Lives of thousands of children in exchange for profit: The milk scandal that killed babies in the 19th century

In the 1850s, New York City was gripped by a mysterious epidemic that affected the city’s most vulnerable residents: babies. According to Big Think, approximately 8,000 babies die every year due to diarrhea, The New York Times reported.

Focus.Technology has its own technology. telegram channel. Subscribe to avoid missing the latest and most exciting news from the world of science!

In an era without advanced medical diagnostics, doctors faced the daunting task of finding the elusive culprit of this epidemic of infant death. The public, full of speculation, put forward various theories, ranging from nutritional deficiencies to digestive diseases such as infant cholera. It was not until 1858 that journalist Frank Leslie began pursuing the truth and finally uncovered the culprit: milk.

More precisely, it was milk fluff, a spoiled product formed as a result of feeding dairy cows the remains of mash waste from Manhattan and Brooklyn distilleries. This strange practice arose from the desire to make profit from waste.

Social and economic pressures of the time encouraged women to wean their babies early. Author of Dangerous Digestion: The Politics of America’s Diet Councils, Dr. Melanie Dupuis notes that middle-class women also face this dilemma while balancing child-rearing and social responsibilities. Corsets, women’s general health, and societal expectations played a role in the decline of breastfeeding.

To meet demand for milk, New Yorkers have turned to “Pure Country Milk,” a misleading label that appears on milk trucks and street corner vendors’ signs. The expansion of the food supply chain during the city’s rapid urbanization in the early 1800s exacerbated the problem.

Milk from rural farms in Orange and Westchester counties as far as Manhattan was in danger of spoiling in stuffy train cars. Establishing urban “pure milk” dairies proved impractical due to limited grazing areas and the prohibitive cost of providing natural fodder. So the distillers came up with an ingenious solution: They installed metal sheds in their factories, where they fed the cows with hot waste wort, thus producing milk froth in the city and making a profit from the waste.

It is claimed that scrap-fed cows produce five to 25 times more milk than grass-fed cows. The Times suggested this might be because the milk expels animal waste. Cows following this diet suffered serious consequences. Their health deteriorated, resulting in ulcers and tail loss. Sellers added chalk, flour, eggs, and plaster of Paris to improve color and consistency to disguise the thin, unnatural bluish liquid.

By the late 1830s, according to historian Richard A. Menkel, “50 to 80 percent of all milk consumed in the major northeastern cities of America” ​​consisted of milk. Temperance reformer Robert Hartley’s efforts to uncover the link between bad milk and infant mortality in the 1840s were largely in vain due to doubts about his motives.

In addition, wealthy distillers wielded significant political influence and enjoyed minimal government oversight. Storing sick cows in windowless sheds further misled the public through false labeling. In addition, the fact that the germ theory was not yet widely accepted made it difficult to determine the real cause of infant deaths, which were often attributed to diseases such as diphtheria and tuberculosis.

But in 1858, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper sparked a public backlash against milkweed with its powerful images and sensationalism. Leslie provided detailed maps showing the street corners where slurry was sold and the dairies responsible for producing it. Their illustrators infiltrated these places, fueling anti-immigrant sentiment by depicting not only unsanitary conditions but also Irish milkmen in derogatory terms.

As angry crowds gathered outside the dairies, the Common Council bowed to the pressure and sent a group of New York city council members to investigate. Unfortunately, the distillery owners were given advance notice, which gave them ample time to disinfect the substandard barns. Despite hearings and inconclusive chemical tests, the majority of the committee voted to preserve the milk and recommended only improved ventilation in the barns.

Despite minimal local support, Leslie’s tireless advocacy eventually forced the New York State Legislature to pass milk regulations in 1862. However, milk adulteration problems continued until rail transportation and pasteurization made it possible to transport cold, uncontaminated milk from rural farms to the city. The situation improved further when Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, which banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of adulterated or mislabeled foods, drugs, pharmaceuticals, and alcohol.

The milkshake scandal remains relevant today as an example of the ongoing war between cheap processed foods and their natural, healthy substitutes.

Previously Focus wrote about the USA mascot that everyone forgot.

We also talked about how the bestselling author’s mistake affected millions of people.