The pasteurization of England: the science, culture and health implications of food processing, 1900-1950

Dr P.J. Atkins, Department of Geography, University of Durham, Durham DH1 3LE e-mail: p.j.atkins@durham.ac.uk

'It [has] been said that the man who heated good milk was a fool and the man who heated bad milk was a knave (Dr Robert Mond).1 INTRODUCTION Ulrich Beck is recently reported to have called the carnivorous part of the British diet 'an experiment inflicted upon us by the beef industry.2 He was referring of course to the scare connecting Mad Cow Disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) to new-variant CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease), a debilitating and ultimately fatal human brain disease, but he might equally well have been thinking of E. Coli 0157, Brucellosis, Crohns Disease, or any of the other public health hazards which have recently been associated with the consumption of animal products.

This paper seeks to build upon the recent, heightened interest in our food environment by demonstrating that one of the most controversial of present-day issues about food standards, whether milk should or should not be compulsorily pasteurized, had a prehistory before the Second World War. This was part of a general debate about the role of the state in food systems, when government, in both its central and local forms, was becoming actively involved in regulating food production and sale, and in setting minimum standards of hygiene, composition and purity. The state response at that time was uneven, depending upon the particular characteristics of the foodstuff concerned and upon the nature of the pressure which was exerted on the policy-makers by interest groups. As Giddens (1996) has noted, assessing and coping with risk is a highly political activity, due to the assignment of values and prioritizing of responses. The regulation of the food industry in the twentieth century provides many examples of this.

Our focus will be upon the milk industry, and particularly on the struggle to eliminate bacterial danger by the application of the heat treatment technology known as pasteurization. There was a public debate from about 1900 to 1945, sometimes fierce in terms of the passionate arguments deployed, about whether it was appropriate for there to be any intervention at all, even though the risks to health were well-known. We will examine this through an account of the views of the two camps, the pro- and the anti-pasteurization lobbies. It will be argued that essentially this was a clash between discourses which were opposed in their views on the desirability of the modernization of food systems.

Our point of departure will be the contention that throughout the century it has been the relationship between science and the state that has constituted the essential shape of food regulation. A naive model might assume that the discovery of 'facts about food hygiene provided the raw material for policy action, and such a history would be a simple matter of matching laboratory research results with legislation. In reality, neither the science, nor the policy-making has been straightforward. Almost every aspect of the growing scientific

knowledge concerning milk hygiene was contested, with some issues the subject of bitter controversy. One example is the debate about the need for pasteurization and the best technology for achieving it. Such uncertainty caused confusion in the public health world and afforded space on the battlefield to two main anti-pasteurization groups. These were, firstly, the dairy farmers and small milk retailers, for whom the status quo ante was the cheapest and most profitable option, and, secondly, a group of activists who for philosophical and ethical reasons opposed any modern technological solution to the problem of disease in the food system.

THE SOLIDIFICATION OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 1901 was a turning point for the role of science in the milk food system. This was the year when Robert Koch publicly challenged the received wisdom that tuberculosis could spread from animals to humans, and in doing so he created a reactive wave of research among those scientists who wished to prove him wrong (Rosenkrantz 1985). But 1901 was also the year of the making of the Sale of Milk Regulations, when for the first time the state legally defined and enforced a minimum level of fat in milk. The occasion for this was a desire to control adulteration, which prior to this had been a common fraud (Atkins 1991; Phillips and French 1999). The effect was far-reaching because here was a government becoming embroiled in a debate about what should in future be considered 'natural. It was well-known that the proportions of fat, solids-non-fat, and water in a cows milk varied with many factors, such as her feed, the stage in her lactation, and even her breed, but now farmers were told there would be penalties if certain minimum standards of composition were not met. In future they were to be presumed to be dishonest if the water level in their milk was too high.

Such state surveillance of food was made possible by the use of scientific instruments for measuring the specific gravity of milk and also the initiation of advanced biochemical investigations. These, along with recently developed bacteriological methods, made it possible from the turn of the century for local authority laboratories to pass judgement upon the integrity and hygienic quality of milk.

One of the infectious diseases discovered to be very common in the milk of the day was bovine tuberculosis (Atkins 2000a, b). Despite Kochs outburst in 1901, most public health and medical professionals continued to believe that it was a significant threat to human health and various solutions were sought. The one that aroused most enthusiasm was pasteurization, a method of heating milk until most pathogens are killed. opposition, as Davis (1950, 528) has noted: 'Probably no subject outside religion and politics has been the cause of more prolonged and bitter controversies than the proposal compulsorily to pasteurize all milk. But there was also much

Much of the fuel for this controversy has been the uncertainty of the science and technology associated with bovine tuberculosis and with the pasteurization solution. Successive

generations of politicians cited this lack of solidity as a reason for inaction, although in the period 1900-1950 a more compelling explanation is that the cost of slaughtering the 40 per cent of the dairy herd which was infected with tuberculosis was deemed to be too great.

