel emotions, i.e., love, anger, loyalty, joy, playfulness, grief, depression, appreciation of beauty, loneliness, compassion, jealousy, regret, sociality

Plant signaling: molecular “vocabulary” releases to signal distress, deter or poison enemies, recruit animals to perform services (i.e., pollination)

Data sources from Angier 2013; Bekoff 2007; Bekoff and Pierce 2009; Chamovitz 2012; Gagliano 2013; Pollan 2013; Ryan 2012.

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better way than thinking animal-­thoughts does,” argues Karen Houle in the Journal of Critical Animal Studies, since the ecologically “ ‘correct unit’ of analysis is not the individual, nor the dyad, but ‘the assemblage’ ” (Houle 2011: 111). Though not explicitly drawing on queer studies, Houle’s argument uses a posthumanist methodology that compares favorably with queer methodology (i.e., Browne and Nash 2010).2 As Cary Wolfe explains, posthumanism involves both content and method: . . . one can engage in a humanist or a posthumanist practice of a discipline. . . . Just because a historian or literary critic devotes attention to the topic or theme of nonhuman animals doesn’t mean that a familiar form of humanism isn’t being maintained through internal disciplinary practices that rely on a specific schema of the knowing subject and the kind of knowledge he or she can have. So even though your external disciplinarity is posthumanist in taking seriously the existence and ethical stakes of nonhuman beings (in that sense, it questions anthropocentrism) your internal disciplinarity may remain humanist to the core. Wolfe 2009: 572 Both posthumanist and queer methodologies reject the essentialist, unified Cartesian human for a socially constructed plurality of continually shifting identities and selves (though the explicit inclusion of sexuality [queer] and gender [trans*] eludes posthumanism); yet posthumanist, queer, and trans* methodologies can be seen in Houle’s approach to plant studies. For example, Houle provocatively rejects the humanist and heteronormative hegemony of mutualism as a framework in plant studies, challenging the conceptual gesture that defines plant behaviors as “communication” only in mutualist (and heteronormative) dyads: “if the benefits to the emitter and receiver [of plant signals] are not equal and not mutual, the description of the plant behavior is downgraded from ‘communication’ to ‘eavesdropping’ ” and the “third party is called a ‘cheater’ ” (Houle 2011: 109). Instead, Houle suggests framing these communications not as “illicit” but as “actions of generosity and gift . . . spontaneous, non-­meritocratic . . . uncontainable excess” (109) that prefigure the “queer interspecies desire” of tranimalities and the polyamorous ecosexuality later described by Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle (2016). Pointing to the “permanent and varied role of organic and inorganic thirds and fourths in every communication mechanism” (Houle 2011: 110), Houle invokes Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of “unholy alliances” to describe plant relations as “a radical collectivity” that transforms sociality and kinship “beyond any simple sense of between” to a broader “among” (111). Houle advocates “becoming-­plant” for the ways it “opens up thinking about relations as transient alliances rather than strategies,” and “credits the accomplishment of identity and intimacy as a radically collective achievement” (112). These arguments fit well with new materialism’s concept of transcorporeality (Alaimo 2010) as well as queer and trans* theories of interplay and co-­emergences among identity, sexuality, and community (Hayward and Weinstein 2015). Leading ecocriticism’s vegetal branch of “critical plant studies,” Catriona Sandilands (2014b) conceives of plant studies as emerging from and companioning critical animal 222

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studies. Her work on Queer Ecology (Mortimer-Sandilands and Erickson 2010) has explored the ubiquitous presence of queer animals that usefully complicates heteronormative assumptions about sexuality, embodiment, and authenticity. Following models of queering animal studies, Sandilands (2014b) proposes the concept of “botanical queers” that illuminates how plant lives offer the potential to complicate heteronormative (and humanist) conceptions of identity, kinship, and time. As with animal studies articulations of posthumanities, plant studies perspectives can be understood through their genealogies. The science studies perspectives in plant studies trace their field from “electrifying discovery” in 1983, through “decisive debunking” in 1984, and on to “resurrection” by 1990 (McGowan 2013). Companioned by more popular science texts such as Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire (2001) and Daniel Chamovitz’ What A Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses (2012), this science studies branch has gained academic attention through professional organizations such as the International Society of Plant Signaling and Behaviour, whose annual conference in summer 2013 drew scholars from over forty countries, and was discussed in the popular debut of plant studies (Pollan 2013). Not surprisingly, both the purposes for plant studies research and the dominant standpoints seem overwhelmingly humanist and masculinist, instrumentalizing plants for new technologies, or theorizing about plants in ways that benefit humans. For example, Pollan (2013) cites a disproportionate number of male scientists (women number only seven out of twenty-seven researchers cited), and gives “poet-­philosopher” Stefano Mancuso of the University of Florence’s International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology greatest prominence in philosophical discussions about how to interpret the science of plant studies. According to Mancuso, the reason to study plant behavior is because “we stand to learn valuable things and develop new technologies,” perhaps “design better computers, or robots, or networks,” harness plants for computational tasks, or send them to other planets for exploration (Pollan 2013). Masculinist, instrumentalist, and gendered perspectives in plant science lead to questions that are limited and ultimately humanist: for example, observing “interplant communication” through the release of volatile chemicals, ecologists Richard Karban and Martin Heil wonder “why should one plant waste energy clueing in its competitors about a danger?” and conclude that “plant communication is a misnomer” and should be called “plant eavesdropping” or even a “soliloquy” (McGowan 2013). From a critical ecofeminist perspective, the plant studies genealogy as currently presented is a Euro-­patrilineage that parallels the developments and omissions of animal studies (Gaard 2012). Presented as if the field emerged only recently, it erases not only the methodology and findings of Nobel prize-­winner Barbara McClintock (Keller 1983) and marine biologist Rachel Carson (1951, 1962), but also two centuries of work on human–plant relations explored by women gardeners, scientific illustrators, animal writers, and ecological artists (Anderson 1991; Anderson and Edwards 2002; Gates 1998; Norwood 1993; Norwood and Monk 1987). Even more significantly, plant studies genealogies largely omit indigenous non-Western perspectives—contemporary eco-­ activists and writers such as Winona LaDuke, Tom Goldtooth, Gloria Anzaldúa, Chico Mendez, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and many others—whose cultures never made the Aristotelian 223

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divisions of humans from the rest of life, and thus whose writing and activism defending the “intra-­active” relations among humans, plants, animals, and ecosystems has never needed material feminism’s recuperative concepts of “transcorporeality” (Alaimo 2010) or “naturecultures” (Haraway 2003) to illuminate All Our Relations (LaDuke 1999). Those plant studies scholars who do attend to indigenous perspectives currently work in the humanities wing of plant studies—anthropology (Kohn 2013; Viveiros de Castro 2004), philosophy (Hall 2011; Marder 2013), and gender and cultural studies (Plumwood 2000, 2002, 2012; Sandilands 2014b).

Trans*ing milk from fauna to flora As is usual in environmental studies, the findings of the environmental sciences wing are crucial yet insufficient, and may in fact be operating on distorted premises, purposes, or hypotheses; they lack the contextual, philosophical, and political reflectiveness of the environmental humanities. Bringing forward feminist animal studies in dialog with Val Plumwood’s critical ecofeminist work on indigeneity (2000) and Deane Curtin’s (1991) contextual moral vegetarianism, Hall’s (2011) philosophical botany, and the queer/ posthumanist/feminist approaches of Hall, Gagliano (2013), and Sandilands (2014b) is necessary in cultivating a critical ecofeminist perspective on human, animal, plant, and ecological relations. Rethinking these relations augments our understanding of “species” and “milk”— a category and lens capable of illuminating human manipulations of insects (bees, tsetse flies, aphids) and plants (maple, coconut, Brosimum trees, as well as soy, almond, rice). What are the ecopolitical ethics of these manipulations, and how do these relations affect the participants of diverse species? How do these trans*species appropriations shape human identities cross-­culturally? Certainly, the constituents of milk—caseins, milk fat globules, sugars, proteins, and amino acids—vary across species, and many of these constituents appear outside of mammalian milk. For example, one variant of whey acidic protein is also involved in “the regulation of shell mineralization in mollusks such as abalone, and in . . . the innate immunity of crustaceans and perhaps insects”; “snake venom glands” also secrete these proteins as antibacterials, as do the skin glands in frogs (Oftedal 2012: 364). Animal milks’ material origins can be traced to “a glandular skin secretion” in mammalian ancestors approximately 310 million years ago (Oftedal 2012). These “synapsid” ancestors laid eggs with very thin shells vulnerable to desiccation, and, unlike their reptilian relatives, did not develop more calcified eggshells to retain moisture. Instead, they buried or incubated their eggs, moistening them with “glandular skin secretions” containing proteins and elements of the parent’s immune system. By 210 million years ago, these mammalian ancestors were producing smaller eggs unable to hold enough yolk to nourish the full development of new offspring, and milk replaced egg yolk as the primary nutrient source. While mammal ancestors have “teeth that were replaced continuously as the animal grew, allowing smaller teeth to be replaced by larger teeth as the jaw lengthened with age . . . [today] most mammals . . . have only two sets of teeth,” the initial “milk teeth” 224

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and the adult teeth (Oftedal 2012: 358). Thus, milk evolved before the appearance of mammals, and may predate the ancestral divide between lineages leading to reptiles and birds, on the one hand, and mammals on the other. One of the oldest members of the secretory calcium-­binding phosphoprotein (SCPP) family, SPARCL1, uses calcium to mineralize human bones. The SPARCL1 gene was duplicated again and again, evolving new functions. Some copies now mineralize other tissues, such as the enamel of human teeth. More than 400 million years ago, milk caseins evolved from such tooth-­mineralizing SCPPs, and can be found in all creatures with a calcified skeleton, such as bony fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals. By 160 million years ago, in the late Jurassic period, “true mammals” had evolved (Oftedal 2012: 357). Today, colloquial references to plant and animal “milk” may evade scientific foundations but still describe nourishment for milk-­ producer and offspring alike. Our transcorporeal and transspecies relations have evolutionary histories that are still present in our seemingly diverse biologies. Analogous to mammal milks in utility, bird milk feeds the young offspring in three different species, and parents of both sexes produce it (Ehrlich, Dobkin, and Wheye 1988). Pigeons secrete an extremely nutritious “crop milk” to feed their nestlings for more than two weeks. This milk is produced from the fluid-­filled cells in the lining of the crop, located at the bottom of the esophagus, and used for storing food. Young pigeons are not fed insects, so the crop milk provides critical protein. Greater flamingos produce milk from glands lining the entire upper digestive tract, feeding their young exclusively on this milk for up to two months. Flamingo milk contains more fat and less protein than pigeon milk, along with a profusion of red and white blood cells. Emperor penguin chicks may also be fed milk from the father, if the mother has not returned by the time the chick hatches: this milk is secreted by the esophagus. While “the ‘crop milk’ of pigeons, flamingoes and emperor penguins is a lipid-­rich material produced by holocrine secretion by epithelian cells of the esophagus or crop . . . it does not match [mammalian] milk in complexity, magnitude or duration of secretion” (Oftedal 2012: 356)—but the relational uses of these milks are the same. Other “milk” attributions offer no actual milk but are replete with cultural associations, assumptions, and projections of suckling desires. For example, the colloquially termed “milksnake” (Lampropeltis triangulum) was so named because it was commonly found in barns, and people (gender and sexuality unspecified, but one can speculate) once believed these reptiles “sucked milk from cow udders”—a practice anatomically impossible for snakes, whose small “gut could only hold several tablespoons of milk” anyway, and whose digestive and dietary needs are more focused on mice and rats (Vogt 1981; Lamb 2012). Lactating cows would most likely reject reptilian efforts to nurse, and without clear desire on the parts of cow or snake, the origins of this naming point to a different species, gender, and sexual orientation altogether. Another inaccurately named herpetile, the milk frog is the largest of all tree frogs in Costa Rica. This frog’s webbed hands and feet utilize large round finger disks as adhesive to grip onto slippery plant surfaces. The thick, glandular skin on the frog’s back secretes a protective milky, toxic mucous that releases when the frog feels threatened. Copious amounts of the sticky, white secretion help protect the frog from predators as well as 225

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from dehydration. In South America, some milk frogs line their tree holes with this film during the dry season to survive. For humans, the frog’s milky secretion causes painful burning or swelling to the skin and can be worse if it contacts the eyes (“Milk Frog ”). Here, the naming of “milk” seems based on the mere appearance of material similarities, rather than on fantasies of milk consumption: what is noteworthy are the recurring references to milk, even on the most tenuous associations. Other misnomers of milk across fruits, plants, and trees invite trans*ecological-­ feminist interrogations. Among milk flora, so-­called “milk fruits” come in at least two varieties. One “milk” fruit growing in the southeastern United States, the milk orange contains a latex-­based liquid traditionally used as an insect-­repellant by the indigenous Osage of North America. On the other side of the globe, “Breast milk fruit” (Chrysophyllum cainito) is native to the Greater Antilles and the West Indies, and has spread to Central America and other tropical areas including Southeast Asia; it is variously called “cainito,” “star apple,” “pomme de lait,” “Bobi wata” (“breast milk fruit” in Sierra Leone), or “vú sùra” (“milky breast” in Vietnam). Along the Mekong River Delta of Vietnam, orchard owners suggest squeezing the tough fruit so that the juice mixes with the fruit fiber, then drilling a small hole at the top of the fruit, and “drinking the flow of the fragrant juice as a baby sucks milk from its mother’s breast” (“Fruits of Vietnam” 2002). Two widely recognized “milk plants” additionally extend cultural conceptions of milk. Originally growing in the Mediterranean region, milk thistle (Silybum marianum) can now be found in dry, sunny areas worldwide (“Milk thistle” 2014). Milk thistle has been used for at least 2,000 years to support liver, kidney, and gall bladder functions, and to treat mushroom poisoning. The plant is named variously for the “milky white sap that comes from the leaves when they are crushed,” for the “white splashes” on the leaves, or for the spiny leaves with “white veins running through them, look[ing] much like spilt milk.” Again, science studies researchers list the plant’s human benefits as including its “antioxidant, anti-­inflammatory, and immunomodulatory actions” as well as anti-­cancer effects for skin, breast, lung, colon, prostate, and kidney carcinomas—but seem less interested in describing what the “milk” does for the plants themselves. Like the milk thistle, milkweed (Asclepias) is also named for its milky sap, which consists of a latex containing alkaloids and several other complex compounds including cardenolides. American milkweeds are a larval food source for monarch butterflies and their relatives, and an important nectar source for native bees, wasps, and other nectar-­seeking insects, who reciprocate the plant’s gift by flying off with some of the plant’s pollen sacs, assisting in the reproduction. The milkweed’s latex fluids also function as self-­defense, limiting the damage caused by caterpillars. It appears that possessing a milky material can suffice to define a plant’s entire identity, a reductionism in perception and naming comparable to perceiving a gay man only in terms of his sexuality, or reductively perceiving a cow exclusively in terms of her lactation. Many plants and trees produce a white juice, scientifically called latex, but colloquially called milk; some milks are benign, while others are toxic. Among benign tree milks, the “palo de vaca” or cow tree (Brosimum galactodendron) grows in the Andes of northwestern 226

