Pure and Modern Milk: An Environmental History since 1900 Smith-howard by Smith-howard, Kendra 9780199899128, 0199899126 instant download after payment.

In the dairy aisle of the supermarket, one milk carton features cows
grazing on a verdant pasture, backed by a forest and undulating
hillside. On another, a cow's wide-eyed face beckons the thirsty
drinker. To the casual shopper, such pastoral images proclaim milk's
wholesomeness and natural purity. However, the same labels in the dairy
case that flaunt meadow flowers and red barns betray a different
history, one of human manipulation of milk between farmstead and
supermarket. Words on the carton indicate that milk is "Grade A,"
"pasteurized," "homogenized," and "vitamin fortified." The cartons carry
expiration dates and advise that the product be refrigerated. Such
adjectives and directives convey a different reality than the pastoral
scenes―that harnessing cows' lactation processes requires an
extraordinary amount of human effort. On behalf of pure and plentiful
milk, Americans have become as reliant on inspectors to monitor cows for
diseases and suppliers to keep milk cool as on idyllic agricultural
landscapes. Though often conceived of as a pure product of nature,
milk's nature had to be perfected for it to become a healthful human
food.
Milk
is not the only food lauded for its natural origins. Nor is it the only
food that reaches the marketplace in an altogether different state from
that in which it originated. But no other food has so stolidly
symbolized natural purity, while simultaneously undergoing dramatic
transformations to its material form. How and why has milk been
conceptualized as wholly natural, even as it has been churned into
manufactured foods like butter and ice cream, and incorporated into
products as artificial as Cheez Whiz and wood glue? What ideas and
values drove the modification of milk? How have consumers' changing
expectations for milk affected the farm people, cows, and rural
landscapes central to milk production? This first book explores these
questions, connecting the development of dairy farming to changing
practices of buying milk products. It traces the processes of milk
production and consumption through the stories of four different dairy
goods: fluid milk, butter, ice cream, and the detritus of dairy
processing (whey, skim milk, and milk proteins).