The first issue to be clarified was the aetiology and epidemiology of bovine tuberculosis. Kochs speech at the 1901 International Congress on Tuberculosis in London led to the immediate establishment of a Royal Commission on Tuberculosis. This was unusual in being entirely research-based and the reports it issued in 1907 and 1911 were therefore on a relatively firm scientific footing in identifying infected milk as the main cause of nonpulmonary tuberculosis in humans. Nevertheless Kochs allies mounted a rearguard action that lasted for several decades and, at the very least, it seems that many members of the milk trade and most of the general public continued to be convinced that the danger of catching tuberculosis from milk was insignificant.3

The adoption of pasteurization as a technological answer to tuberculosis was slow at first. The first commercial pasteurizer was manufactured in Germany in 1880, and by 1885 milk was regularly heat treated in Copenhagen and Stockholm, but little happened in Britain for a further 20 years (Hill 1943, 3). Only 1.5 per cent of the milk supply here was pasteurized in 1926.4 The majority of retail milk was still unpasteurized in 1939 and this remained true in many small towns and rural areas well into the 1950s. One reason for this was that the early pasteurization machinery was unreliable. In the so-called 'flash process, milk was heated very quickly to a high temperature in batches and then cooled, but the technology was primitive and was incapable of ensuring that all of the milk was treated equally and the bacteria fully eliminated. The problematic flash method was eventually banned by the Milk (Special Designations) Order (1923),5 and replaced for the next couple of decades by low temperature (63-71C for 30 minutes) machines. These 'holders or 'flow retarders heated the milk slowly as it passed through a succession of large vessels. The most successful phase was ushered in by H.T.S.T. (High Temperature Short Time) methods in the 1940s. Here the milk was heated for 12-20 seconds at 75-76C, giving a generally more effective result.

Commenting in 1923, S.R. Douglas of the Medical Research Council was not impressed by the technology then in use: 'the pasteurization of milk as carried out by the trade in this country is, from the consumers point of view, absolutely useless.6 He argued that heated milk, if not fully pasteurized, is a dangerous medium for the growth of bacteria. Table 1 suggests that matters were still unsatisfactory a decade later. The new phosphatase test, which Graham (later Sir Graham) Selby Wilson had developed as an indicator of whether

pasteurization had been carried out properly, showed that many samples still contained viable mycobacteria even after heat treatment. It is hardly surprising therefore that the public were sceptical until the general adoption of the perfected technology after the Second World War.

<Table 1 here>

THE PUBLIC HEALTH DEBATE ABOUT PASTEURIZATION In the light of these technological uncertainties and theoretical squabbles, how was it then that a network of pro-pasteurization lobbyists came into existence? The answer lies in the

respective strength and political mobilization of the two sides, for and against pasteurization.

From 1900 to about 1930 the field was held by the anti-pasteurization campaigners. Under a broad banner opposing any state intervention in dairy farming or the dairy trade, they were able to forestall or dilute all of the legislation that came forward. This was achieved by skilful parliamentary manoeuvring and a fortuitous combination of events that saw Westminster's attention focused on the Great War and a series of other major political issues.

But by 1930, when it was becoming obvious that the Milk and Dairies Act, which had had come into operation in 1925, and the Milk and Dairies Order that followed in 1926, were not having much positive impact, the pro-pasteurization activists began to regroup.

First, a highly motivated group of eminent doctors and research scientists were actively involved in calling for pasteurization. Graham Selby Wilson, Professor of Bacteriology and

the London School of Hygiene, and Viscount Dawson of Penn, the Kings physician, seem to have been the coordinators. In particular they wrote letters to the Lancet, the British Medical Journal and The Times (Dawson of Penn et al. 1930; Anon. 1934; The Times 6th March 1934), and these were so widely quoted in the literature of the day that they certainly seem to have made the desired impact. By 1933 the governments own advisers on medical policy were willing to state that 'it is clear that the only way of ensuring a safe general milk supply is pasteurization.7 Wilsons book in 1942 was also a major landmark, and was published in the same year as a Medical Research Council report warning of the increase of tuberculosis during the War.

Second, the British Medical Association and other societies attempted an institutional route for expressing their concerns about the milk supply. The B.M.A. sponsored several

delegations to the government but received most publicity for its 1938 poster and advertisement campaign warning of the dangers of unpasteurized milk. This caused

controversy to such an extent that several newspapers even refused to take B.M.A. copy. They presumably feared that they might be sued by litigious members of the milk trade.

Third, several weighty reports were published, giving statistical data on bovine tuberculosis and arguing for pasteurization of the milk supply, at the very least in a permissive form which could be adopted by individual local authorities. The reports from the Peoples League of Health (1932) and the Hopkins Committee (Hopkins 1934) were especially pertinent, although the more limited pronouncements of the Grigg (1933) and Cutforth (1935)

Commissions had grivitas and, more importantly, gained the imprimatur of government for certain policy shifts.

It is worth noting that the public health politics of the 1930s and 1940s were not overwhelmingly pro-pasteurization. Even within the medical profession there were many opponents and one can occasionally detect the exasperation this caused from editorials in the medical press: 'Pasteurization is one of those subjects that tend to generate more heat than light. It is a great pity that medical men who oppose pasteurization support their case by misstatements of fact, or by ignoring those facts which are available to anyone who will take the trouble to spend an hour or two in a medical library. It is a pity, because their misstatements and ill-informed views are given much prominence in a press often enough, unfortunately, more anxious to please certain interests than to get at the truth of the matter (Anon. 1943, 258).

The continued opposition, although certainly in a small minority by 1930, gave a loophole to the policy-makers. Thus Earl de la Warr, then Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, in 1931 issued a call for unanimity before the state could be expected to intervene: 'The medical profession...would also help the government if they would make up their minds as to what they really felt about milk. Before the medical profession come down on the farming industry for not taking certain steps about milk, they should really make up their minds what they wanted the farmers to do (Anon. 1931, 387-88).