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Venezuela, where indigenous people drink the milk, dip bread in it, and give it to their children. The sap and leaves of the tree are also thought to increase milk supply in cows and goats, and the breastmilk of humans as well (Anitei 2007). The Demerara milk tree (Lacmellea utilis) from Guyana in South America also produces a latex “milk,” consumed by the Arawak people. Other milk trees include the Ceylon cow-­tree (Gymnema lactiferum or Asclepias lactifera) used in Sri Lanka to increase milk flow among mammals, while its leaves and latex are used to treat septic wounds, and as a remedy for constipation, intestinal ulcers, and intestinal worms (Karuppusamy and Rajasekaran 2009). The sweet tabaiba tree (Euphorbia balsamifera) originates from the Canary Islands and North Africa, where its latex was chewed to create strong teeth, and also used against skin disorders such as warts, moles, and calluses. But both the Asclepias and Euphorbia plant families have poisonous members: the West African milk tree (Euphorbia trigona) is actually a succulent that secretes a milky white sap that causes skin inflammation and even blindness if it touches a person’s eyes; the Euphorbia tirucalli of Tanzania bears a similarly toxic latex. Clearly, the plants themselves produce the “milk” not to “nurse” others, but to protect their own present and future growth. Latex trees—sometimes called rubber trees—have coexisted and flourished with indigenous human cultures for centuries. In the rainforests of Brazil, the battle between indigenous rubber tappers and cattle ranchers came to international attention with the murder of Chico Mendes in December 1988. Rubber can be tapped from a different place in the same tree every few days, but the same position in the tree can only be tapped every one to two years. This enables the tree to be tapped without harming its growth. Using the rhetoric of human rights, indigenous communities strive to protect both themselves and the forests where they live, an environmental justice perspective on “milk” trees that articulates a relational identity of sustainability, in stark contrast to the humanist and colonialist perspective of the loggers and cattle ranchers. Variously edible, medicinal, or protective due to its poisonous character, the “milk” of these trees is not “real” milk—latex is a complex emulsion consisting of proteins, alkaloids, starches, sugars, oils, tannins, resins, and gums that coagulate on exposure to air. It serves mainly as a defense against herbivorous insects. But in the phrase “real milk,” whose “milk” becomes the standard of authenticity? Evidently it is animal milk, and moreover, mammalian milk. In the US and European countries, it is usually cow’s milk, though the milk of goats and sheep extends the radius to non-Western countries, and buffalo milk includes India and parts of Africa. But “milk” does not mean human milk— that milk is called human milk, mother’s milk, or breastmilk. To see this milk everywhere in “milky” plants and fruits is to articulate not just recognition but yearning—and an invitation to appropriate and use the “milky” substance for human purposes. Like Shel Silverstein’s (1964) internationally famous children’s book, The Giving Tree, which told the story of a tree whose only desire to give the boy everything she (sic) had (until she was only a stump), the mere presence of milk is associated with unlimited nurturance for humans of a particular culture, gender, and sexuality. And these associations extend to insects. 227

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Queering insect ecologies of milk From trees and plants to birds and frogs, projections of “milk” trans*speciate vital matters. In 2012, researchers discovered that female tsetse flies not only produce milk, but that this milk contains sphingomyelinase, or “SMase,” an enzyme also important in mammalian lactation (Bhanoo 2012). Unlike mammals, the female tsetse produces a single egg and ovulates the egg into a uterus where the egg hatches and remains to complete its milk-­fed larval development. For while the larva is in the mother’s uterus, the mother fly expresses the SMase enzyme as part of the milk secreted from the fly’s milk glands. The larva feeds on the milk, and acidic conditions in the larval gut activate the enzyme (Society for the Study of Reproduction 2012). Although the mammalian and insect SMases differ, the basic structure and function of the enzymes and their products are similar. What inferences do scientists draw from this mammal–tsetse similarity? First, they propose the insects could “serve as model systems for studying metabolic diseases related to SMase deficiency” in mammals (Society for the Study of Reproduction 2012). Citing the tsetse fly’s role in transmitting sleeping sickness, which strikes roughly 20,000 people annually and puts 70 million sub-Saharan Africans at risk, scientists also observe that reduced levels of the SMase enzyme lead to poor health in tsetse offspring, and they suggest targeting this enzyme to help decrease the tsetse population and reduce the incidence of sleeping sickness for humans and its correlate, nagana, in pigs, cattle, and horses (Frazer 2014). Focused on manipulating another species’ milk in order to annihilate their offspring in the womb—reducing suffering for humans and other animals, certainly—scientists nonetheless fail to ask what ecological functions the tsetse fly plays in the larger ecosystem, and how these functions might be fulfilled while protecting humans and their animals. Is this focus mere humanism, or does the presence of milk lend additional authorization to the insect’s objectification? Another unusual insect milk involves aphids—and their ant keepers. Aphids drink plants’ nutrients and excrete a sugary substance called “honeydew” that is a favorite of “herder” ants. Some species of herder ants follow the aphids, devouring their droppings, while others “milk their herds by tickling them with their antennae” (Zeldovich 2014). The herder ants move the aphids to “better pastures and shield them from rain,” sometimes carrying them from one plant to another. These ants also care for and protect aphids’ eggs, treating them as their own and keeping them safe inside their colonies for winter. When a young queen of a herder ant colony leaves on a mating flight, she brings an aphid in her mouth to her new home. But sometimes these herder ants appear to keep the aphids enslaved, biting off the aphids’ wings so they won’t fly away, and releasing chemicals from their feet that make aphids move slower, becoming more docile (Imperial College London 2007; Zeldovich 2014). While herder ants protect “their” aphids from predators—attacking ladybugs that try to feast on their aphid “herds”—they sometimes devour the aphids, too. How do human scientists interpret these multispecies interactions? One biological scientist observes “although both parties benefit from the interaction . . . the aphids are 228

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manipulated to their disadvantage; for aphids, the ants are a dangerous liaison” (Imperial College London 2007). Others use appearances of ant–aphid exploitation as appeals to nature that justify human exploitations of other species: herder ants “treat the bugs as their dairy cows” in “much the same way we keep cattle,” and “just like humans take away their animals’ freedom in exchange for care and protection,” ants do too (Zeldovich 2014). One scientist even blames the aphids for their confinement, suggesting “it’s possible that the aphids are using [the ants’] chemical footprint as a way of staying within the protection of the ants” (Imperial College London 2007)—odd behavior for insects whose wings are bitten off, and whose whole bodies are sometimes devoured, “much like we eat our cattle” (Zeldovich 2014). Appeals to nature have often been used to legitimate human cultural norms, rationalizing injustices from compulsory heterosexuality to female gender roles and white racial superiority (Gaard 1997), and feminists have long recognized blaming the victim as another strategy for deflecting responsibility from perpetrators of violence and oppression. Here, it is rhetorically significant that both cows and aphids are portrayed as “livestock,” and as “dairy” herds to be “milked,” projecting humans’ unequal interspecies relations onto relations between aphids and ants in order to naturalize and thus legitimate human interspecies dominance. Notably, the agency and intelligence of species subordinated by humans has not been sufficient grounds for maintaining interspecies justice—despite the humanist belief in the alleged uniqueness and superiority of human agency and intelligence. Honey bees, for example, have demonstrated the ability to count up to four (Dacke and Srinivasan 2008) and to recognize human faces (Dyer, Neumeyer, and Chittka 2005). Not only do the bees communicate with one another, through scent and through the “waggle dance,” but they also appear “to argue” or even “debate” as the hive forms a collective opinion about the location of their new home (Sandilands 2014a). As with plant communication (termed “signaling” by plant scientists), biologists “take great pains to distinguish bee communication from human language” (Sandilands 2014a: 162), dismissing as anthropocentric the recognition of human–honeybee communicative kinship. One human–animal studies’ scholar similarly rejects the comparisons between cows and bees, arguing “there are significant differences between honeybees and the animals usually signified by the term ‘livestock’ ” (Nimmo 2015a: 186), and bases this claim largely on the view that “feminist critiques of objectification and Marxist critiques of alienation and exploitation, all of which presuppose an affirmation of the subject” don’t apply “when the animals in question are quintessentially collective” (Nimmo 2015b: 6). Honeybees are eusocial, an identity that rests not with the individual but with the community, and is characterized by cooperative care of all offspring, cohabitation of overlapping generations, and specialization of labor to such a degree that individuals in one task group lose the ability to perform at least one behavior of another task, enabling a higher degree of cooperative specialization (Horn 2008). The inferiority—or at least, the wildly unpopular appeal of a relational identity for Western viewers—is reinforced from human–animal studies philosophy to popular culture. Jerry Seinfeld’s comic Bee Movie (2007) popularizes honeybee society by distorting the biological facts, hetero-­ masculinizing the workers, and singling out one “pollen jock” as the hero. American 229

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viewers—socialized to believe that individualism is a requirement for psychological health and maturity, and to view masculinity as the highest form of human self-­ individuation—might not feel sympathetic to an all-­female collective, and echoes of “communism” or “socialism” might lose ticket sales. Other honeybee films, such as the documentaries Queen of the Sun (2010) and Vanishing of the Bees (2010), tend to be humanist as well, aimed at motivating humans to take action for human benefits, rather than for interspecies justice (Glasser 2011). Their focus is on beekeepers such as David Hackenberg, the beekeeper who first called attention to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in fall 2006, when he found not dead bees but empty hives. Both films’ arguments are similar: bees are central to food production, their disappearances are likely because of anti-­ecological agricultural practices, and humans will suffer a lack of food if the bees disappear. What is elided in the stories that these popular films tell are the consequences of human interventions in ecosystems for individual species, interspecies relations, and ecosystem health. Transcending the dominant humanist perspective through a queer ecofeminist perspective on milk (as situated in a trans*species ecology) provides more insight into the intra-­actions producing the honeybee crisis. In the US, CCD emerged from a constellation of events and practices beginning with, and perpetuated by, settler colonialism. When “westward expansion” cleared the Great Plains of indigenous humans, native prairie grasses, and wild buffalo, this settler colonialism removed ecosystem stabilizers and affected the wetlands and water cycles; then new settlers planted wheat monocrops (single varieties predicated on the extermination of pre-­existing or wild varieties) that could not survive the cyclical droughts characteristic of the Great Plains. It is no wonder that settler-­farmers lost their fields and homes to the Dustbowl Era of the 1930s (Morris 2015). Monocrops require pesticides (repurposed chemical compounds from the Second World War, making war on plants, animals, and ecosystems at home), and genetic engineering followed afterwards as recuperative attempts to return farming (soon becoming agribusiness) to the Great Plains. By 1980, these monocultures had created areas ripe for pests such as the Varroa mite that preys on bees. Monocultures have to be managed by ever-­stronger pesticides, with the most widely used class known as neonicotinoids (“neonics”) now widely thought to be associated with CCD, as the neonics contain a chemical neurotoxin that disrupts bees’ ability to navigate, and to find their way home (hence the empty hives). Was it a coincidence that both neonics and recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) came on the US market in the same year, 1994? While the European Union issued a ban on rBGH by December 1999, and on three of the most widely used neonics in 2013, the US Environmental Protection Agency has colluded with chemical companies, relying on studies from “company experts” to determine chemical safety, producing profits for chemical corporations at the expense of animals and ecosystems (Brinckman 2000; Morris 2015; Vallianatos 2014). With few documented improvements for crop yields (Marcotty 2014), and lethal effects on honeybees, neonics are also harmful to children: by 2015, only seven studies appeared in English globally documenting the health effects of neonics on humans. All seven found adverse effects on children, including “congenital abnormality . . . autism . . . heart defects, 230

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birth defects” (Morris 2015). Add to this constellation the practices of migratory beekeeping and the long-­distance transport of bees, along with the loss of genetic diversity in bees due to poor breeding practices of commercial breeders, and the perfect storm for honeybee exploitation comes into focus. In this nexus of events and practices, honeybees are exploited for their labor in pollination and for their production of honey, royal jelly, beeswax, propolis, and bee venom. While some argue that the bee “keeper” is not a bee farmer because beekeepers “cultivate” the conditions for bees “to flourish and to produce excess honey,” thereby shifting the interspecies relation “from domination to trust” (Nimmo 2015a: 189–90), there is nothing worthy of bee trust in the large-­scale corporate practices of beekeepers, which have produced the crashing decline in honeybee populations. Nor can we look to “the relations between hunter-­gatherers and the animals they hunt” (Nimmo 2015a: 191) as an example for human–bee interspecies trust, for this thinly masked tokenism appeals to indigenous cultural practices which do not apply to settler-­colonialist contexts (see Gaard 2001); Euro-­western beekeeping cannot be naturalized through association with indigenous hunting practices. In US cultural practices, honeybees are objectified and instrumentalized, valued primarily in terms of their labor that benefits or can be appropriated by humans. Just as Donna Haraway’s “companion species” (2003) conceals the suffering, confinement, and deaths of laboratory animals in the misnomer “working animals,”3 arguments that human–bee relations “fit the companion species mold” (Nimmo 2015a: 192) should be regarded as insufficient for structuring trans*species justice. For it is not the identity of the objectified, instrumentalized, and oppressed party to the “multispecies vision” that is of concern—whether cow or bee as “livestock”—but rather the relationship that emerges between species, and the flourishing of all parties to the “relational co-­constitution” that is the measure of trans*species justice. For honeybees whose labor, bodies, and food are manipulated and stolen by humans, these practices create a nexus of environmental injustices. Bees’ pollination labor is manipulated via captivity and transport, creating undue stresses, and exemplifying a form of labor and economic injustice. The forced breeding of bees—whereby queens’ wings are sometimes cut off to prevent them from leaving the hive, and select queens are murdered (by pinching off their heads) or forcibly inseminated while unconscious, filled with semen that will reproduce specific human-­valued traits—exemplifies a form of reproductive and sexual injustice. The honey bees are also malnourished: while pollen is the honeybees’ main source of nutrition, honey is their only food during cold weather, but the commercial beekeepers replace bees’ honey with sugar water so the beekeepers can make larger profits. Commercial beekeepers remove all the spring-­season honey, and in colder areas, some beekeepers will burn the hives, killing all the bees inside before winter starts, to reduce their costs. These human–bee “multispecies” practices exemplify food injustice. And now we come to the theft of royal jelly, the bees’ milk. Royal jelly is a glandular secretion free of p-­coumaric acid, the plant-­based chemical fed to honeybee larvae to produce worker bees (“Catch the Buzz” 2015). Based on the needs of the hive, nurse bees feed specific larvae this glandular secretion to produce new queen bees, and the royal jelly is taken from the queen larvae by commercial beekeepers 231

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when the bee larvae are about four days old. The science of milk’s evolutionary origins in glandular secretions suggest that royal jelly is bee milk, produced for bees (not humans) for the purpose of growing queens. The theft of the honey bees’ royal jelly is a form of “multispecies” intergenerational injustice.

