Feeding the masses: animal experimental farms, nutrition science, and the politics of metabolism
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Authors
Mang, Maggie
Issue Date
2024-08
Type
Electronic thesis
Thesis
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Science and technology studies
Alternative Title
Abstract
This dissertation investigates how agricultural animal science research influenced theimplementation of population-level policies around human mass feeding and nutrition in the
early- to mid-twentieth century United States. Following ‘experimental mass feeding’ projects
and theories for both humans and nonhumans, this dissertation shows how developments in
nutrition science and administrative theories of mass feeding interpolated social arenas not
always related to agriculture itself. This project begins at the USDA’s experimental farm in
Beltsville, Maryland, in the early-twentieth century. Unlike other experiment stations attached to
land-grant universities, Beltsville was the only national experimental farm, later earning the
moniker of ‘Uncle Sam’s Proving Ground.’ Focusing on metabolic experimentations, I trace how Beltsville changed within an early twentieth century context of an imperialist United States that was also experimenting with the implications and promises of an increasingly scientized agricultural system. Interested in how agricultural knowledge production travels, I then follow one of Beltsville’s prominent animal nutrition scientists, Paul E. Howe, as he moved from the USDA to the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). I outline how Howe used the scientism of emerging nutritional science to establish nutritional baselines that would protect the prison’s authority and legitimacy, as well as shore up administrative and managerial expertise. This dissertation then analyzes federal massfeeding programs like ‘nutritional engineering’ and ‘nutritional anthropometry’ that gained footholds in a post-WWII era largely due to the significant amounts of federal money supporting feeding experiments through the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). I show how these federal frameworks of ‘nutritional engineering’ and ‘nutritional anthropometry’ contained within them distinctly agricultural origins, even if those who drew inspiration from
agricultural practices often waxed romance about the bucolic ease of agricultural feeding. This dissertation ends with contemporary examples of experimental mass feeding by way of ethnographic participant observations at industrial trade-shows. ‘Nature-based’ methods of industrial agricultural feeding has emerged in a long line of industrial agricultural techno-fixes that promises to meet global food demand and preserve existing infrastructures in place. I map how hype in both industrial agricultural spaces and human health are looking to the space of the gut microbiome and the gut- brain axis to absorb larger social ills. Ultimately, I demonstrate how my historical scholarship on American experimental mass feeding is crucial to understanding these trends today and their implications for planetary and human health.
Description
August 2024
School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Full Citation
Publisher
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY