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<div align="center"><b><i>MIT Seminar on Environmental and <br>
Agricultural History<br>
<br>
</i><font size=4>"Modern Meat: Synthetic Hormones, Livestock, and
Consumers in the Post-War Era"<br><br>
</font>Nancy Langston<br>
<br>
Professor of Environmental Humanities, Department of Forest and Wildlife
Ecology <br>
and the Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies, University of
Wisconsin-Madison<br>
<br>
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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.<br>
<br>
<div align="center"><b>Friday, February 29, 2008<br>
2:30 to 4:30 pm<br>
Building E51 Room 095<br>
Corner of Wadsworth and Amherst Streets, Cambridge<br>
<br>
</b>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
<a href="mailto:mcollet@mit.edu">mcollett@mit.edu</a>. <br>
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