Conclusion: living and dying in the land of milk and honey In over a dozen passages in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Exodus 3:8, 17; 13:5; 33:3), the Promised Land is referred to as a “land flowing with milk and honey” (Eretz Zavat Chalav u’Devash), signifying that humans are the chosen people for an exploitable land. Biblical scholars explain that according to the Talmud, the “honey” in this expression refers to the honey that flows from dates and figs—it is plant honey, not bee honey—and the milk is from goats, not cows, and some even believe the term refers not to milk at all, but to white wine (Enkin 2015). One rabbi observes the later ban on raising goats and sheep in Israel as a decision that weighed the economic benefits for the animals’ owners against “the environmental costs and the injury to the farmers whose crops were being damaged by the animals,” and chose a “sustainable path,” ruling “against inappropriate development that yields a quick profit for some but damages others, and causes extensive long-­term ecological damage” (Cherlow 2008). Other Torah scholars (Cherlow 2008; Posner 2008; Robins 2002) also affirm the fruit nectar as the source of the honey, and emphasize not the milk but the “flowing” that indicates “fertile pastures” and “the fertility of the Promised Land” (Posner 2008). These scholars read “milk and honey” as “allegorical tools that sexualize the land”: “it is a ripe land, a land that gushes like a surrealistic breast, and its honeyed orifices are anticipating the acts of occupation, even penetration, and then conceiving and multiplying for its masters” (Robins 2002). The Hebrew root zwv (Deut 6:3) meaning “flow, ooze, gush” refers both to the flow of blood from a menstruating woman, the discharge of semen from a man, and the gushing of intestines from a person pierced with a sword; similarly, the words interpreted as “milk” (alav) and “honey” (devasb) also have sexual content. Robins suggests the word for flow, zwb, has a connotation of “sexual distress, inappropriateness, or prohibition” that may be “indicative of ambivalence toward desire itself ” that accompanies a long tradition of male travel, conquest, and imperialism. A land abundant with fruit honey and milk flowing from plants, insects, and animals is a land with abundant water and fertile soil that nectar-­ producing flowers require, a land whose fertility is free from human control (for at the time of these biblical passages, beekeeping had not been developed). What would it mean to queer the land of milk and honey? It would mean an erotics of freedom. It would mean trans*species reproductive justice and sexual self-­ determination; it would mean trans*species labor justice and food justice. Instead of the fear that drives the desire to control, a land of milk and honey would be governed by participatory eco-­democracy. Instead of Syngenta and Bayer’s neonicotinoids, instead of manufactured bee colonies and long-­distance transport, instead of factory farms that separate mother cows from calves within hours of birth, instead of Amazonian 232

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deforestation and cattle ranches, a queer land of milk and honey would allow the intelligence and agency of ecological others to develop the fertilities that please them, fertilities that allow human coexistence rather than dominance. Instead of the cultural and economic war against human mothers that biases them against nursing their own infants, or makes it economically impossible to do so, infants and mothers could cooperatively structure their nourishing and nursing relations. In their movement to establish EcoSexuality and thereby to queer eco-­justice actions, Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle (2016) queer the metaphor of earth as mother, suggesting humans see earth as a lover whose many parts pleasure us, and whose pleasure is delightful and enlivening to our own. What would it be like to consider the erotic pleasure of cows, the delight of bees, the sensuality of plants and aphids? Doing so requires a trans*formation in self-­identity, from autonomous individualism to a transspecies eco-­identity. It involves reasoning with the body, and eroticizing the mind. Instead of separating and elevating our individual gratifications above those of others, we can envision a trans*species and trans*corporeal ecological justice of milk, where the promised land of sustainability flows unhindered. To bring about that sustainable relationship among animals and insects, humans and plants, soil and water, requires queering food justice—and centering the agency of the so-­called “food,” the relational, trans*corporeal milks.

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PART IV THINKING ABOUT PLANT MILK

CHAPTER 12 MILK AND MEANING: PUZZLES IN POSTHUMANIST METHOD Jessica Eisen

Critical Animal Studies scholars have advocated a “posthumanist ethics,” defined by a substantive focus on animals, and a methodological focus on animal experience (Wolfe 2009). Recently, other strands of critical theory, particularly critical plant studies and new materialism, have joined these calls to revise or abandon anthropocentrism, concentrating on the sentience or agentic qualities of plants and matter respectively. What would it mean to take these calls seriously in the context of milk studies? As human communities create and recreate their social and legal meanings of milk, what might a posthumanist method entail? Greta Gaard’s provocative essay in this collection invites us to ask in respect of milk: “What is it? And who are we, in relation to it?” For Gaard, a full answer to these questions takes us to the “intersections of queer ecofeminist, transgender, material feminist, postcolonial, critical animal, and critical plant studies perspectives.” Gaard’s expansive exploration of what milk is delves into the thickets of women’s unpaid productive labor; racial and economic disparities; and failed ventures to sell human-­breastmilk products in gourmet shops. Gaard references the chemical and nutritional compositions and relational matrices surrounding milk produced by non-­human mammals and birds to nourish their young; and the poisons and other substances emitted by amphibians, plants, and insects, that we humans have also chosen to term “milk” because of our own visual and cultural associations. But Gaard’s project is more than a simple descriptive catalog, surveying the many meanings of milk. Her exploration is a springboard for an ethical project: “a trans*species and trans*corporeal ecological justice of milk.” Gaard deploys the concepts of “moral standing” (which even plants may have on her account) and “justice”—which she hopes to refine in ways that make them more responsive to the diverse inhabitants of this broadened moral community. For Gaard, asking what milk is thus demands further questions, beyond the obvious reference points of the human authors and readers of texts on milk: “What is the embodied experience of a dairy cow, and how can we know it?” Pressing further still, Gaard asks “why exclude the milk of species beyond mammals from this interrogation?”, embarking on a thorough exposition of “milk” through attention to the so-­named products of birds, amphibians, and even plants. Gaard does not invoke law specifically, but law is necessarily implicated in changing conceptions of justice. Can and should law support Gaard’s vision of a land of “milk and honey” that “would allow the intelligence and agency of ecological others to develop the

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fertilities that please them, fertilities that allow human coexistence rather than dominance”? What can it mean for law to “consider the erotic pleasure of cows, the delight of bees, the sensuality of plants and aphids” (Gaard this volume)? While the ethics and poetics of critical plant scholars and new materialists legitimately embrace a certain imaginative license, this is a more fraught process for law. As Robert Cover sharply reminded those legal scholars who “blithely ignore” the social consequences of their hermeneutics, “[l]egal interpretation takes place in a field of pain and death” (Cover 1986: 1601). Marking law as a particularly hostile territory for a project like Gaard’s, Cover posits that the experiences of victims of law’s “organized violence” are “never made a part of the interpretive artifact” (1986: 1629). Cover’s admonition is undoubtedly true of the US law of milk—specifically the law of cow’s milk. The US Code of Federal Regulations offers a definition of milk, under Title 21, “Food and Drugs”: Milk means the lacteal secretion, practically free from colostrum, obtained by the complete milking of one or more healthy cows, which may be clarified and may be adjusted by separating part of the fat therefrom; concentrated milk, reconstituted milk, and dry whole milk. Water, in a sufficient quantity to reconstitute concentrated and dry forms, may be added. 21 CFR § 133.3 The cow’s experience is pushed deeply into the background of this definition. Her calf is nowhere to be seen. In fact, her milk is not for her calf at all. (I say “her milk” in the common sense, not the legal sense; at law, both she and the milk she produces belong to the human or corporate entity that owns her. At law, nothing is hers; there is no such thing as “hers.”) It is contemplated that her milk will instead be mixed with the milk of other “healthy cows”; it will be clarified, adjusted, concentrated, dried, and reconstituted. Although the human farmers, processors, distributers, advertisers, vendors, and consumers of her milk are not mentioned by name, this definition of milk is built on their interests. This law is for them. What of the lives and interests of cows? There are over 9 million “milk cows” lawfully detained on US farms (USDA 2016). In a single month, these animals produce over 17 billion pounds of milk that are lawfully expropriated for human use (USDA 2016). (Again, the terms “detention” and “expropriation” are used in their common, not legal, sense. At law, these terms and the legal limits and conditions they import do not apply to cows, who have no legal interest in their own liberty, who cannot legally own, and who are particularly vulnerable to private actors.) Humans often confine these cows intensively, in herds that number in the hundreds or thousands (Rollin 1995: 100). Although “few pastoral images [in the United States] are as powerful and pervasive as that of cows on pasture,” the most pervasive practices of dairy production prevent cows from grazing on pasture, and instead either tie them up in their stalls; confine them in unshaded outdoor dirt pens; or allow them limited freedom to move between their stalls and concrete or earthen yards (Rollin 1995: 103–4; Haskell et al. 2006). These cows are 238

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often killed after their third lactation (Rollin 1995: 108). Their short lives are characterized by injuries (“lameness”), udder infections, repeated artificial inseminations, and removal of their newborn calves before natural weaning—a process described in industry parlance as “stressful,” although the “[e]xcessive bawling, fussing, and breaking down of fences [that] occur[s] when maternal urges are . . . denied” sounds an awful lot like what we might call heartbreak (Rollin 1995: 99–108, quoting Albright 1987: 2721. Cf. Daros et al. 2014). As Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson reports, “[n]o one who has ever observed it doubts that a cow mourns the loss of her calf ” (Masson 2003: 141. Cf. von Keyserlingk and Weary 2007; Weary et al. 2008). The experiences of these cows are invisible to law—even beyond their invisibility within the regulatory definition of milk—although paradoxically law enables these experiences at every step. Most obviously, and most thoroughly explored in the legal literature, law shapes the lives of dairy cows by dividing the world into persons and things—assigning non-­human animals to the category of things, of property (Wise 2000; Francione 1995). Whatever these cows’ lives may mean to them, their legal owners have the power to name them as “milk cows” and to build their realities around that narrow vision of their existence. The property rights humans enjoy over animals are bolstered by their property rights in the farms where these animals live and die—including the right to exclude journalists, advocates, or citizens who may seek to disrupt or even simply witness their operations. The privacy of the dairy farm is further ensured by a newer form of specialized “Ag Gag” legislation designed to criminalize the collection of video footage documenting the treatment of farmed animals (Marceau 2015; Tremblay-Huet 2015). Laws governing contract assure the smooth operation of the dairy industry, as they do with other industries (Hamilton 1995). And a complex thicket of legislative and regulatory mechanisms introduced through the Farm Bill have worked to intensify dairy production by subsidizing inputs, insuring against profit drops in case of overproduction, funding agricultural research, and providing for government purchase and distribution of excess dairy (The Agricultural Act of 2014 (H.R. 2642; Pub.L. 113–79); Imhoff 2012). Law thus creates and shapes the farm in many ways. At the same time, there are few legal limits on what a human person may do to the animal property they own—vanishingly few in the case of farmed animals (Wolfson and Sullivan 2004). The US Animal Welfare Act—the primary piece of federal legislation protecting animal property from the harms their owners may inflict—expressly excludes “farm animals” from the definition of the word “animal” as it is employed throughout the entire Act (The Animal Welfare Act, Title 7, s. 2132). No federal laws govern the treatment of animals, including milk cows, prior to transport or slaughter, and state laws governing cruelty generally either exempt farmed animals altogether, or calibrate the legal definition of “cruelty” so as to exclude “customary farming practices,” without regard to the purposes of those practices or the harms they impose (Wolfson and Sullivan 2004: 206–7). Law makes the dairy farm possible, and then closes its eyes to what happens inside. It builds and then defers to the property lines it draws around the farm, around the cow, and around the milk mechanically expressed from her udder. Law supports and exacerbates background conditions of deeply unequal power, then absolves itself of 239