CAPITALISM AND GERMS From the turn of the century the heat treatment of milk started in Britain in a small way (Mackenzie 1899; Hope 1901). Initially it was introduced in London by Wiltshire United Dairies, Express Dairies and other large companies as a means of delaying the souring process and thus increasing the shelf life of their product (Macewen 1910, 80; Shaw 1919,

634). There was no initial concern about disease per se and retailers certainly did not declare the intervention to their customers, who would then have realised that freshness was not always guaranteed. MacFadyens (1938, 148-49) cynical interpretation was probably not far from the truth: 'If it had not been essential for the dairy trade of today (a series of large combines collecting milk of various ages over a wide area) to find some system whereby they could ensure delivery to the consumer in a sweet condition, it would appear doubtful that general pasteurization of milk would ever have come to the fore.

Producer-retailers, however, who were responsible for about 20 per cent of milk retailed, opposed pasteurization. Since many could not afford their own pasteurizing and bottling plant, they would have had to take their milk to a depot and receive some anonymous product in return (Savage 1931, 545-56). The direct link with the land, upon which much of their goodwill depended, would therefore have been destroyed. The point was that producer-retailers sold their own milk and therefore offered a special service to the consumer of 'milk from the cow (Hammond 1956, 252-53). They opposed the move towards compulsory pasteurization implicit in the Milk Industry Bill of 1938, which as a result did not reach the statute book partly because of the activity of a number of M.P.s representing their interests (Davies 1944, 132). The large dairy companies, ever anxious to eliminate their smaller competitors, were of course in favour of this and also supported wartime efforts to rationalise delivery rounds to the detriment of the producer-retailers.

RESISTANCE FROM NEO-ROMANTICISM AND ANTI-MODERNISM The environmentalism of the early twentieth century had clear roots in the dirt and diseaseobsessed hygienist discourse of the Victorian era. But it also had a new element of what

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Trentmann calls 'neo-romanticism, a bourgeois cultural movement that had offshoots in various countries (Trentmann 1994).8 The fresh air, hiking and healthy body ideas of the well-organized and highly popular German youth movements of the 1920s and 1930s had their parallels in Britain and inspired a broad-spectrum response across the class and political divides. The Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, the Ramblers Association, the Youth Hostel Association and the Kibbo Kift Kin all represented in their own way a muscular interpretation of leisure in the open countryside, a new and institutionalised somatic experience of nature arising spontaneously out of civil society.

Complementary to such action-based and lifestyle philosophies was the flood of popular writing about rural England that peaked in the period 1930-45.9 H.J. Massingham is an example of one author who helped to create an interpretation of the countryside as a repository of certain precious traditional values. Together these ideas and the fresh air activities forged what for Matless (1995) is 'a particular landscaped version of English citizenship, a new set of identities which were mediated through the relationship between humans and nature.

Organic farming and clean milk The critique of modernism had other neo-romanticist expressions. There was, for instance, much scepticism about modern farming methods such as the use of fertilizers and other agrochemicals, and also about the introduction of mechanized cultivation and machine milking. On the one hand this package of techniques was seen as displacing jobs in the countryside and

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therefore encouraging migration to urban areas. On the other hand, modern farming was also accused of degrading soil fertility and leading to irreversible soil erosion (Lymington 1938).

In response, figures such as Lady Eve Balfour attempted the popularisation of organic farming as an alternative, drawing inspiration from the techniques of recycling organic matter that had been developed in colonial India (Balfour 1948). A common aim was the full reestablishment of mixed farming, which its proponents considered to be the optimum type of enterprise for English ecological conditions. It comprised a holistic system in which waste products were swapped between the arable and livestock sides, helping to reduce or eliminate the need for artificial inputs such as artificial fertilizers and imported feeding-stuffs. The greatest possible level of self-sufficiency on a holding also had the merit of minimizing the risk of introducing disease with new stock.

Pasteurization was criticized by organic farmers as proof of the failure of modern farming. It treated the symptoms and not the cause of the problem, which in their view was the overintensification of production in conditions of dirt and disease, coupled with a disregard for the traditional principles of good husbandry. Lady Balfour was especially critical of pasteurized milk, which she said was in the true interests only of the large dairy companies, who were enabled 'to sell milk several days old without the customer being aware of the fact, and of the dirty producers, 'for raw milk must be clean or it goes sour, only pasteurization enables the dirty milkers to get away with it (Balfour 1948, pp. 210-11). For her, 'pasteurization can never be a good thing in itself. It should be regarded even by its advocates as the lesser of two evils. The necessity for it, where it exists is a confession of failure. The aim should be to

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abandon the practice just as soon as the need for it - unhealthy cows and dirty methods - can be eliminated.

This version of the anti-pasteurization argument saw the technology as superfluous. What was really needed was a revolution in farm hygiene that would guarantee a dirt- and germ-free product. In order to begin the task of changing attitudes, a National Clean Milk Society was founded in 1916 by Wilfred Buckley and Waldorf Astor (Buckley 1922). Their campaign lasted for over a decade and involved a wide range of activities. They sponsored a number of National Milk Conferences in the 1920s, at which the issues were formally debated, probably for the first time in the United Kingdom, but their most important contribution was the encouragement of research on the best methods of clean milk production.10 This was

undertaken at the National Institute for Research in Dairying from about 1921, and was inspired by the leadership of Robert Stenhouse Williams (Vernon 1997).

