Risk on the Table: Food Production, Health, and the Environment

Published by Berghahn Books 2021

Risk on the Table

Food Production, Health, and the Environment

Edited by: Angela N. H. Creager and Jean-Paul Gaudillière

Volume 21 in the series Environment in History: International Perspectives

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781789209457

Overview
Contents

About this book

Over the last century, the industrialization of agriculture and processing technologies have made food abundant and relatively inexpensive for much of the world’s population. Simultaneously, pesticides, nitrates, and other technological innovations intended to improve the food supply’s productivity and safety have generated new, often poorly understood risks for consumers and the environment. From the proliferation of synthetic additives to the threat posed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the chapters in Risk on the Table zero in on key historical cases in North America and Europe that illuminate the history of food safety, highlighting the powerful tensions that exists among scientific understandings of risk, policymakers’ decisions, and cultural notions of “pure” food.

Author / Editor information

Angela N. H. Creager is the Thomas M. Siebel Professor in the History of Science at Princeton University, where she directed the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies from 2016–20. Her current work focuses on the role of genetic tests in environmental science and regulation during the late twentieth century.

Jean-Paul Gaudillière is a Senior Researcher at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, and a Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He is currently working on the transition from “international public health” to “global health,” with a specific focus on developments in East Africa and South Asia.

Angela N. H. Creager is the Thomas M. Siebel Professor in the History of Science at Princeton University, where she directed the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies from 2016–20. Her current work focuses on the role of genetic tests in environmental science and regulation during the late twentieth century.

Reviews

“This collection draws insightful genealogies of a persistently virulent problem: food safety. The book brings together a series of well-written and exciting historical cases that together create a picture of the scientific and political struggles for food safety and their obstacles.” • Alexander von Schwerin, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

“‘Risk on the Table’ is a perfectly apt title for a book which deals with a major concern of modern societies: What shall we eat? Combining perspectives of ‘food risk’ as a matter of health concerns; environmental issues; and economic, social and employment problems, this book is truly innovative.” • Karin Zachmann, The Technical University of Munich

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Figures and Tables Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	x
Introduction Angela N. H. Creager and Jean-Paul Gaudillière Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I Objectifying Dangers
CHAPTER 1 Salad Days: The Science and Medicine of Bad Greens, 1870–2000 Anne Hardy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
CHAPTER 2 Radioactive Diet: Food, Metabolism, and the Environment, ca. 1960 Soraya de Chadarevian Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
CHAPTER 3 Poison and Cancer: The Politics of Food Carcinogens in 1950s West Germany Heiko Stoff Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
CHAPTER 4 “EAT. DIE.” The Domestication of Carcinogens in the 1980s Angela N. H. Creager Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
CHAPTER 5 Risk on the Negotiating Table: Malnutrition, Mold Toxicity, and Postcolonial Development Lucas M. Mueller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	138
CHAPTER 6 Contaminated Foods, Global Environmental Health, and the Political Recalcitrance of a Pollution Problem: PCBs from 1966 to the Present Day Aurélien Féron Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
PART II Ordering Risks
CHAPTER 7 Trace Amounts at Industrial Scale: Arsenicals and Medicated Feed in the Production of the “Western Diet” Hannah Landecker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
CHAPTER 8 Between Bacteriology and Toxicology: Agricultural Antibiotics and US Risk Regulation (1948–77) Claas Kirchhelle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	214
CHAPTER 9 Conflicts of Interest, Ignorance, Capture, and Hegemony in the Diethylstilbestrol US Food Crisis Jean-Paul Gaudillière Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
CHAPTER 10 Defining Food Additives: Origins and Shortfalls of the US Regulatory Framework Maricel V. Maffini and Sarah Vogel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	274
CHAPTER 11 The Rise (and Fall) of the Food-Drug Line: Classification, Gatekeepers, and Spatial Mediation in Regulating US Food and Health Markets Xaq Frohlich Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	297
Afterword Deborah Fitzgerald Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	330
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	338

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 366
Keywords: Environmental Studies (General); History: 20th Century to Present; Food & Nutrition

eBook

Published: January 15, 2021
ISBN: 9781789209457