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responsibility for abuse. Where law speaks, it almost always expresses the unfettered rights of propertied humans to use farmed animals as they see fit; where law is silent, it expresses the same thing. Readers versed in feminist theory will twig: we’ve heard this story before, most notably in the context of law’s demarcation of a “private sphere,” including the family (Boyd 1997; Pateman 1983): “The ideology of the public/private dichotomy allows government to clean its hands of any responsibility for the state of the ‘private’ world and depoliticizes the disadvantages which inevitably spill over the alleged divide . . .” (Lacey 1993: 97). Thus the “status quo” comes to be cast as “natural”: “Actual inequality and domination in the family . . . are represented as private matters that the state did not bring about” (Olsen 1983: 1506). The relationship between farmer and milk cow is thought to be natural, primordial, salutary—not unlike the classical legal image of the husband and wife. It defines the imperative of the collectivity (to eat; to reproduce) in terms of the interests of its strongest members, and uses the law to create a lawless space for its enforcement at their hands. It draws on ingrained hierarchies for its justification (man over beast; man over woman), and wrings its hands over the disastrous consequences that may attend their disruption (Olsen 1983: 1507). It trusts private actors (farmers; husbands) to wield their power appropriately because they are well-­intentioned, bound by duty, and even because they love those in their charge (cf. Siegel 1996). (Note here the common affirmation by farmers that they treat their cows “like family” (Horizon Organic 2016; Kindred Creamery 2016).) The exceptional treatment law has reserved for family matters parallels and converges with the “agricultural exceptionalism” that has insulated farms from the usual legal obligations to workers, to animals, and to the environment (Schneider 2010: 937–43). In many ways, the farm may be to animals what the family has been to women within some strands of feminist critique: the arbiter and enforcer of their place, their purpose, their meaning; so naturalized that it is not even worth asking what they might think of it, even if we thought they were capable of answering. Feminist animal advocates have long drawn connections—rhetorical, legal, and material—between the harms men inflict on women, and the harms humans inflict on animals (Adams [1990] 2010; Deckha 2010). Of course, the family has not been the “linchpin” of every theory of women’s oppression, and attendant advocacy for social and legal change. Sexuality, reproduction, work and material security, and physical dominance have all been advanced as the “deus ex machina” of sex inequality (MacKinnon 2007: 142–3). So too with the oppression of animals, in respect of which we are only now beginning to develop linchpin theories—grounded not only in patriarchy or in the imperatives of the farm, but also alternatively in capitalism (cf. Sanbonmatsu 2011; Taylor and Twine 2014), religion and ideology (cf. Wise 2000), or legal institutions like property (Francione 1995). But the particular strength of the symbolic and practical interconnections between the oppression of women and animals, and the overwhelming overrepresentation of women among animal advocates, has led many to conclude that feminist theory is a productive resource for theorizing human–animal relationships (e.g., MacKinnon, 2004; Donovan and Adams 1996; Deckha 2010). As a starting point, the harms animals 240

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experience at human hands are not presently experienced by our legal, political, or social institutions as wrongs to be stopped. The reasons given for discounting these harms (when they are stated at all) are familiar to women: they are different from us; they are less than us; they are made for us. And, of course, the regretful sigh of but we must, from those with the power to decide. Feminists have experience discrediting arguments like these— albeit experience that is halting, fraught, incomplete—and experience unsettling them where they govern in the form of unstated assumptions (Bartlett 1989: 878). Feminists have experience translating the pain of women’s lives (alternately cast as irrelevant or nonexistent, as animal pain often is) into claims for which law and justice demand relief. This imperative—to expose naturalized harms, and to recast them as justice problems—would seem to lie at the heart of many posthumanist projects. The very notion of trans*species justice cuts against the grain of dominant accounts, which hold that animals are not “worthy recipients of justice” (Garner 2013: 2), and that law and “jurisprudence” are “about human beings” (West 1988: 1). The call for an ethical system that takes seriously the harms suffered by milk cows, let alone “the sensuality of plants and aphids,” thus calls for a profound methodological shift within the fields of law and justice (Gaard this volume). “Method organizes the apprehension of truth. It determines what counts as evidence and defines what is taken as verification” (MacKinnon 1989: 106; Harding 1987: 2). As a matter of legal practice, method embraces “the ways in which legal inquiry is framed and legal arguments are made; the claims to know on which both are based” (Abrams 1991: 373). For posthumanists—and even for those who may bristle at that title, but who seek a version of justice in which animal experiences are more than worthless—there is a need to chart new conceptions of relevance and evidence that account for those experiences across every area of legal practice and social life. And while feminists and participants in other justice movements have undertaken such methodological shifts, the circumstances of animals, let alone plants, differ in ways that limit the analogy and transferability of these humanist histories. The American literature on feminist method is saturated with references to“consciousness raising.” Feminist consciousness raising is “the collective critical reconstitution of the meaning of women’s social experience, as women live through it” (MacKinnon 1989: 83). Consciousness raising has been described as the “meta-­method” that provides a “substructure” for such other feminist methods as asking “the woman question” and engaging in “feminist practical reasoning” (Bartlett 1989: 866). Even where the phrase “consciousness raising” is not expressly invoked, feminist legal methods consistently rely on communicative processes whereby women’s own experiences are individually recounted, and collectively embraced, as crucial starting points in defining programs for legal and political action. The importance of beginning with women’s own voices cannot be overstated (e.g., Harding 1987: 7; Scales 2006: 108). For many feminists, the imperative to continually return to individual experiences, and continually solicit overlooked voices and experiences, is a necessary anxiety of feminist method (e.g., Minow 1988: 60). Critical race feminists have made important contributions in this respect—homing in on the significance of particular “intersectional” experiences that resist simple articulation 241

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in terms of “sexism” or “racism.” Kimberlé Crenshaw urges that, “for feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse to embrace the experiences and concerns of Black women, the entire framework that has been used as a basis for translating ‘women’s experience’ or ‘the Black experience’ into concrete policy demands must be rethought and recast” (Crenshaw 1989: 140). In a similar vein, Mari Matsuda advocates “[t]he method of looking to the bottom,” emphasizing that “[w]hat is suggested here is not abstract consideration of the position of the least advantaged . . . Instead we must look to . . . [those] who are uniquely able to relate theory to the concrete experience of oppression” (Matsuda 1987: 324–5). Critical race scholars not working in an expressly feminist paradigm have also embraced the significance of personal experience and narrative as central to the shift in method required to achieve “racial reform,” naming as a “principal obstacle” the “majoritarian mindset—the bundle of presuppositions, received wisdoms, and shared cultural understandings persons in the dominant group bring to discussions of race” (Delgado and Stefancic 1993: 462). “Naming one’s own reality” is thus at the core of critical race method (1993: 462). In human justice movements, we see this thematic focus on the recovery of repressed and overlooked voices recurring again and again: from feminism, to critical race theory, to postcolonial critique (Spivak 1988), to the disability-­rights advocates’ refrain: “Nothing about us without us” (Charlton 1988). In the legal context, these movements have actively challenged, and sometimes redefined, what “counts” as evidence, truth, and relevance, across a range of doctrinal contexts. Speaking of racial segregation, the majority of the Supreme Court of the United States once dismissed the experiences of black Americans who reported that “the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority,” insisting that, “[i]f this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it” (Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 551 (1896)). The experiences of African Americans formed no part of this vision of what is “found in the act,” or this vision of what “equal protection of the laws” might mean. But following years of persistent advocacy, the experiences of African Americans began to emerge as methodologically legitimate, with black children’s own “sense of inferiority,” and its effects on their “hearts and minds” taking a central role in the Court’s holding that school segregation did in fact violate the US Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, 494 (1954)). The voices of black lawyers and communities were at the center of this advocacy, and scholars continue to pore over this history as a case study in the challenges and rewards of community self-­definition and representation (Brown-Nagin 2011; Mack 2012). Similarly, workplace sexual harassment amounting to a “hostile environment” is now considered an actionable form of workplace discrimination, over the objection that “purely psychological aspects of the workplace environment” (i.e., women’s experiences) should not be sufficient to ground a claim (Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57, 64 (1986)). The work of women themselves, telling their stories and crafting legal strategies, was central to this shift in law (MacKinnon 1979; Siegel 2004). Significantly, and consistent with the scholarly imperatives of feminist legal theory and critical race theory, the strategies that won these advances were devised by women, 242

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by people of color. It is not my intention here to overstate the extent of progress in the fields of racial or gender justice in the United States, or to deny that significant challenges remain on both fronts, legally, socially, and economically. Nor is it my intention to imply that there was some unified or uncontested experience undergirding either of these reform efforts. To the contrary, reform efforts in both areas have been beset by dissension and debate within the relevant constituencies (Bell 1976; Abrams 1995; Brown-Nagin 2011). Instead, I want to highlight a feature of legal methodological change that poses special challenges for ethical projects engaging legal obligations to the other-­thanhuman world. Why are the experiences of cows so profoundly absent in our legal constructions of milk? No doubt part of the reason lies in the social and ideological exclusion of animal lives from human definitions of the scope of law and justice, and is exacerbated by the physical and visual segregation of cows from the human beings who have power over those definitions. Naming and knowing are expressions of social power, and American cows don’t have much of that. But there are other obstacles: real, embodied, experiential factors that make communications across certain kinds of differences particularly difficult, and that make it particularly challenging for participants in human language communities— including those with posthumanist political orientations—to make knowledge claims about animal experiences. As Thomas Nagel has pointed out, we can try to imagine what it is like to be a bat, and sleep hanging upside down, catching insects with our tongue, and perceiving our environment through echo location—but on some level, what we are always actually doing is imagining ourselves doing these things. We cannot, except through imperfect vehicles of imagination and projection, really understand or “know” what doing those things is like for a bat (Nagel 1974. Cf. Parsley 2013: 28, critiquing approaches to law and cinema that “forget the humanity of representative practices,” taking a film featuring a buffalo as his central example). Humans engaged in debates about ethical and legal relations with animals ought to feel the weight of responsibility that comes from speaking about animals in ways that bleed into speaking for animals. Cows do not retain and instruct counsel, nor do they critique the reasoning of judges and legal scholars. When cows communicate, with humans or amongst themselves, they are not in the business of analyzing human laws and logic; they will not draw on their life experiences to develop or advance particular legal or interpretive strategies to be applied in the context of human legal and political institutions. They will not disagree, strategize, and compromise among themselves as to what to seek through law, or how to seek it. They will not speak up in the language of law to object when judges and scholars talk to them, or about them, in ways that get the realities of their lives wrong. This means that the processes by which cows’ experiences may make their way into human law will necessarily differ fundamentally from the ways that women, racialized minorities, and other marginalized human communities have bent prevailing concepts of law and justice to partially, haltingly, take their truths to be legal truths. This is a risky business for animal advocates. As Catharine MacKinnon observes, people speaking for animals “tend to remain fixated on what we want from them, to project human projects onto animals” (MacKinnon 2004: 270): 243

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[J]ust as it has not done women many favors to have those who benefit from inequality defining approaches to its solution, the same might be said of animals. Not that women’s solution is animals’ solution. Just as our solution is ours, their solution has to be theirs. This recognition places at the core of the problem of animal rights a specific ‘speaking for the other’ problem. MacKinnon 2004: 270 When it comes to cows though, we are not without resources for understanding their lives. The risk of human projection is matched by an equal or greater risk that we may “overemphasize” their “inscrutability” in ways that obstruct just relations with them (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011: 38). The embodied and social similarities between cows and humans, and actual communicative interactions, give us some resources with which to make good faith claims about the kinds of knowledges that cows have that might be relevant to law and justice. We can know, for example, that we harm them and their calves when we separate them. This seems like an important first step in thinking through what cows know that should matter to the way law sees milk. It is challenging enough to use good faith efforts at communication and imagination to understand the knowledges of other humans; harder still with cows; and yet harder with bats—with the challenges growing along with the social and embodied differences that separate us. We ought to admit that the methodological challenges we would face in seeking to develop legal analytic methods that embrace plant knowledges would be truly radical. Can we—how can we—claim to know what is known by plants that excrete toxic milks from their skins as a form of self-­protection? Do human experiences expressing breastmilk, or sweating, or even fending off a crocodile attack (Plumwood 1995), give us even the most basic reference points for what those plants might be knowing through their experiences? Seeking to include plant knowledges in the communities of meaning that generate significance for terms like “milk” puts us at serious risk of human-­centric projection—even in the rare cases when our efforts are made in good faith. Gaard, for example, characterizes Karen Houle’s work on plant communications as methodologically posthumanist. True, Houle pushes back against humanist characterizations of certain plants as “eavesdropping” (Houle 2011: 109). But Houle’s alternative account—casting these communications in terms of “generosity and gift”— seems equally vulnerable to the charge of projection, albeit in service of an alternative political vision (2011: 109). Houle advocates “becoming plant” because it “opens up thinking about relations as transient alliances rather than strategies,” and “credits the accomplishment of identity and intimacy as a radically collective achievement” (112, emphasis in the original). For her part, Gaard notes that these arguments “fit well” with “queer and trans* theories of interplay and co-­emergences among identity, sexuality, and community” (Gaard this volume). And so they do. But these benefits are all about how plant experiences may be deployed as metaphors or models for more just human communities—with justice seemingly determined against an anterior standard of what humans owe to each other, based on human needs and experiences. We may endorse Houle and Gaard’s political vision of a more collective conception of identity and 244

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intimacy, but we do not know, and these authors do not claim to know, how plants themselves experience these communications and collectivities. This is not to say that plants do not communicate with persons at all; as Christopher Stone explains, “The lawn tells me that it wants water by a certain dryness of the blades and soil—immediately obvious to the touch—the appearance of bald spots, yellowing, and a lack of springiness after being walked on” (Stone 1972: 471). But what do we really know about the pain, the urgency, the political import of a blade of grass that is yellow, springless, and dry? I think we ought to admit that we have few resources for constructing a plausible account of how these plant experiences might figure into our legal and ethical meanings. Some may see this as a dangerous concession—a retreat to the same kind of conservative, masculinist standard of verification that law has so often deployed to exclude and diminish the valid justice claims of women and others (Scales 1986: 1400). I do not think so. I think that when we reflect on the legal and ethical meanings of milk, the exclusion of cows carries a different valence than the exclusion of milkweed. In part, this is because the experience of listening to plants is a different sort of exercise from the experience of listening to animals. When a cow whose calf has been removed bellows and slams her body against the walls of her enclosure, the communication we can and should receive is very different from the kinds of communications to which Houle opens herself in “becoming plant,” or the kind of communication Stone receives from his dry lawn. As Carol Adams explains, not everything is “made out of ideas”: “It may be theoretically asked whether carrots are being exploited, but once we situate ourselves within the lived reality we know as this world, we must surely know or intuit that the eating of a horse, cow, pig, or chicken is different from the eating of a carrot” (Adams 1994: 107). The experiences of cows are at the heart of some of the most profound justice problems associated with milk. The erasure of cow experiences from law is directly implicated in the lives and deaths of billions of feeling creatures. The failure of posthumanist method respecting cows is part of a genuine and massive justice problem in which law is both complicit and non-­responsive. “The reality and detail of oppression” are a proper “starting point” for entry into “mainstream debates about law and theory” (Matsuda 1996: 9). And in the case of milk, the beings who are “most cruelly abused are precisely those whose consciousness is least in doubt” (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011: 31). When it comes to milk, how do we know truth; how do we decide which truths matter; and what counts as proof? Law needs new answers to these questions. For the most part, animal experiences literally do not count in US law, and cows suffer seriously as a result. Making their truths into legal truths will require a new account of truth. The humanist methodological commitment to finding and amplifying the voices and experiences of the oppressed may serve as a useful starting point. For animals, though, a more imaginative and creative process will be required: finding ways to tell animals’ stories, and ways to accept that the necessary partiality (meaning both biased and incomplete) of our accounts does not undermine the reality of the experiences we fumble to describe. Maybe this is the direction in which animal legal method must lean: 245

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defining legal and moral truths in a manner that embraces the incomplete nature of human knowledge; that accepts our language communities as a small fragment of what there is to know and feel in the world where our laws intervene; and that insists upon good faith in interpreting what little we are capable of receiving from that broader world.

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CHAPTER 13 DIY PLANT MILK: A RECIPE-MANIFESTO AND METHOD OF ETHICAL RELATIONS, CARE, AND RESISTANCE Matilda Arvidsson

Milk is not only, as is commonly held, the absolute, pure, and perfect food (DuPuis 2002; Linné and McCrow-Young this volume): it is perfecting. Through accepting the gift of milk—engulfing my mouth, swallowing, letting it into my very self, through corporeal automatism, flesh, life—I become one with the social, legal, and political community through which this drink has come to me. I enter into that community as a particular biological species: I become human. There is a transcendental purity in the wholeness of that community, not unlike the coming together over the Christian communion, of swallowing the blood and flesh that brings symbolism and materialism together and offers salvation (Maillet this volume). The political theology of milk—the secularized theological, symbolic, and material work (de Vries 2006) that milk does in our society— makes it a central asset to the nation state in its performance of sovereignty, power, and lawful citizens (through the juridification of milk) (Otomo 2014; Otomo 2016; Tirosh and Eldan this volume), as well as to private corporations in fulfilling expansionist capitalism and salvaging humans into consumer-­citizens. Milk is also, pure and simple, life itself (Atkins 2010). As someone who gave my own milk to my children, I know that milk does not come from nowhere. It is a hard labor of love and care (Cohen this volume; Ryan this volume). It is about eating and being eaten from. It takes its toll on your body, it transforms you. It performs a profound and lasting relation.1 That relation is a means of survival, both in terms of the nutrition it involves and in terms of the ethical and social bond which milk performs and perfects. When considered in this way, milk is something central to life itself, what it means to be in this world, in a community with others. It does not have to be a consumer product within a capitalist expansionist market economy. Being a mother, a breastfeeding mother, and a member of the human community, I have had to think carefully about milk, and the relations into which I enter through the milk I drink, or otherwise use. I do not need milk. Nor, have I discovered, do I need to replace dairy products with plant-­based alternatives.2 Little by little I have found that there seems to be a conflation between being a vegan consumer subject and being simply vegan. Consider a traditional dairy product like cheese on a pizza: the melted dairy cheese on top of the pizza is a way, in a dairy society, to respond to the question “what can I make out of this milk, so that it does not go to waste?” It does not, however, offer a response to the question “how can I find a dairy product so that this pizza does not go to waste?” A

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perfectly delicious and nutritious pizza does not need cheese: neither dairy cheese, nor a plant-­based alternative product (in fact, the latter often tastes horrid). The occasions during which I, an adult human, would need milk—dairy or non-­dairy—are exceedingly rare, if existing at all. I need my own milk to nurture my children and to help them enter this world in a bond of care and interrelatedness. But, for the rest, we drink milk—dairy or plant based—not because we must, but because we can. Milk becomes a symbol of our dominance over flora and fauna. Our supreme dominance and exploitation requires that we kill, eat, digest, and through our corporal beings become it all. There is a powerful political theology at work in consuming the world, be it in the form of milk or otherwise. Although I seldom consume milk I do not despise it—on the contrary. Because of the symbolic and metaphysical stature enjoyed by milk—both dairy and plant-­based milk— in the Western, Christian, and traditionally agricultural society in which I live, I am cautious. I carefully ponder those relations I wish to engage in through milk and those I want to resist. I do not necessarily despise the milk industry (dairy or non-­dairy). If I want milk—for baking a birthday cake, for making a cup of hot chocolate, or when I desire a milky, spicy, tea drink—I take 3 deciliters of oats (small or big flakes, it does not matter). I blend them (any blender or mixer will do) with 1 to 1.5 liters of cold, clean water, depending on how thick I want my milk: thicker for a sauce, thinner for a drink. I begin by pouring a little water then add the rest in increments. I add a pinch of salt and about one tablespoon of oil (any neutral oil works). The resulting milky, grainy mixture must be strained. If too fine, the emulsion will not go through, so an old and worn cloth is better than a new one. Finally, I pour the liquid into a clean container which can sit in my refrigerator for up to a week. The leftover oat pulp can be mixed into the morning porridge. It is also good for baking bread. This is a slightly slower method of obtaining milk compared to buying it at the grocery store. The slowness is part of a method of relations, care, and resistance. I do not make the effort unless I know that this is what I really want. It is thus not only a method of making plant-­based milk the DIY way, but also a method for reminding myself that milk does not come from nowhere, the “nowhere land” of the grocery store, where it emerges as a pre-­given, estranged object. Store-­bought dairy milk relies on the death, enslavement, and labor of others (Adams 2010: 304, Adams this volume). Making and consuming my own DIY plant milk does not transform me into a superior (vegan) being. It (too) feeds into my desire for domination and keeps me full, content, and even happy at times. It still requires me to be part of the consumer chain; I purchase the oats, the salt, and the oil. It makes me part of the community and the land on which I live. The turn from dairy to plant-­based milk is thus not, I argue, a visionary, or even ethical, move per se. Rather, DIY plant milk may be part of a method of relational ethics of slowness, resistance, and care. In that vein, it is important not to simply celebrate the rise of plant milk as part of a post-dairy vision. The visions of corporations producing plant milk products, like the Swedish company Oatly, may at certain times and junctures, as Linné and McCrow-Young (this volume) point out in their study, coincide with visions of those (of us) working for a post-dairy society. Yet we must simultaneously keep in mind that corporations always look to create new consumer markets. There is nothing 248

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inherently ethical in that. Moreover, as in the case of Oatly, plant milk becomes a pure and superior food through its commodification, conflating humanness with masculinity. In this vision of a post-dairy society, the feminine body—as the only body that “has the power to create something other than itself ” (Otomo 2016: 73)—is replaced by the “male genius scientist’ ” (Oatly was founded and is run by a successful line of all-­male CEOs— the present one frequently performing as a hipster cowboy/masculine hero in Oatly commercials). The all-­male inventors, risk capitalist investors, and CEOs of plant milk corporations become, as it were, “lactating men” (Cohen this volume), but without performing the hard bodily labor, enduring the social ramifications, and performing the relational ethics which come with breastfeeding (Ryan this volume). Nonetheless, post-dairy visions and ethics can still be put into practice with care and consideration. DIY plant milk can, if we want it to, become a method for discriminating where we invest our care and through which means we care.3 The slowness of milk-­ making provides us with a mode of resistance against relationships with beings we do not honor through the desire for the pure, perfecting, relational food epitomized by milk.

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NOTES

Chapter 1 1. All Hugo correspondence quotes are my translation, as are the quotes from Guillaume de Berneville that appear later in the chapter. 2. The images of the Nursing Madonna date from late Antiquity. It is commonly assumed that one of the most ancient representations is the third century ad Priscilla Catacomb fresco in Rome (Bisconti, Nicolai, and Mazzoleni 2009). This imagery was still common in Byzantine iconography in the early Middle Ages. It figured on the lost façade of Rome’s Santa Maria in Trastevere (early twelfth century), certainly revived in Western Europe under Cistercian influence. 3. An interesting example is found in a late manuscript of the Golden Legend allegedly illuminated in Paris circa 1480, BnF Fr.244, folio 81. The martyrdom of Saint Blasé is shown contemporarily with the one of the women and her children, who, when beheaded, let milk flow. 4. Quaerant sibi jam in parvulis Babylonis dulces, sed truces matres, quibus lac mortis emulgeant, quos blandis mulceant favoribus ac flammis nutriant sempiternis. Nam Ecclesiae alumnus ex uberibus sapientiae, lactis melioris expertus dulcedinem, jam in eo coepit crescere in salutem; [. . .] Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter LXXVIII, Patrologia Latina, 182 col 196C–D. 5. Nam si dignaris, et verbo, et exemplo meo in religionem ego te genui. Nutrivi deinde lacte. Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter I, Patrologia Latina, 182 col 76A. 6. Fonti Francescane. Scritti et biografie di S. Francesco d’Assisi. Cronache et altre testimonianze del primo secolo francescano, Padoue, EMP, p. 2333 and sqq. 7. The painting is also known as Magdalena Ventura With Her Husband, Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli, Hospital de Tavera, Toledo, Spain. 8. Master of the Chia Triptyque, Saint Giles Custodia, Orte Dicesan museum, c. 1480. Caption: Quando santo Egidio fu allatato dalla cervia. 9. Caravaggio, 1607, Seven works of mercy (Naples, Pio Monte della Misericordia), Pierre-Paul Rubens, Caritas Romana, 1612 (Saint Petersburg, Hermitage Museum), 1625 (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).

Chapter 2 1. Amy Newman excerpt from “When at the Close of her Letter about Her Therapist Linking Suicide to Masturbation, Anne Sexton Writes, ‘I Shall now Go out to a New Kitchen and Prepare Shrimp and Cocktail Sauce’ ” from On This Day in Poetry History. Copyright © 2016 by Amy Newman. Reprinted with the permission of Persea Books, Inc (New York), www.perseabooks.com. 2. As described by the Uffizi Website. See “The Birth of Venus by Botticelli,” Uffizi.org. Available online: https://perma.cc/5383-EB8H [accessed April 29, 2016].

Notes 3. See PETA’s video “Milk Gone Wild,” Peta.org. Available online: http://www.peta.org/videos/ milk-­gone-wild [accessed August 1, 2016]. 4. “How to Artificially Inseminate Cows and Heifers,” Wikihow. Available online: https://perma. cc/EPV8-RB3J [accessed April 30, 2016]. 5. My citation for the rape rack was PETA News, 1, no. 8 (1986) p. 2. 6. See the restaurant’s website. Available online: http://www.filthyfood.co.uk [accessed August 1, 2016]. 7. See Julia Mariell Graup (2016), “Vegan Humor,” Facebook, 27 April. Available online: https:// www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154119450229691&set=gm.1276959452315605&type =3&theater 4/30/2016 [accessed August 3, 2016]. 8. See Carol J. Adams. (2016), “This is a Facebook page discussing cows used in dairy production,” Facebook, 18 July. Available online: https://www.facebook.com/49298739009/ photos/a.111718359009.100155.49298739009/10153851599494010/?type=3&theater [accessed August 13, 2016].

Chapter 3 1. See also Pairaudeau 2015 on the role of Indian migrant dairying in nation building in other British colonies. 2. See “India,” Food Security Portal. Available online: https://perma.cc/LT5C-WMU8 [accessed January 26, 2017].

Chapter 4 1. Nestlé’s range of flavored milk drinks Nesquik are branded with “Quicky” the Nesquik bunny, and Chuck E. Cheese’s chain of pizza restaurants are heralded by the cheese-­loving mouse. 2. However, once we understand that nipples are common to all mammals and are formed prior to sexual differentiation, we can read them as essential organs, fundamental to human life as eyes, ears, limbs, and all common organs. Nipples are not vestigial—aristocrats and men are not genetic “improvements” on lactating women—milk is simply so fundamental that the organs for its transmission are a priori essential organs. 3. The Law for the Protection of Infants and in Particular of Nurslings was enacted by French National Assembly in 1874 and is known as the “loi Roussel” after its principal sponsor Théophile Roussel. 4. This is a popular truism, and can be found circulating on blogs and forums for CGI in education and training. Available online: https://perma.cc/4D83-JAB4 [accessed January 27, 2017]. 5. The Swedish corporation Tetra Pak dominates the global market for pasteurized milk packaging. Its corporate division DeLaval “develops, manufactures and markets equipment and complete systems for milk production and animal husbandry” in more than one hundred countries. In Pakistan, DeLaval is implementing a “Dairy Hub” program in collaboration with the government and several dairy processors to develop larger-­scale, modern, commercial dairy farms. Its “Dairy Hub” promotional video maintains: “The traditional approach of the

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Notes farmer and his lack of knowledge about modern dairy farming is the single most important barrier impeding milk from achieving its true potential” (“The Great Milk Robbery” 2011).

Chapter 6 1. For a review of the criminal and civil laws, and of manufacturing standards, broken by Tnuva’s managers, see Rabi v. Tnuva (2008), para. 4. 2. Despite Tnuva’s distinctly Israeli corporate identity, marketing research indicates that its products are consumed regularly by Palestinian families within Israel. This is true for other mainstream Israeli food products, such as Elit and Osem (Almog 2009). Unfortunately, insufficient data is available on Palestinians’ consumption patterns in the occupied territories and in Gaza.