Unwholesome food and eugenics Another strand of anti-modernist views, expressed strongly in many quarters, concerned the perceived unwholesomeness of the national food supply. The origins of the depressed tone of much of the literature lay at the turn of the century when a debate about the 'physical deterioration of the nation had erupted after the discovery that many army recruits were physically unfit to fight the Boers in South Africa (Dodd 1904, ch. 1; Gilbert 1965). Such fears were later rekindled by Sir John Boyd Orrs (1936) finding that half of the population were undernourished. Although politicians were keen to play such statistics down, there were

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many who saw the modernization of British society as a failure for the living standards of a majority of people: 'For all our medical work in reducing certain contagious diseases and prolonging the expectation of life, a man full of vigorous health is almost a museum piece in this country. Subnormality in health and degenerative disease in mild or acute form are the average in this country, so much so that we take it for granted (Lymington 1941, 13).

The first explanation adduced was that these C3 bodies were the result of poor childhood nutrition and the debilitating effects of urban living but, later, worries surfaced about the quality of food and its poisoning by chemical residues. By the 1930s a link was asserted between a declining fertility of the soil and the health of the race, with interesting echoes of the blood and soil rhetoric that was to take hold in Germany. There was an underpinning here of the eugenic arguments that were common in the 1920s and 1930s.

Writers as varied as Viscount Lymington (later to be the Earl of Portsmouth) and Sir George Stapledon were advocates of this view of deterioration (Lymington 1938, 1941).11 For them whole foods, including milk, unmodified by processing, were an essential part of national salvation: 'Much of modern food is processed, preserved, refined, sterilized, dead...Contrast the insipid pasteurized fluid of today to the milk of our forefathers...We are constantly told there is no significant difference between the processed milk and the fresh, as if the loss of ascorbic acid and the insolubility of lime and phosphorus caused by heating were of no account (Picton 1941, 112).

It was the lot of milk to bear much ideological baggage during this period, including notions about racial health and vigour. Thus the eugenicists and their fellow travellers claimed that the strength and fertility of the nation would be threatened by pasteurization, making milk an

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unnatural substance (Sutherland 1938, 704, 1028; Picton 1938, 812). In doing so they entrained any science that they could find which showed that pasteurization modified the 'natural constituents of milk. One example was the research of Mattick and Golding (1931, 1936) which showed that rats fed on a diet of sterilized milk were unable to reproduce, and that those fed solely on pasteurized milk suffered from vitamin B deficiencies. Sutherland (1938, 704) claimed that, as a result of pasteurization, 'the shadow of depopulation and national decline is looming in the near future.

It was this type of argument which encouraged activists to demand a government-sponsored system of school milk provision, the reasoning being that well-nourished children would contribute to a renewed national virility. The first feeding trials, financed by the National Milk Publicity Council, were started in Birmingham in 1922-23 (Jenkins 1970), and by 1930 35,000 children were receiving free milk daily, paid for by their Local Education Authorities.12 In 1934 this was expanded nationwide in the governments own Milk in Schools Scheme. Most of the milk supplied was not pasteurized, however, and, ironically, it was this availability of cheap school milk which exposed more children than ever before to the inherent dangers of consuming raw milk (Francis 1958, 91-2).

One final point should be raised on the theme of eugenics. It again relates to health at the macro-scale. The principle of inoculation was of course well understood in the early century but, despite many experiments and several false dawns, no reliable anti-tuberculosis vaccine was thought to exist for the human population.13 It was therefore suggested by some

commentators that milk with a small infective dose of mycobacteria might actually be

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beneficial in conferring some immunity on its regular consumers. Any heat treatment which might kill these bacteria was therefore opposed as interfering with the only known practical mechanism of mass-inoculation. In truth there is evidence that long-term exposure to bovine tuberculosis does indeed reduce morbidity and mortality from the more common, human form of the disease, but the dose was of course uncontrollable and estimates indicate that over 800,000 deaths were caused by this transmission of tuberculosis from animals to humans in Britain during our period, 1900-1950 (Atkins and Cox 2000).

Anti-statism and the yeomanry of olde England The anti-modernist theme was often, but not exclusively, coupled with a right wing opposition to intervention by the state. Viscount Lymington, for instance, a Conservative M.P. from 1929 to 1934, asserted that successive governments were to blame for inter-war agricultural depression because of their 'interference in farming, and he gave the example of the Milk and Dairies Order (1926) which 'has made cowshed costs fantastic at the instance of theorists in the Ministry of Health. He deplored, as a form of 'state socialism, the

establishment by the National Government of the Milk Marketing Boards in 1933 and resigned from Parliament soon afterwards (Lymington 1938; Portsmouth 1943, 85).

Lymington also expressed strongly anti-pasteurization views, a process which he thought lessened the incentive to produce clean milk and which guaranteed only the consumption of 'bulked cemeteries of cooked germs. To him compulsory pasteurization was 'supreme folly (Lymington 1938, 255-57). Instead he favoured certified milk and criticized its initial exclusion from the Milk Marketing Scheme.

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It is clear from his autobiography that Lymington had some early sympathies with fascism: his pre-war travels included visits to both Hitler and Mussolini and he tells of narrowly avoiding internment in 1939 (Portsmouth 1965). Meanwhile he had been drawn into William Sandersons English Mistery, a society which stressed the need for a revival of pre-industrial traditions and Anglo-Saxon identity.14 Membership included Reginald Dorman-Smith, who later became Minister of Agriculture (1939-40) and Rolf Gardiner.

