Laboratories, Laws, and the Career of a Commodity

Abstract

Publisher's copyright statement: P.J. Atkins 2007. The de nitive peer-reviewed and edited version of this article is published in Environment and planning D : society and space, 25/6, 967-989, 2007, 10.1068/d74j Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Abstract. Unlike most foods, milk is produced fresh at least twice every day, thus recreating over 700 times a year a commodity "designed" by the combination of nature, commerce and law. The paper is a study of the ontogenesis of this commodity in Britain since 1800, stressing the emergence of two new objectivities: dairy science and the law on adulteration. In the words of Christopher Hamlin, what mattered was the "manufacture of certainty, however flimsy that certainty might later be shown to be".This was achieved by the collection of samples, the generation of facts by the deployment of the laboratory technologies of physics and chemistry, and a semimonopoly over the truth-power of dairy science gradually built up by the large commercial companies. A foundation of state-sponsored regulation provided an official legitimation of compositional standards that suited the interests of capital but ignored "natural" variations in quality and often pilloried innocent producers. The public eventually became accustomed to the regulated quality of the milk in their "pinta" and assumed it to be natural. Even the standardization of composition since 1993 has caused very little disquiet among the consuming public, although milk is now a fully constructed commodity like any other dairy product. Mechanical modernity has at last triumphed over a century of "milk as it came from the cow".3 Laboratories, laws and the career of a commodity

The ecological paradox: social and natural consequences of the geographies of animal health promotion

“…Preventing the pollution of these commodity flows from animals at infected individual farms to other agricultural spaces demands the creation and definition of new spaces: those which are officially free from disease, and those which are not. Ensuring the smooth flow of untainted agricultural commodities within this geography requires a set of rules, procedures and practices to standardise and purify global agricultural space from the disrupting influence of disease (Donaldson and Wood 2004; Atkins 2007; Hinchliffe 2007). More commonly, these are referred to as ‘biosecurity’ (see Donaldson 2008; Bingham and Hinchliffe 2008; Hinchliffe and Bingham forthcoming; Braun 2007).…”

Swedish Milk, a Swedish Duty: Dairy Marketing in the 1920s and 1930s

“…25 Laboratory analysis was also cited by the Swedish Milk Propaganda as a means to guarantee quality and hygiene, for example in the drawing in Figure 5. Quality and hygiene were used as sales arguments for dairy products in other countries as well.…”

“…26 The Milk Propaganda thus worked to change the idea of dairy products that many townspeople may have derived from their former rural experiences. 28 Second, milk, cream, butter and cheese were given different identities and, in the terms used by Callon et al, expected to make careers as different kinds of commodities. First, dairy commodities were presented as more or less originating from the hygienic factory-like dairy plants that were built during the 1920s and 1930s.…”

“…Canada has already been mentioned and as regards England, Peter Atkins points to the role that the dairy industry gave to laboratory analyses as ways to counteract consumers' mistrust of milk as adulterated or otherwise contaminated. 25 Laboratory analysis was also cited by the Swedish Milk Propaganda as a means to guarantee quality and hygiene, for example in the drawing in Figure 5.…”

The long genealogy of quality in the British drinking-milk sector

“…In short, the milk retailed nowadays is very different from that on sale 150 years ago. It will be argued that embedded within the product we consume today is the memory of market developments over many decades (Atkins, 2007a(Atkins, , 2011(Atkins, , 2013 [...] it is [...] an object that has a life, a career (Callon, Méadel & Rabeharisoa, 2002: 197).…”