Fresh: a perishable history (Belknap Press) by Susanne Elizabeth Freidberg

Author:Susanne Elizabeth Freidberg [Freidberg, Susanne Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2009-04-27T07:00:00+00:00

Poison from the Countryside

In some ways, American cities’ milk supplies had greatly improved by the early twentieth century. The swill dairies were gone, and in the rural areas larger herds and higher-yielding cows ensured year-round abundance. Iced rail cars brought loads in daily from two, three, even four hundred miles away. Service was also more convenient. Even fifth-floor apartment dwellers could count on fresh supplies at breakfast, delivered by a milkman who climbed the stairs while his horse pulled the wagon to the next building.27 Schools and factory cafeterias served milk, and quick-lunch shops sold it by the glass. And when prices of other foods climbed, milk remained economical, especially relative to its nutritional value.28

But milk remained as deadly as it ever was, especially for babies and young children. Urban infant mortality rates averaged more than 15 percent nationwide, and in some mill towns and cities—including the nation’s capital—they topped 25 percent. Despite ongoing improvements in sanitation, water supplies, and health care, babies stood much less chance of surviving in cities than in rural areas, where infant mortality rates averaged around 11 percent.29 Diarrhea and related intestinal ills accounted for the most deaths, especially in hot weather. They went by many names: cholera infantum, marasmus, intestinal inflammation, dysentery, even just “the summer complaints of children.”

Although it was often impossible to pinpoint the cause of these ailments, cow’s milk ranked among the primary culprits. Evidence from across Europe and the United States showed that bottle-fed babies died at much higher rates than their breastfed peers, especially if the milk came from dubious sources. A 1903 New York City study confirmed the popular view that diarrhea-related deaths peaked in summer, when milk was often not properly chilled either in transit or at home. Indeed, in The Milk Question, Rosenau called the average household icebox a “a snare and a delusion... [and] more often a household incubator. Instead of being cold, it is only cool; sometimes actually warm.”30

People had long known that milk spoiled more quickly at warm temperatures. But now scientists’ microscopes revealed exactly how fast it deteriorated over time and place. One intrepid New Jersey dairy inspector, Samuel Sharwell, proved this point by tracking four cans of milk “from cow to consumer.” Starting at four a.m. in Baldwinsville, New York, he took the cans from four “ordinary” farms (none had refrigeration) and accompanied them to Newark, 340 miles away. At the station platform, the first samples revealed that the milk already contained up to 50 times more bacteria than the Newark standard of 100,000 per cubic centimeter. Then he boarded the iced freight car. “There are several points of difference between a Twentieth Century Limited and a milk train,” he remarked. “But if one is following milk over the country he must ride with it. So I found myself in semi-darkness among the milk cans bumping southward over the Lackawanna tracks as speedily as such trains usually travel.” Along the way the temperature rose from 50 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit, despite the ice, and the milk’s bacteria count increased exponentially.

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