Gardiner was an organic farmer, an opponent of processed foods and an activist in the revival of a vibrant rural culture. He had been a member of Social Credit as an undergraduate at Cambridge and had built strong links with the German youth movements in the 1920s. When he took up farming in Wiltshire he formed the 'Springhead Ring of fellow enthusiasts in youth work, folk dance, forestry and farming, and his estate became a meeting place for German visitors and British Germanophiles. Gardiner wrote about his desire for closer links across the North Sea and this crystallised after 1933 into an admiration for Nazism (Griffiths 1980, 144-45). Later he did claim that National Socialism had betrayed the principles of blood and soil, and called for the replacement of centralized planning by local, organic reconstruction according to traditional yeoman values. His vision was always innately

hierarchical, however, with landowners such as himself providing the lead both socially and economically (Gardiner 1941).

Lymington, Gardiner, and other prominent conservative thinkers were critical of the role of capital in modern society. They regretted its role in industrialization, and the associated urbanization which in their view gave rise to social problems. The separation of the

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consumer from the farmer by corporate intermediaries such as large food companies or marketing boards was another negative consequence since long supply lines encouraged the processing and preservation of perishable foodstuffs. They were nostalgic for the roots of English civilization, which for them lay in the countryside, and they proposed a modified version of rural society that would be yeoman-dominated and centred on small-scale communities.

This was not new. There had been a widespread call in first two decades of the century for a movement 'back to the land. Lloyd George had been captivated by the idea and had used up much political energy on this and other rural matters, such as the reform of land tenure. The neo-romantics had an idealised vision of a yeoman England of hardy, self-reliant farmers, and organizations such as the Rural Reconstruction Association (founded 1925) and the Kinship of Husbandry were loci of these ideas (Fordham 1942). The latter had been established by Lord Lymington and included Rolf Gardiner, writers H.J. Massingham and Edmund Blunden, historian Arthur Bryant, and others). They were in close touch with 'green German ideas that were transmitted through visitors such as Geo Goetsch and Adolf Reichwein.

Vitalism and the newer knowledge of nutrition The final strand of environmental neo-romanticism was its spiritual dimension, or what Matless (1991) calls nature-mysticism. This entailed a reverence for the sublimity and

wholeness of nature which extended from the transcendental contemplation of landscape, through what nowadays would be called 'deep ecology, to a desire for 'whole and 'natural foods. D.H. Lawrence was an inspiration to many with his self-confident Nietzschian

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individualism, and a strong bio-mysticism derived from Haeckel and Emerson (Bramwell 1989, 113). Lawrences philosophy was vitalistic, based upon a belief in the restless energy of the universe, and his novels stand for the preference of many of his contemporaries for the life force of the organic over the cold calculation of a mechanistic modern civilization (Ebbatson 1980, 28-66). He is reported to have written to Rolf Gardiner supporting the latters connexions with the German youth movement and commenting that 'the Germans take their shirts off and work in the hay: they are still physical: the English are so woefully disembodied (Griffiths 1980, 144).

Further ideological input came from the theosophical teaching of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) on biodynamic farming. The immediate source for this was Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, a disciple of Steiner, whose farm in Holland became a place of pilgrimage for the British ecological lite in the 1930s (Pfeiffer 1940). Steiners original lectures on agriculture had been delivered in 1924 and stressed the spiritual cosmic features of the environment rather than the materialist interpretation of chemists such as Liebig. The 'higher forces at work in living bodies were not defined but theosophists have claimed that the subsequent discovery of enzymes, hormones, vitamins and trace elements in food has proved that Steiner was right in warning against interventions (such as pasteurization) which may lead to the destruction of unknown vital energies and links (Steiner 1958, 9-10; Koepf, Pettersson & Schaumann 1976; Koepf 1989; Sattler & von Wistinghausen 1992).

The Kinship of Husbandry were fully aware of Steiners work and it is no surprise that the writing of Lymington and Gardiner has vitalistic overtones. Indeed, much of the anti-

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pasteurization rhetoric seems to have absorbed the notion of hidden energies and unknown qualities, to the extent that it was common to hear comments such as '[I] do not like sterilized or pasteurized milk, which [I] regard as dead milk.15

Such ideas derived momentum from the mythic, almost spiritual appeal of mothers milk (McKee 1997, 123), that most vital of fluids, with its overtones of cleanliness (associated with its whiteness) and health-promotion. As breast-feeding declined amongst certain groups of women in the early twentieth century, some respect was transferred to the obvious substitute, cows milk. It was not generally appreciated, however, that the composition of the two milks is rather different, the latter lacking the species-specific immuno-globulins which give human milk its protective property against infantile diarrhoea and certain other diseases (but not tuberculosis).

Immediately after the First World War, just when pasteurization was becoming common in large cities such as London and Glasgow, science presented the anti-lobby with their best argument. This science was the so-called 'newer knowledge of nutrition and it confirmed the presence in milk and other foods of the micro-nutrients which came to be known as 'accessory food factors or vitamins.16 The fear then grew that pasteurization might destroy these, along with trace elements, enzymes, antibodies, and hormones.

Hopkins had worked on this topic from 1906 to 1912 but it was the further research of Eijkman, Funk, McCollum, Drummond and Mellanby which established the detailed implications, and by 1920 vitamins were becoming widely known (McCollum 1957, 201-

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424). After this, milk drinkers would have become gradually aware of the micro-nutrients they were consuming (Plimmer & Plimmer 1922, 1925), and concerns were raised about the effect of pasteurization. Questions were even asked in the House of Commons about whether pasteurization destroys 'the essential qualities as well as the impurities of milk.17 It took a further decade for food scientists to prove that the changes are not significant in nutritional terms.

