Article ID: CBB620126843

The Business with “Bugs”: Ruminology and the Commercial Feed Industry in the United States (2022)

unapi

Experimental cattle aided agricultural scientists throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in their efforts to produce beef and milk more efficiently for the growing human populations of the United States. Feed experiments were especially important for understanding how and what cattle needed to eat to better produce this food. However, as experts dedicated their time toward creating the most “economical” rations, their organism of focus shifted. This essay describes how scientific efforts to understand feed conversion in livestock became increasingly focused on the role of ruminant microorganisms over the course of the twentieth century. Highlighting media coverage of fistulated cows and the design of artificial rumens, I argue that the scientific shift from macro- to microorganism was contemporaneously embraced and, in turn, funded by agricultural chemical companies to better market animal feed products by the postwar period.

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Article Brad Bolman (2022) Introduction: What Right? Which Organisms? Why Jobs?. Journal of the History of Biology (pp. 3-13). unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Wise, Michael
Maroney, Stephanie Ruth
Brad Bolman
Tara Suri
Marsha L. Weisiger
Nance, Susan
Concepts
Experimental organisms
Cattle
Agriculture
Livestock
Nutrition; dietetics
Breeding
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
18th century
21st century
20th century, early
17th century
Places
United States
Great Britain
South Carolina (U.S.)
North America
Germany
Canada
Institutions
University of California, Berkeley
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