Chapter 7 1. Unpaid services including breastfeeding remain outside the defined boundary of economic activity. 2. Greenhouse gas emissions per kilograms of milk formula approximate 4 kg (CO 2 equivalent). This excludes greenhouse gas emissions for every kilogram of raw milk delivered to the farm gate, which are comparable to driving a car 6–12 miles. This is equivalent to 6,888 million miles driven in the average US passenger car, around 1 million tons of waste sent to landfill, 323 million gallons of gasoline consumed, and 3,107 million pounds of coal burned. 3. National accounting rules in the European Union now include estimating the value of national trade in sexual services of women, though not their trafficking.

Chapter 8 1. As I explain in Part II, this chapter is limited to lactation and breastfeeding in the context of infant-­feeding rather than addressing adult nursing or other forms of “queer breastfeeding.” 2. In that sense, “male breastfeeding” does not include male-­to-female trans persons who breastfeed. 3. The term nipple confusion refers to an infant’s difficulty in latching and suckling on the breast after bottle feeding or other exposure to an artificial nipple.

Chapter 9 1. While Fishbein’s dual role as President of the AMA and sales manager for Similac should cause pause, what is perhaps even more interesting is his profound, personal appreciation for breastfeeding, lauding his mother for giving birth to four children naturally, at home, and nursing them all (Fishbein 1969: 6). Fishbein’s legacy is what he termed the “War Against Quackery,” with a particular interest in halting the sale of products that could harm the public. As President of the AMA he faced libel lawsuits filed by the makers of these various

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Notes products, whom Fishbein considered “charlatans” (Fishbein 1969: 49). Within this context, his devotion to Similac is all the more interesting, suggesting that it was the product’s closeness to breastmilk that warranted his approval. There exists some concern today that Fishbein’s war on quackery effectively eradicated traditional and herbal medicines in favor of those tightly regulated by the AMA. 2. A history of these women can be situated among recent scholarship on women laborers who have been critical to important innovations, but have long gone without recognition for their participation, such as the so-­called “Tiffany Girls,” who designed and created Tiffany Glass, and NASA’s teams of female “computers,” responsible for the math that made the missions possible. 3. It should be noted that while many pediatric hospitals largely banned parents from visiting, parents were welcome upon the Floating Hospital. 4. Euromonitor International is a highly regarded, privately owned market research firm. Passport is its database; each corporation report is created by industry experts who compile data from a number of sources. Passport is considered a reliable way to access economic data that is not otherwise disclosed.

Chapter 10 1. In Sweden starting in the 1920s and 1930s, the “Milk Propaganda” association established in 1923 managed the dairy marketing project. Similar projects existed in a number of other countries (Martiin 2010). 2. This research employed qualitative semi-­structured interviews (Brinkmann and Kvale 2015) with Oatly employees in Sweden. Interviews ranged between 60 and 90 minutes and were conducted in person with the following positions: CEO, creative director, sustainability manager, social media manager, communications director, international sales director, and two co-­founders. Although we prepared key topics and questions, the interviews did not follow a particular order or format, but rather a “structured conversation” (Gray 2003: 95). 3. A 1979 model of the machine could process 200 liters of soy milk per hour including pasteurizing and flavoring. In 1975, soy milk was tested on 500 school children. For this first test, the soy milk had seven different flavors—chocolate, vanilla, banana, raspberry, strawberry, coconut, and pineapple. During the second half of the 1970s, there were numerous, but often unsuccessful, experiments to market soy milk to the general public. The primary buyer was always the government, and school children the principal consumers. 4. The promotion of milk in schools was not simply a children’s health program; it was also, as DuPuis (2002: 114) noted, a farmer’s income program. 5. WhiteWave had previously been controlled by the dairy industry; in 2002 the company was bought by Dean Foods, Inc. one of America’s largest dairy milk companies (Shurtleff and Aoyagi 2013). 6. During recent years, the dairy industry has become increasingly intertwined with the global animal economy. Mergers, where larger dairy corporations have taken over smaller ones, are a strong trend (Jönsson 2005), as is the replacing of smaller farms with larger ones. The number of farms delivering milk to dairy processing plants has decreased by half between 2002 and 2013 (from approximately 10,000 farms to approximately 5,000 farms), while the average number of cows per farm has increased from forty-two to seventy-one cows.

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Notes 7. But such conflicts over the rightful place of novel vis-à-­vis established technologies in food is by no means restricted to those, such as cheese, milk, or meat, where conflicts are well-­ acknowledged. As US ice manufacturers in the late nineteenth century began to produce ice by freezing water, more traditional ice harvesters (who took ice from frozen lakes) argued that “ ‘artificial’ ice lacked the vital qualities needed to keep foods cold, that there ‘is no life in it’ ” (Freidberg 2009: 25). 8. Fluid cow’s milk as a food has one strange quality that makes it unlike any other industrial food: its production has remained relatively local. (DuPuis 2002: 8). The history of milk thus differs from that of many other food commodities such as wheat, rice, or even orange juice which is characterized by globalization. Milk is one of the last foods to retain an intimate connection between freshness and local production (DuPuis 2002: 9). 9. Recently the boom in almond milk production and consumption has raised health and environmental concerns. The inventors of pea-­based plant milk made a point to distance their product from almond milk, noting that it takes “96% less water to make than almond milk, and 76% less than soy milk.” (Kirkova 2016).

Chapter 11 1. Portions of this section on “Milk Fauna” are drawn from my earlier research on milk (Gaard 2013). 2. As queer studies scholars have argued, queer perspectives may endorse but are more likely to differ from the liberal assimilationist goals of the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered (LGBT) movement for inclusion in heteronormative institutions (e.g., equal marriage, equal inclusion in the military, LGBT human rights legislation, corporate sponsorships for Pride). Present in groups such as the Radical Faeries of the 1960s and queer activist groups of the 1990s, ACT UP and QUEER NATION, some queers have expressed resistance to heteronormative assimilation, choosing instead to celebrate queer culture, eschew essentialist dualisms of gender and sexuality, and affirm queer diversities across race, gender, and class (Jagose 1996; Gleig 2012). These perspectives form the base for queer methodology (Browne and Nash 2010). 3. For those with an understanding of speciesism as a form of humanist identity-­formation (as well as a form of oppression that permeates or “animalizes” other value dualisms of humanism and humanist identity), Haraway’s claims that “inequality in the lab is, in short, not of a humanist kind,” or that lab animals “have many degrees of freedom” and participate in laboratory experiments as “lab actors” and in factory farming as “workers” rather than slaves seem disingenuous, to say the least. Haraway goes on to mischaracterize those who exploit animals in laboratories as “caretakers” or “caregivers” rather than experimenters, and offers the experimenter’s “sharing” of suffering as an act of “remaining at risk and in solidarity in instrumental relationships that one does not disavow” (Haraway 2008: 75).

Chapter 13 1. In thinking about milk, and its giving and receiving, as performing an irreversible relation, I read psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche (1999) and philosopher Judith Butler (2005) together with ecofeminism (Gaard 2013).

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Notes 2. As Linné and McCrow-Young (this volume) point out in their political, social, and economic history of plant based milk, the trajectory of plant-­based milk products have gone from being regarded an inferior alternative to dairy (almost as good as dairy, but not quite), to instead, now, being marketed as superior (morally, ecologically, nutritionally) milk products in their own right. 3. The DIY plant milk method of ethical relations, care, and resistance which I suggest is, in a way, a response to the question Greta Gaard (this volume) poses: “how do we make ethical food choices in light of the fact that all potential foods are sentient beings?” Drawing on Eisen (this volume), my DIY contribution insists on method as central to any viable ethics, posthumanist or otherwise. While still staying within the political economy of eating other beings—in this case from the flora rather than the fauna—slowness and relational consideration offers the method through which ethical food choices might be better guided.

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Bibliography Library, University of Massachusetts, Boston: Massachusetts Infant Asylum Records, 1868–1916. Massachusetts Infant Asylum (1885), Matron’s Report, January, Archives of UMass Boston. Courtesy of the University Archives and Special Collections Department, Joseph P. Healey Library, University of Massachusetts Boston: Massachusetts Infant Asylum Records, 1868–1916. McDowell, Margaret A., Cheryl D. Fryar, Cynthia L. Ogden, and Katherine M. Flegal (2008), Anthropometric Reference Data for Children and Adults: United States, 2003–2006, National Health Statistics Report No. 10, October 22. Available online: https://perma.cc/5BQF-23Q9 [accessed January 31, 2017]. Mintel (2014), “Brand Share – Baby Formula,” in Baby Food and Drink – US, May, Market Report. Moreau, R. (2016), Passport Abbott Laboratories Inc., Packaged Food (World), Euromonitor International. National Council of Applied Economic Research (2014), An Analysis of Changing Food Consumption Pattern in India, Agricultural Outlook and Situation Analysis Reports, Delhi. National Institute of Nutrition. (2010), Dietary Guidelines for Indians. Available online: https:// perma.cc/J9L6-QYMA [accessed February 2, 2017]. Parameswaran, Radkhia (2011), “States of Imagination: Aesthetics, Affects and Representational Practices in/of Asia,” American Folklore Society Conference, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Pineau, Marisa Gerstein (2011), “From Commodity to Donation: Breast Milk Banking in the United States, 1910 to the Present,” CSW Update (UCLA Center for the Study of Women’s Newsletter). Available online: https://perma.cc/JY25-RLWW [accessed February 4, 2017]. Ross Products Division of Abbott Laboratories (1970–2003), Ross Labs data & graph, Columbus: Ohio. Ross, Jay, Chen Chunming, Fu Zhenying, He Wu, Fu Gang, Wang Yuying, and Chen Mingxia (2001), Calculating the Effects of Malnutrition on Econmic Productivity, Health and Survival in China using PROFILES, December. Sandilands, Catriona (2014b), “Botanically Queer,” Presentation for the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality, March 27, Columbia University. Available online: http:// vimeo.com/90535517 [accessed January 19, 2017]. Shen, Kunling (2016), Pediatric Development and Challenges in China, Beijing Children’s Hospital. Smith, Julie P. (2012), “Including Household Production in the System of National Accounts (SNA)–Exploring the Implications of Breastfeeding and Human Milk Provision,” conference paper, 32nd General Conference of The International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, August 5–11, Boston. Statistics Sweden (2013), Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2013 Including Food Statistics, Örebro: Statistics Sweden, Agriculture Statistics Unit. Steinfeld, Henning, Pierre Gerber, Tom Wassenaar, Vincent Castel, Mauricio Rosales, and Cees de Haan (2006), Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options, Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 5 Swedish Board of Agriculture (2012), “Market Overview — Milk and Dairy Products,” Swedish Board of Agriculture, Jönköping: Swedish Board of Agriculture, Division for Trade and Markets. United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) (2006), Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2006, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Economic Research Service (2012), ERS Dairy Consumption Trends, January 29. Available online: https://perma.cc/5X4K-ZJAM [accessed February 7, 2017]. United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) (2015a), California Almond Objective Measurement Report. Available online: https://perma.cc/5GUN-2FVH [accessed February 7, 2017]. 289

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290

INDEX

activism: commodity activism, 209 food activism, 208 food politics, 208 plant-­based milk and, 208–9 see also animal rights activism actor-­network theory, 84 Adams, Carol, 82 adult breastfeeding: cross-­species lactation and, 13–15 power of milk, 14–15 St Giles, 14–15 advertising: cows, using, 34–5, 36, 55 plant-­based milk, of, 206 affective labor, 164–9 agency, 81, 88, 94, 97 animals, in, 221 (table) plants, in, 221 (table) “agricultural exceptionalism”, 240 agriculture and bioinformatics, 79 allonursing, 154, 155 almond milk: environmental impact, 210 market sales, 202 alternative: challenge to norms, 204 counterculture, 204 plant-­based milk as alternative, 199, 207 Ambrosia Milk, 117 “American Venus”, 22, 23 “Analysis of a City Map” (1927), 77 animal/plant species hierarchy, 220 animal rights activism milk in schools, 208 plant-­based milk and, 196, 207, 208 see also vegan movement animal sciences, 217 animal studies: plant studies, similarities between, 220 Animal Welfare Act 1966 (US), 239 animalized protein, 22, 26 animalized woman, 37 animals: agency in, 221 (table) children, breastfeeding, 14 ethical and legal relations with, 243 feminized, 37 lives, Marxist analysis of, 26

oppression of, 240 sexualized, 21 subjectivity, 83 terminal, 26 animals parenting, 154, 155 gender and, 154–5 anthropornography, 21–2 Apax (private investment fund), Tnuva sold to, 110 aphids, 228–9 Aristotle, 141, 153 art: extraction of milk, in, 74 Virgin Mary’s influence, 10 artificial feeding, superiority over breast feeding, 124 artificial insemination (cows), 31–2 assemblage, 81, 82, 83 Atkins, Peter, 81, 91 Australia: human milk and, 132–3 unpaid work and GDP, 128 autonomy in Tnuva v. Rabi, 100–1 bacteria in milk, 75 Beard, Mary, women silenced, 30 Bearded Woman (painting), 11, 12 biocorporeality: machines and, 89 mammalian, 81 resistance and, 97 bioinformatics and agriculture, 79 bio-­males, 143, 147, 148 mammary gland, 156 bio-­political, 83, 84 biopower, 89, 165 bird, 213, 214, 225, 228 bodily milk production, 81 Boston Floating Hospital, 162–3 bottling milk, 170 breast milk collection, 181–3 competitors, 176–83 detractors, 176–83 illnesses treated, 167–8 nurse with babies (photo), 165, 166 nurses at work, 168, 169 staff training, 167 Bosworth, Alfred W., 161–2, 185 breast milk research, 163–4