POST-WAR DEBATES At the end of the Second World War, Davies (in Anon. 1945, 340) confidently asserted that 'the old debates on pasteurization were over and Hammond saw wartime government control as a turning point. The balance of power had shifted decisively in the favour of those who advocated pasteurization and 'the milk enthusiasts had entered into their kingdom at long last (Hammond 1956, 271-72). Gradually pasteurization spread in the 1950s from the large cities to the smaller towns and rural areas. Tuberculosis was becoming less of a threat and the Tuberculin Tested grade of milk was finally abolished in 1964 as no longer necessary. But other pathogens are still regarded as a problem in raw milk.

The anti-pasteurization movement may have hoped to be left in peace as a niche market among consenting consumers aware of the risks they take, but they have come under periodic attack again in the last twenty years. Pasteurization of milk was made compulsory in Scotland in 1983 and there were moves to extend this to England and Wales in 1989 and again in 1997-98 as a result of the international regulatory drive of the Codex Alimentarius Commission of the United Nations. The latest debate has gained a great deal of publicity, mainly as a result of the

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activities of single-issue lobby groups such as the Campaign for Real Milk and particularly the Association of Unpasteurized Milk Producers Consumers, founded in 1989 and headed by Sir Julian Rose. Several arguments are deployed by these groups but the most powerful one is the loss of freedom of choice (Pickard 1984; Soil Association 1998) and the quality press has been particularly scathing about the activities of the 'health police of the 'nanny state (Blythman 1997a, 1997b; Riley 1997; Dinsdale 1998; Heiney 1997; Leigh 1998; Nicolson 1998). 18

CONCLUSION The pasteurization and anti-pasteurization camps were starkly opposed, with relatively little neutral ground between. It seems that the issue was chosen as a suitable rearguard action by those who found that modern trends in the food system were unacceptable. This is not to say that their views were in any way 'pre-modern or 'traditional, because they espoused ideas that were essentially new and had emerged as a direct result of modernism. The organic farming and the vitalistic philosophies of Haeckel or Steiner owed very little to earlier thinkers.

The mystical and qualitative arguments of the anti-pasteurization lobby have irritated modernists intensely. Magnus Pyke called them irrational, unsupported by evidence,

misleading and untrue (Pyke 1968, 77-80). He wanted them to be judged according to the criteria of the modern science establishment and not according to their own bio-mystical agenda. Graham Wilson was of a similar mind to Pyke but he did at least devote a large section of his textbook on pasteurization to the anti-pasteurization arguments (Table 2).

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<Table 2 here>

The ground has of course shifted in the half century since Wilsons book, with new antipasteurization arguments coming forward. The latest worries are the increased likelihood of atopic allergic reactions and the killing of anti-microbial proteins and other anti-infective agents. In addition the anti-pasteurization case today is partly based on comparisons with other foods, for it is pointed out that there are far fewer cases of contamination in raw milk than in eggs, poultry meat or even water.

After a lengthy consultation process about the possible compulsory enforcement of milk pasteurization in England and Wales, the Ministry of Agriculture in January 1999 renewed its approval of 'green top' milk but at the same time increased the stringency of the hygiene tests it has to pass. This was no doubt intended as a means of squeezing the remaining producers by increasing their costs, but the debate continues because the issues underlying the stateinspired enforcement of food safety are so fundamental to the relationship between human consumers and their food environment.

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REFERENCES ANON. (1931) Pure milk, Lancet i, 387-88 ANON. (1934) Surplus milk and safe milk: a policy in outline, Lancet i, 757-59 ANON. (1943) Doctors agree about pasteurization, British Medical Journal i, 258-59 ATKINS, P.J. (1991) Sophistication detected: 1850-1914, Social History 16, 317-39 ATKINS, P.J. (2000a) Milk consumption and tuberculosis in Britain, 1850-1950, forthcoming in A. Fenton (Ed.) Order and disorder: the health implications of eating and drinking in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Edinburgh: Tuckwell Press ATKINS, P.J. (2000b) Country cows, urban disease: risk and regulation of bovine tuberculosis in Britain, 1850-1950, forthcoming in Kearns, G. Nelson, M., Rogers, J. & Lee, W.R. (Eds) Improving the public health Liverpool: Liverpool University Press ATKINS, P.J. & COX, N.J. (2000) Consumptive bodies and risk: the comparative pathology of bovine tuberculosis in Britain, 1850-1950, unpublished ms BALFOUR, E.B. (1948) The living soil: evidence of the importance to human health of soil vitality, with special reference to post-war planning 8th edition London: Faber & Faber BLYTHMAN, J. (1997) Raw deal, Guardian 28th June, 41 BLYTHMAN, J. (1997) Raw deal, Guardian 6th December, 55 BRAMWELL, A. (1989) Ecology in the 20th century: a history New Haven: Yale University Press BUCKLEY, W. (1922) Limits of pasteurisation: better milk means more business, The Milk Industry 2, 8 (February) 79-81 or, the adulteration of the milk supply,

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CHASE, M. (1989) This is no claptrap: this is our heritage, pp 128-46 in Shaw, C. & Chase, M. (Eds) The imagined past: history and nostalgia Manchester: Manchester

