MIT Seminar on Environmental and
Agricultural History
"Modern Meat: Synthetic Hormones, Livestock, and Consumers in the Post-War Era"
Nancy Langston
Professor of Environmental Humanities, Department of Forest and
Wildlife Ecology
and the Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies, University of
Wisconsin-Madison
Soon after World War II, the first synthetic estrogen,
diethylstilbestrol (DES), was approved as a growth-promoter in
poultry, hogs, and cattle. DES soon became critical in the
development of industrialized feedlot system in America. At the peak
of its use in the 1960s, DES was given to nearly 95% of feedlot
cattle in America. After high levels of hormones were detected in
treated chickens, concern over DES effects began to grow in various
lay groups, including farmers who handled treated livestock, workers
who manufactured the material, and consumers who were eating meat
from treated livestock. The metabolic byproducts of DES--wastes with
potent estrogenic activity--from feedlots and from people made their
way into broader ecosystems, exposing a wide range of wildlife to the
hormone. This talk explores the ways scientists, industry, consumers,
and regulators negotiated growing controversies over synthetic
estrogens, and examines the ways that endocrine disruptors in the
post-war era changed the internal ecosystems of human, livestock, and
wildlife bodies, interconnecting our bodies with our environments in
increasingly complex ways.
Friday, February 29, 2008
2:30 to 4:30 pm
Building E51 Room 095
Corner of Wadsworth and Amherst Streets, Cambridge
Sponsored by MIT's History Faculty and the Program in Science,
Technology, and Society. For more information or to be put on the
mailing list, please contact Margo Collett at
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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