[E&E seminars] MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History, February 29, 2008

[Margo Collett]

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:mcollet at mit.edu>mcollett at mit.edu.
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