University Press CUTFORTH, A.E. (1935) Report of the Reorganization Commission for Milk, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Economic Series 44 DAVIES, J.L. (1944) The production, marketing and supply of milk, Proceedings of the Nutrition Society 2, 123-37 DAVIS, J. (1950) A dictionary of dairying London: Leonard Hill DAWSON OF PENN, VISCOUNT, CAMERON, H.C., HORDER, T., PORTER, C., ROBERTSON, J., FENTON, J., HUTCHISON, R., MACMILLAN, J., & BOSTOCK HILL, A. (1930) Pasteurization of milk, Lancet ii, 1315 DINSDALE, P. (1998) Natural anger, Guardian 11th February, 4 DODD, F.L. (1904) The problem of the milk supply London: Baillire, Tindall & Cox EBBATSON, R. (1980) Lawrence and the nature tradition: a theme in English fiction 18591914 Brighton: Harvester ENOCK, A.G. (1943) This milk business: from 1895 to 1943 London: H.K. Lewis FORDHAM, M. (1942) The land and life: a survey of problems of the land in relation to the future rural life of Britain, with a policy for agriculture after the war Routledge FRANCIS, J. (1958) Tuberculosis in animals and man London: Cassell GARDINER, R. (1941) Rural reconstruction, pp 91-107 in MASSINGHAM, H.J. (Ed.) England and the farmer: a symposium London: Faber London:

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GIDDENS, A. (1996) Affluence, poverty and the idea of post-scarcity society, Development and Change 27, 365-77 GILBERT, B.B. (1965) Health and politics: the British Physical Deterioration Report of 1904, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 39, 143-53 GRIFFITHS, R. (1980) Fellow travellers of the right: British enthusiasts for Nazi Germany 1933-9 London: Constable GRIGG, E. SIR (1933) Report of the Reorganization Commission on Milk, Ministry of

Agriculture and Fisheries, Economic Series 38 HAMILL, J.M. (1933) Milk, Lancet ii, 1495-98 HAMMOND, R.J. (1956) Food. Volume 2: studies in administration and control London: H.M.S.O. and Longmans, Green & Co. HEINEY, P. (1997) Sour taste of government stances, The Times 6th December, 18 HILL, H. (1943) Pasteurization London: H.K. Lewis HOPE, E.W. (1901) Sterilisation and pasteurisation v. tubercle-free herds, &c., Paper read at the British Congress on Tuberculosis, Lancet ii, 197-198 HOPKINS, F.G., Report of the Economic Advisory Council on Milch Cattle Diseases, B.P.P. 1933-4 (Cmd 4591) ix. 427 HOY, W.A. & NEAVE, F.K. (1937) The phosphatase test for efficient pasteurisation, Lancet ii, 595-98 JENKINS, A. (1970) Drinka Pinta: the story of milk and the industry that serves it London: Heinemann KAY, H.D. & NEAVE, F.K. (1935) pasteurisation, Lancet i, 1516-18 Some results of a simple test for efficiency of

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KOEPF, H.H. (1989) The biodynamc farm: agriculture in the service of the earth and humanity Hudson, New York: Anthroposophic Press KOEPF, H.H., PETTERSON, B.D. & SCHAUMANN, W. (1976) Biodynamic agriculture Spring Valley, New York: Anthroposophic Press LEIGH, R. (1998) The white stuff, Guardian 28th February, 46 LYMINGTON, VISCOUNT (1938) Famine in England London: Witherby LYMINGTON, VISCOUNT (1941) The policy of husbandry, pp 12-31 in MASSINGHAM, H.J. (Ed.) England and the farmer: a symposium London: Faber MCCOLLUM, E.V. (1957) A history of nutrition: the sequence of ideas in nutrition investigations Boston: Houghton Mifflin MACEWEN, H.A. (1910) The public milk supply London: Blackie MACFADYEN, N. (1938) Pasteurisation of milk, British Medical Journal i, 148-9, 259 MCKEE, F. (1997) The popularization of milk as a beverage during the 1930s, pp 123-41 in SMITH, D.F. (Ed.) Nutrition in Britain: science, scientists and politics in the twentieth century London: Routledge MACKENZIE, L. (1899) The hygienics of milk, Edinburgh Medical Journal 5, 372-78 and 563-76 MATLESS, D. (1991) Nature, the modern and the mystic: tales from early twentieth century geography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers ns 16, 272-86 MATLESS, D. (1995) 'The art of right living: landscape and citizenship, 1918-39, pp 93122 in PILE, S. & THRIFT, N.J. (Eds) Mapping the subject: geographies of cultural transformation London: Routledge

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MATTICK, E.C.V. & GOLDING, J. (1931) Relative value of raw and heated milk in nutrition, Lancet i, 662-67 MATTICK, E.C.V. & GOLDING, J. (1936) Relative value of raw and heated milk in nutrition, Lancet i, 1132-34; ii, 702-06 NICOLSON, A. (1998) Rural ride, Sunday Telegraph 18th January, 54 ORR, J.B. (1936) Food, health and income London: Macmillan PEOPLES LEAGUE OF HEALTH (1932) Report of a special committee appointed...to make a survey of tuberculosis of bovine origin in Great Britain London: Peoples League of Health PFEIFFER, E. (1940) Bio-dynamic farming and gardening: soil fertility, renewal and

preservation 2nd edition New York: Anthroposophic Press PHILLIPS, J. & FRENCH, M. (1999) State regulation and the hazards of milk, 1900-1939, Social History of Medicine 12, 371-88 PICKARD, B.M. (1984) The case for untreated milk Haughley, Stowmarket: Soil Association PICTON, L.J. (1938) Pasteurisation of milk, British Medical Journal i, 812 PICTON, L.J. (1941) Diet and farming, pp 108-30 in MASSINGHAM, H.J. (Ed.) England and the farmer: a symposium London: Faber PLIMMER, R.H.A. & PLIMMER, V.G. (1925) Longmans, Green & Co. PLIMMER, V.G. & PLIMMER, R.H.A. (1922) Vitamins and the choice of food London: Longmans, Green & Co. PORTSMOUTH, EARL OF (1943) Alternative to death: the relationship between soil, family and community London: Faber Food, health and vitamins London:

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PORTSMOUTH, EARL OF (1965) A knot of roots: an autobiography London: Bles PYKE, M. (1968) Food and society London: Murray RILEY, A. (1997) Cheesemakers face up to a raw deal, Guardian 4th October, 16 ROSENKRANTZ, B.G. (1985) The trouble with bovine tuberculosis, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 59, 155-75 SATTLER, F. & WISTINGHAUSEN, E. VON (1992) Stourbridge: Biodynamic Agricultural Association SAVAGE, W.G. (1931) Pasteurisation in relation to milk distribution, Lancet i, 543-46 SHAW, W.V. (1919) Report on the pasteurization of milk in England, pp 634-41 in Biodynamic farming practice

Departmental Committee of Production and Distribution of Milk [Chairman: Waldorf Astor], Third Interim Report P.P. 1919 (Cmd 315) xxv. SOIL ASSOCIATION (1998) Government consultation on the proposed ban on raw cows drinking milk: draft submission Bristol: Soil Association STEINER, R. (1958) Agriculture London: Biodynamic Agricultural Association SUTHERLAND, P.L. (1938) The laboratory examination of milk, Journal of the Royal

Sanitary Institute May, 693-705 TRENTMAN, F. (1994) Civilization and its discontents: English neo-romanticism and the transformation of anti-modernism in twentieth century western culture, Journal of Contemporary History 29, 583-625 VERNON, K. (1997) Science for the farmer? Agricultural research in England 1909-36, Twentieth Century British History 8, 310-33 WILSON, G.S. (1942) The pasteurization of milk London: Arnold

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Table 1. Proportion of pasteurized milk failing the phosphatase test

Where the pasteurized milk was sold Percentage of samples failing to pass the Phosphatase Test 1935 survey To public in London To public in towns over 20,000 population To school children in London To school children outside London Total percentage 44 34 46 58 47 1937 survey 32 17 14 22 22

Sources: Kay & Neave (1935); Hoy & Neave (1937); Enock (1943) 124.

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Table 2. The main pre-war arguments against pasteurization, as listed by Wilson (1942) Pasteurization diminishes the nutritive value of milk. Pasteurized milk may diminish resistance to disease. Pasteurized milk interferes with the proper development of the teeth and predisposes to dental caries. Pasteurization, by eliminating tuberculosis of bovine origin in early life, will lead to an increase in pulmonary tuberculosis in adults. Pasteurized milk has a cooked flavour. Pasteurization fails to destroy bacterial toxins in milk. Compulsory pasteurization will diminish the incentive for clean milk production. Compulsory pasteurization will remove the stimulus to the eradicate diseased animals from milking herds. Pasteurization is often inefficient. Pasteurization reduces the cream line. Pasteurization of milk diminishes the fertility of the animals fed on it, and might increase the present fall in the human birth rate. Pasteurization is unnecessary, because raw milk does not give rise to tuberculosis. The death rate from tuberculosis remains uniformly lower in rural areas, where all milk is drunk raw, than in cities where all milk is pasteurized. Children and invalids thrive better on raw milk. Pasteurization will lead to an increase in infant mortality. Pasteurized milk will not clot with rennet, rendering cheese-making more difficult. Pasteurization favours the growth of bacteria in milk. Pasteurization destroys the healthy lactic acid bacteria in milk, and pasteurized milk therefore goes putrid instead of sour. Pasteurization destroys beneficent enzymes, antibodies, and hormones, and takes the 'life out of the milk. Pasteurization kills the bacilli in milk and leaves their carcases to decompose directly it is exposed to the air. Pasteurization legalizes the right to sell stale milk. Imperfectly pasteurized milk is worse than raw milk. The medical profession is not unanimous in support of pasteurization. Raw milk is better than no milk.

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NOTES
1

The Dairyman, The Cowkeeper and Dairymans Journal (1923) May, 440. Guardian 28th March 1996. Wilson, A. (1937) The Times 27/1. Parliamentary Debates 192 (1926) 698. It continued to be used unofficially for milk that was not declared as heat treated. The Dairyman, The Cowkeeper and Dairymans Journal (1923) December, 237. Hamill 1933, 1497. Hamill was Deputy Chief Medical Officer. I am grateful to David Matless for this reference. For instance the output of the Batsford publishing house. See Chase 1989. The 1923 conference attracted delegates from 75 County Councils and Local Authorities, 45 from

10

companies and universities, and 15 from overseas. The Dairyman, The Cowkeeper and Dairymans Journal (1923) December, 184-207.
11

Stapledon was founder of the Welsh Plant Breeding Station at Aberystwyth. Parliamentary Debates 244 (1930) 1863-64. B.C.G. was not commonly used in Britain until the 1950s. In 1936 Lymington split from Sanderson and formed the English Array. Dr Kerr, Medical Officer of Newcastle in an after-dinner speech. The Dairyman, The Cowkeeper and

12

13

14

15

Dairymans Journal (1924) June, 524?-38.

16

The original term was vitamines, but these micro-nutrients turned out not to be amines. Parliamentary Debates 159 (1922) 2030. The choice argument is supported by the National Farmers Union. The Food Programme, BBC Radio 4,

17

18

2nd February 1998.

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