Index cow’s milk research, 169 formula milk and, 161, 163 Botticelli, 19, 21, 33 bovine-­cyborg entities, 89 bovine milk, strengths of, 41 Bradley and Hedrén, 208, 210 see also post-­dairy utopias breast, 65, 67, 68, 70, 73, 73–4, 141 breast milk: bacterial composition, 181 collection (Boston Floating Hospital), 164, 181–3 Denny Plan, 181 economic value of, 215–16 GDP, included in, 130 market commodity, as, 216–17 medieval stories, in, 70 powdered, 176–7, 182 research (Bosworth’s), 163–4 selling, 182 breast milk collection (Boston Floating Hospital), 164 breast milk production (Norway) included in food statistics, 120–1 breast milk substitutes, 119 dairy industry and, 184–5 breast pumps, 155, 157, 158 Roman, 153 breastfeeding, 67, 141 adult see adult breastfeeding animals, 14 artificial feeding’s superiority over, 124 decrease during industrialization (Norway), 121 economic rewards and, 119–21 effect on economy (China), 135–6 equal parenting and, 159 Galenic theory of, 9 gay fathers, by, 150–2 gender and, 13 gender coding, 148 hospital deliveries affect, 121 industrialization, 121–2 male see male breastfeeding mammals, 155 national income accounting and, 129–32 official economic statistics, inclusion in, 130 pigs, 14 prevalence of (statistics), 125 racial and ethnic differences, 216 return to employment affects, 121 social aspects, 72–3 White House Conference on Child Health and Protection, mentioned in, 183–4 calves’ separation from cows, 219 Cambodia, 117, 120, 133

292

cancers, 142 capitalist, 81, 82, 83, 84 power and milk, 77 care, 247–50 interrelatedness and, 248 Cash Cow: Ten Myths about the Dairy Industry (Élise Desaulniers), 23, 33 CGI (computer generated imagery), 76 fluid and, 76 milk, of, 76 chest feeding, 149 child growth: Indian milk consumption, 55–7 milk and, 41 child health, 118, 132 child-­raising, economic support for, 120 children, kidnapping of, 15 Children’s Charter (1930), 183 China: breastfeeding’s effect on economy, 135–6 commercial baby food sales, 135 human milk in (2005–2015), 134 human milk production, 132–4 paid employment, 134–5 plant-­based milk in, 200 policy, in, 134–5 unpaid care work, 134–5 Cimon breastfed by daughter, 16 cisnormative assumptions, 149 class: action, 99, 100, 102, 103, 107 gender-­inflected, 85 male breastfeeding and, 154 relations, 89 cognitive performance and height, 58 Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), 230 Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation (Michael Harris), 21 commercial baby food sales: China, in, 135 India, in, 135 “consciousness raising”, 241 contextual moral vegetarianism, 224 corporeal, 83, 86, 92 “cottage protest”, 110 cow donation programme, 50 cow goddess (Kamadhenu), 47 cow protection, 47 Mahatma Gandhi and, 48 movements, 47–8 cow tree, 226–7 cows: advertising using, 33–4 artificial insemination instructions, 31–2 “benefit package”, 25 consumption of (India), 43

Index dairy, 124, 126 dairy industry and, 81–98 female cows and Krishna, 47 Hinduism, in, 43, 47 humans, similarities between, 244 life span, 217 living conditions, 217 Mahatma Gandhi and, 48 milk see cows’ milk milk output, 217 milk production rates, 217–18 post-Independence significance (India), 49 pregnancy, 25 property rights, 239 protection of in India, 41 sacred see sacred cows (India) sacred status in India, 41–2 separation from calves, 27, 219 sexual exploitation (pattrice jones), 32, 218 social power of, 243 uses of (India), 43 Vedas, in, 42–3 worship of, 43 cows’ milk: advertising, 171 Bosworth’s research into, 169 dairy industry and, 184–5 modification, 172 state supply of, 68–9 critical plant studies, 237 critical race method, 242 critical race theory, 242 cross-­nursing, 149, 159 cross-­nursing lactation and adult breastfeeding, 13–14 cross-­species nursing, 149 Curtin, Deane, 224 dairy animal census (1916), 44 dairy culture (India), 41–6 dairy farmers, 217, 218 dairy farms and farming: labor relations, 87, 89 legislation covers, 239–40 materiality of, 84 dairy industry, 121, 130 American economy, supporting, 184 breast milk substitutes and, 184–5 cows and, 81–98 cows’ milk and, 184–5 development of (US), 81–2, 184 economic health of the nation and, 185 regular testing, 90–1 sanitary conditions, 90 dairy milk: children’s health and, 199

environmental impact, 199 food politics and, 199–200 perfection, 199, 200 plant-­based milk, links with, 201 political identity, 199 production, environmental issues, 202 propaganda, 199 school milk programs, 199 sign of progress, as, 199 superior, as, 195, 200 symbolic association, 199 see also cows’ milk dairy milk sales, 202 drop in compared with plant-­based milk sales, 202 dairy products, 64–5 Raj period, in, 44 silicon added to, 100 Darwin, Charles, 145 data, 63, 67, 69 daughters, breastfeeding by, 16–17 Daumier, Honoré (artist), 68 Denny Plan, 181 Desaulniers, Élise, 23, 30, 33 dharm, 47–8 disgust, 112 absent, physical or monetary damages, 102–3 animal products cause, 157 cultural aspects, 105–6, 107–8 essentialist approach, 103–4 female-­coded fluids cause, 157 food and, 104–5 harm, as, 99–100 human milk and, 157 immoral acts and people and, 104 law, in, 11–14 legal analysis and, 113–14 moral-­cultural, 104–6, 112–13 moral judgment and, 104 Tnuva v. Rabi, in, 100–1 tort, part of, 108, 111, 113 universal-­essentialist, 112–13 divine milk product, 9–15 DIY oat milk, 248 Djurens Rätt (Swedish animal rights organisation), 208 doe breastfeeds St Giles, 14–15 Douglas, Mary, 105 dream liquid, 64 Dunayer, Joan, 37 DuPuis, E Melanie, 195, 196, 197, 199, 200, 204, 210 dysphoria, 152 ecofeminism, critical, 213–33 economic analysis and gender power relations, 118

293

Index economic-­political regulation: food regulation, 197 see also FDA; USDA economic rewards: breastfeeding and, 119–21 human milk markets and, 119–21 economic statistics, mothers’ milk valued in, 126–9 economic support for child-­raising, 120 economic valuation of milk, 130–1 ecosexuality, 222, 233 Edgerton, Harold (photographer), 75–6 eggs, development of, 224 embodied, 84, 85, 87 Emerson, Dr Paul, 176–7 English Plantmilk Society, 198 environmental issues: dairy milk production, of, 202 plant-­based milk production, impact of, 206 plant-­based milk sales, 206 sustainability, 204 environmental justice, 227 equal parenting and breastfeeding, 159 erotic, 232, 233 ethics: animal rights activist, 208 plant-­based milk as ethically superior, 206 post-­humanist, 237–46 ethics of care: feminist, 20, 38 vegan, 20, 39 evolutionary biology, 143, 222 exploitation, 82, 83, 84 extraction of milk, 73–5 art, in, 74 myths for, 73–4 farmer, relationship with milk cows, 240 fauna: milk, 215–33 transfer of milk to flora, 224–7 FDA, 203–4 female bodies, use and abuse, 23 female breast, men’s views on, 158–9 female lactation induced in male mammals, 146–7 feminism, 37, 159, 242 human-­animal studies, in, 82–3 feminist animal studies, 214 feminist breastfeeding, 147, 159 feminist economics, 118 feminist ethics of care, 20, 38 feminist legal theory, 242 human-­animal relationships and, 240–1 Feministiskt Initiativ (Swedish feminist party), 208 feminized animal, 37 feminized protein, 22–4, 26 fetus, sex in, 145

294

flamingos’ milk, 225 flora, 219, 224 milk, 226 fluid: CGI and, 76 dynamics, 75 female bodily, 156, 157 female-­coded fluids, 157 male lactation and male breastfeeding fluids, 149 microscopy and, 74 milk as, 63–4, 141 food: disgust and, 104–5 justice, 232, 233 politics and dairy milk, 199–200 statistics (Norway), breast milk production included, 120–1 formula milk, 65, 69–70, 72 advertising, 185–92 Bosworth and, 161, 163 brand names, 72 company marketing, (Norway), 121 human capital, effect on, 126 invention of, 69 maternal reproductive health, effect on, 125–6 sales trends, 125 Similac, 161 formula milk industry (US), expansion of, 124–5 Foucault, Michel, 83 Frost, Robert, 27–8 fruit, 226, 227, 232 fruit bats, 143, 145–6 male, production of milk, 146 Gaard, Greta, 214, 215, 217, 223, 229, 231 galactagogue, 146 galactorrhea, 142, 156 Galen, (scientist, 129–216 AD), 9 Gandhi, Mahatma and cow protection, 48 gay fathers’ breastfeeding, 150–2 GDP, 126–9 breast milk included in, 130 household production, 118–19 household work included in, 129 human milk production excluded from, 128–9 unpaid work and (Australia), 128 gender: animals’ parenting, in, 154–5 bigendered conceptualization of lactation, 11 breastfeeding, 13 class relations and, 89 gendered characteristics and, 141 inflected class contempt, 85 lactation and, 13 non-­conforming couples, 146

Index non-­conforming parents, 149 power relations and economic analysis, 118 relations, 10 roles, 147 sex and, 143, 148–9 gendered: animal exploitation, 83 human and human-­animal relations, 82 infant feeding practices, 143 gestational surrogate, 150 ghee, 43, 44, 52 Giles, Fiona, 147, 149 Gillespie, Kathryn, 23 acceptance of grief, 40 goshala (place of cows), 47 Gould, Stephen Jay, 144, 145 Greek yoghurt (Clover), 19, 20 gynecomastia, 156 hand-­milking, 84 machine milking and, 86–7 Haraway, Donna, 220, 224, 231 harm: disgust as, 99–100 naturalized, 241 Harris, Michael, 21 visual availability of woman, 22 height: cognitive performance and, 58 Indian citizens’ socio-­economic status and, 57 power differentials and, 58 “herd retirement” program (US), 217 “herder ants”, 228–9 heteronormative characteristics, 141 heteronormative norms, 154 Hinduism, cows in, 43, 47 Hindus, milk’s significance for, 49 Hird, Myra, 154, 155 Holstein cattle in advertising, 36, 55 honey bees: communication skills, 229 community lifestyle, 229–30 crisis, 230–1 environmental injustices, 231 exploitation, 231 films about, 230 “honeydew”, 228 hormones: consumption of, 142 disruption of caused by illness, 142 lactation and, 146 trans fathers and, 152 hospital deliveries and breastfeeding, 121 household production and GDP, 118–19 household work and GDP, 129 Hugo, Adèle and Victor, 7

human-­animal relationships, 82–4 feminist theory and, 240–1 human-­animal studies: feminist approach, 82–3 Marxist approaches, 82 post-­structuralist approaches, 83 social perspectives, 83 human capital, formula milk’s effect on, 126 human mammals and oxytocin, 219 human milk, 143, 149, 150, 151, 152, 158, 159 availability, 118 China, in (2005–2015) disgust of, 157 exchange, 117 India, in (2005–2012), 134 North American milk banks and, 131 Roman nurse-­fathers, 153 selling, 117 value of (Australia and Norway), 130 human milk markets and economic rewards, 119–21 human milk production: Australia, in, 132–3 China, in, 132–4 economic progress measures, 131–2 GDP, excluded from, 128–9 India, in, 132–3 Norway and United States, in, 132–3 value of estimated, 130–1 humans and cows, similarities between, 244 immoral acts and people and disgust, 104 India: commercial baby food sales, 135 cows’ status, 41–2 dairy culture, 41–6 dairy industry (1960s), 51 human milk in (2005–2012), 134 human milk production, 132–3 Independence and sacred cows, 46–50 milk consumption see milk consumption (India) milk marketing, children targeted, 57–8 milk production see milk production (India) milk provision, 77 milk’s “special food” status, 41 “India’s food problem”, 46 induced lactation, 146, 149 bio-­males, in, 147 Indus Valley, history and development, 42–3 industrialization: breastfeeding and, 121–2 decrease of breastfeeding during (Norway), 121 milk, of, 66–7 infant and young children (IYC) food economy, 120

295

Index infant feeding: crisis in, 120 gendered practices, 143 research (1913), 163 insect ecologies of milk, 228–32 interconnected oppressions, 20, 35 intergenerational injustice, 232 intermittent suction machines, 94–7 interrelatedness and care, 248 interspecies justice, 229, 230 Irigaray, Luce, 156 ‘it’, 213–15

latex, 226–7 trees, 227 Latour, Bruno, 84 leg-­engaging arms, 88, 89 legal analysis and disgust, 113–14 lesbian couples, 146 Lifetime Net Merit, 79 Linné, Carl von, 141 Lionetti, Roberto, 142 liquid, bodily functions (female), 156 LRF Mjölk (Federation of Swedish Farmers) and “milk wars”, 204

Jews, 14, 107 jones, pattrice, sexual exploitation of cows, 32, 218

machine milking and hand milking compared, 86–7 mad cow disease, 26, 38 male breast, 142, 144–5 male breastfeeding, 143–4, 148–55 alternatives to, 157–8 barriers to, 156–7 characteristics, 149–50 class and, 154 definition, 148–9 examples, 150–3 fluid, 149 Roman nurse-­fathers, 153–4 societal aspects, 156–9 male lactation, 10–13 biology, 144–8 examples of, 142–3 fluid, 149 gender-­based, 148 generally, 141–3 male parental care and, 147–8 mammals, 141, 144, 146, 147 male mammals: female lactation induced in, 146–7 nipples, 144–6 male pregnancy, 148 mammals: breastfeeding, 155 kiss feeding and, 155 male lactation, 141, 144, 146, 147 milk production and, 81 non-­humans, 155 mammary gland, 141, 144, 145, 147 bio-­males’, 156 Marian cult, 10–11 marketing and advertising: analogous to dairy milk, 201 carton design, 201 Oatly’s, 205 martyrdom and milk, 9–10 Marxism: animals’ lives analysed in, 26 human-­animal studies in, 82 masculinities, 154, 156

Kellogg, Ella E. E. and John Harvey, 201 kinship and milk, 8–9 “kiss feeding”, 155 mammals and, 155 Kosher rules, 101 Kraft cheese, 202–3 Krishna and female cows, 47 Kurien, Verghese, 51, 52 La Leche League, 152–3 La République (sketch, 1848), 68, 70 labor: affective, 164–9 maternal, 185, 193 relations on dairy farms, 87, 89 lactating man: concept of, 11 milk donation and, 151 lactating virgin, 10 lactation: bigendered conceptualization, 11 early twentieth century in (US), 119–20 Galenic tradition, 9 gender and, 13 hormones and, 146 induced, 146 “lactation failure”, 120 male see male lactation morality of, 13–14 19th-­century France, in, 119–20 pregnancy, without, 10 surrogacy for induction, 146 lactose intolerance: milk allergies, 119 white body, the, 200 language: brand names, 72 milk’s role in, 63, 64 optimization of, 78

296

Index Massachusetts Infant Asylum (MIA), 177–9 staffing records, 179–80 wet nurses at, 177, 179 mastectomy, 142 material, 82, 85, 88, 91, 97 materialistic philosophies, 213–14 materiality: dairy farming, of, 84 machine, 92, 97 maternal health, 125–6, 132, 135–6 formula milk, effect on, 125–6 maternal labor, 185, 193 McArthur, Jo-Anne, 28, 29, 39 McDonald, Trevor (trans father), 152–3 mechanical calf, 92–7 mediation, 98 medieval stories and breast milk, 70 method, 241, 242, 245 microscopy: body fluids and, 74 milk and, 74 Middle Ages, milk in, 7–17: cross-­species milk, 8 milk: concept of, 63–5 constituents, 224 definition, 238 gender normativity of, 143 political theology, 247 schools, in, 195–6, 198 (Brazil), 199–200 milk advertising: Holstein cattle, use of, 55 Mother Dairy milk advertisement, 56 “milk and honey”, definition, 232 “milk as beverage” (India), 43–4 milk banks, 8, 123 milk consumption (India), 41–59 child growth and, 55–7 middle classes’ increased use of, 54–5 political and economic growth and, 53–8 trends for increase of, 54 21st century, in, 53–8 US milk consumption, compared with, 53–4 milk cows: farmer, relationship between, 240 living conditions, 238–9 no legal protection, 239 “Milk Days” (Sweden), 199 milk donation, 151 lactating man and, 151 milk formula see formula milk milk frogs, 225–6 milk fruits, 226 “Milk Grid”, 77 milk in schools, 195–6, 198 (Brazil), 199–200 milk intake, increase of, 51–2

milk marketing (India), children targeted, 57–8 milk plants, 226 milk production: mammals and, 81 water buffalo, by, 49, 50 milk production (India), 43, 45–6, 52 1937 in, 44 Western images of, 55 milk production (Israel), 108–9 milk products, 64 India, in, 43 milk trees, 226–7 “milk wars” (legal case), 204 LRJ Mjölk (Federation of Swedish Farmers) and, 204 milk yields: optimization, 78 recording, 91 milking and sanitation, 85 milking machines: “milk-­tube” design, 85–6 pressure see pressure milking machines suction milking machine, 89–90 suction-­type milking machine, 92–3 “Surge”, 94, 95 milking mechanization: design considerations, 85 development, 84–7 earliest recorded suction machine, 89 pre-1940 development, 84–5 pressure machines see pressure milking machines milksnakes, 225 Miller, Harry, 201 Miller, William I., 99, 103, 104, 112 misnomers, 223, 226, 231 monocultures, 230 Monroe, Marilyn, 22 “Moothology”, 20 moral judgement and disgust, 104 Morisot, Berthe (artist), 180 “mother cow”, 48 Mother Dairy milk advertisement, 56 “Mother India”, cow as symbol, 48, 49 mothers: financial value (US), 216 medical history of, 181 milk, economics statistics, 126–9 “multispecies injustice”, 231–2 mutualism, 222 myth, extraction of milk, for, 73–4 nation-­building, 42, 54 national accounting framework, 129 National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), 51 national identity of milk, 59

297

Index national income accounting and breastfeeding, 129–32 national milk production, analysed, 45 neonicotinoids (neonics) (pesticides), 230 nipple: confusion, 152 stimulation, 155 “non-­porous sacks”, 88 North American milk banks and value of human milk, 131 Norway: human milk production, 132–3 value of human milk, 130 Noske, Barbara, 26, 36 nuclear testing and photographic film, 76 Nussbaum, Martha, 99, 103, 104, 112 nutrition: ideology, 199, 200 nutritional campaigns, 199 oat milk, 248 Oatly (Swedish company) 248–9 company development, 201 development of Oatly’s product, 199 factory, 195 lawsuit with LRF Mjölk, 204 marketing and advertising, 204 marketing strategy, 203 “milk wars”, the, 204 Mill Milk, 201 re-­branding, 205, 209 Skånemejerier, 201 objectification, 82, 83 Operation Flood (India), 41, 50–3, 77 phases, 51 oppression, 214 organized violence, legal aspects, 238 oxytocin, 217–18 human mammals, in, 219 pagans as snakes, 14 “parent-­offspring” conflict, 218–19 parental care, male and male lactation, 147–8 parenting, 143 animals’, 154, 155 binary, 149 equal, 158, 159 “Pasture, The” see Frost, Robert photographic film, nuclear testing, 76 photography and milk, 75–6 pigeons’, milk, 225 pigs, breastfeeding children, 14 Pine Tree Milkers, 94, 96 plant, 214, 215, 220 behavior, 222 communication, 223, 244–5

298

plant-­animal border-­crossers, 215 plant-­based milk, 195–211, 248–9 activism and, 208–9 advertising, 206 benefits, 205 cartons, 198 challenging norms, 207–8 China, in, 200 commercial brands, 198 dairy milk, links with, 201 definitions, 203–4 English Plantmilk Society, 198 environmental impact, 206–7 food allergies, 199 generally, 195–6, 196–7 history of, 197–9 imperfect milk, the, 199, 201 inferiority of, 200 introduction, 195–7 market growth, 202 marketing of, 201 markets, 202 packaging, 206 production process, 201 purpose of, 199 sales, drop in dairy sales compared with, 202 socio-­environmental movements and, 208–9 socio-­political influence, 208–9 superiority of, 207 Swedish schools, use of in, 208 technological development, 205–6 uses and purposes of, 198–9 plant studies: animal studies, similarities between, 220 “critical plant studies”, 222–3 genealogy, 223–4 perspectives, 223 plants’ feelings, 214–15 science of, 223 plants, agency in, 221 (table) Plumwood, Valerie, 82, 224 policy: China, in, 134–5 France, in, 131–2 gender bias and, 137 macroeconomic, 128 political theology (milk), 247–8 politicized milk in US, 195 Pollan, Michael, 220, 221, 223 post-­animal foods, 211 post-­dairy: ethics, 247–9 utopias, 207–9 visions, 248, 248 posthumanism, 222 posthumanist ethics, 237–46

Index poststructuralism in human-­animal studies, 83 poverty, 45, 46, 59 pregnancy, 23, 25, 27 cows’, 25 lactation without, 10 male, 145 political aspects for women, 159 trans fathers’, 152 pressure milking machines, 87–9 description, 87 effectiveness of, 88 organic principles imitated, 88–9 prolactin, 146 protein: animalized, 22, 26 feminized, 26 public/private divide, 240 “pulsator” machines, 93–4 pumps: air, 89–92 breast, 153, 155, 157, 158 suction, 89, 92 vacuum, 90 purity: milk, of, 63, 106–7 water, of, 64 queer: breastfeeding, 149 definition, 220 ecology, 143 theory, 143, 215 “Quicker‘n a Wink” (film), 76 race, 215 feminism, 242–3 racial segregation, shift in, 242 Raj, dairy products during, 44 rape rack, 32, 33 rationalized, 81, 91 reconstituted milk (Bosworth’s): correspondence on, 172–6 laboratory director’s complaint, 176 relational, 81, 84, 97, 98 thinking, 213–14 religion and milk, 63–4 repronormativity, 159 returning to employment, breastfeeding affected by, 121 robotic milking systems, 77 Roman Charity (painting), 16 Roman de Renart (Reynard), 14 Roman nurse-­fathers and human milk, 153 Romanic art, 13, 16 Rosie the Riveter, 24–5

royal jelly, theft of, 231–2 Rozin, Paul, 103, 104 sacred cows (India) and Indian Independence, 46–50 Saint Blase, 9–10 Saint Clare of Assisi, 11 Saint Francis of Assisi, 11 Saint Giles, doe breastfeeds, 14–15 Saint Mammas, 11 sainthood, 8, 15 samsar, 47–8 Sandilands, Catriona, 222, 223, 224, 229 sanitation in milking, 85 Schlosser, Eric, 38 science and milk, 74–5 secretory calcium-­binding phosphoprotein family (SCPP), 225 selling human milk, 117 semen, 141 Roman times, in, 153 separation, 63, 66, 67, 70, 72 milk, of, 66 Seventh Day Adventists, 198, 201 sex: fetus, in, 145 gender and, 143, 148–9 sexual exploitation, cows’, 32 Sexual Politics of Meat, The, 20–1, 22, 32, 36, 82 sexual politics of meat grid, 37 sexualized animals, 21 silicon: dairy products, added to, 100 human consumption of, 100, 107 medical hazards, 102 UHT milk, added to, 99, 100 Similac (formula milk), 170 advertising, 185–92 21st century, in, 192–4 slaves as wet nurses, 158 snakes: nursing, 13 pagans as, 14 women breastfeeding, 13 “social protest” (Israeli), 110 “social provisioning”, 118 social reform movements and milk, 58–9 socio-­economic status (India) and height, 57 socio-­environmental movements and plant-­milk, 208–9 sociotechnical juncture, 83, 97 soy milk, 198 benefits of, 205 Brazil, 198 Chinese history, 197 Hong Kong, 198

299

Index market growth, 202 United States, in, 203 SPARCL1 gene, 225 Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (US), 125 sphingomyelinase (SMase), 228 spiritualization of milk, 9 Sprinkle, Annie, 233 Stark, Martha H (head nurse), 164 Stephens, Beth, 233 “Study of Splashes, A” (milk photographs), 75 suckling, 143, 146 calf, suction imitates, 93 non-­nutritive, 150 Roman nurse-­fathers and, 153 suction, suckling calf, imitating, 93 supplemental nursing system (SNS), 152 “Surge” milking machines, 94, 95 surrogacy, 151 gestational surrogacy, 150 induced lactation for, 146 “survival of the fittest”, 220 Swami Dayanand Saraswati, 47 Sweden: Milk Days, 199 schools, plant-­based milk used in, 208 System of National Accounts (SNA), 126, 128 taurine cattle, 42 teat, 41 male quadrupeds’, 144 “teat-­compressing rollers”, 89 “teat-­engaging apparatus”, 89 teat cups: composition of, 91 rubber, 91–2 technologization of milk, 64–5 testing milk, 90–1 Tetra Pak, 77–8 plant-­based milk in, 198 “Thistle” machines, 94 Titian, 21, 22 tort: disgust is part of, 108, 111, 113 Tnuva v. Rabi, in, 100, 102 Tnuva: image portrayed by, 109 sale to Apax (private investment fund), 109–10 Tnuva cottage cheese, 110–11 Tnuva silicon affair, 99–115 Tnuva v Rabi, 100–3 case details, 100 disgust and, 100–1, 107–8 ethos of, 108–11 infringement of autonomy, 101 tort in, 100, 102

300

“tranimalities” defined, 220 trans: definition, 220 enmesh trans, 220 “time to trans”, 220 trans breastfeeding, 152–3 trans father, 152 hormones and, 152 pregnancy of, 152 transgender man, 152, 159 transgender studies, 215 trans*species justice, 231, 237, 241 Trivers, Robert, 148 tsetse flies’ milk production (female), 228 tuberculosis testing, 90–1 udders, damage to, 85 UHT milk, silicon added to, 99, 100 United Kingdom: human milk market prices (2012), 132 lactation levels, 125 milk marketing, 124 working poor and breastfeeding, 121 United States: human milk production, 132–3 milk consumption and Indian milk consumption, compared, 53–4 soy milk, in, 203 unpaid care work: China, in, 134–5 GDP and (Australia), 128 Ursula Hamdress, 20–1, 22 USDA, 203 veal, 217, 219 Vedas, 42–3 cows mentioned in, 42–3 vegan, 247, 248 activism, 35–6 ethic of care, 20, 39 movement, 208 veganism, 210 Venus: “American Venus”, 22, 23 symbolism of, 22 Venus d’Urbino, 21 Venus pudica, 21 Virgin Mary: influence on works of art, 10 spiritualization of milk, 9 Vitasoy, 198, 201 Voragine, Jacobus de, 9, 10 water buffalo’s milk production, 49, 50 “weaning conflict”, 218 “weaning distress” studies, 218

Index Weil, Simone, 39 Wet Nurse and Julie (Berthe Morisot), 180 wet nurses, 164 art, in, 180–1 Massachusetts Infant Asylum, at, 177, 179 nationality of, 180 19th century, 7 public perception of, 180 Roman, 153 selection of, 182 slaves as, 158 wages for, 122–3 wet nursing, 67–8 exchanges, 117 working conditions, 123 White House Conference on Child Health and Protection (1930), 183–5 breastfeeding mentioned in, 183–4 “White Revolution” see Operation Flood

whiteness of milk, 78–9 “Why a Pig?” (article), 21 Wolfe, Cary, 36, 222 women: animalized, 37 availability of (Harris), 22 pregnancy, political aspects, 159 silencing of (Mary Beard), 30 snakes, breastfeeding, 13 World Food Program (WFP), 51 Worthington, A M (photographer), 75 Wright Report (1937), 44 estimates of national milk production (table), 45 Indian milk production, 45–6 Young, Iris Marion, 158 Yu-Ying, Li, 197 zebu cattle, 42, 49, 55

301