Technology and Culture

Making Machines of Animals by Neal A. Knapp is a key piece within the historical studies addressing the relationship between biotechnology and agricultural economics, particularly concerning the productive model that revolutionized the American meat industry in the twentieth century. It is a work that can well be placed in the historiography that has driven evolutionary history in recent decades. It clarifies an [End Page 372] understudied phenomenon: the institutional mechanisms of diffusion and reproduction of a new productive model in the American meat industry, which took place in a powerful ecosystem that revolved around the International Livestock Exposition in Chicago (1900–1975) and its main promoting institutions—the packing industry and the land-grant colleges.

Throughout five chapters, the author analyzes in detail how genetic improvement of the herd, breeding, and fattening supported the idea of livestock modernization promoted in the competitions of the Expo, as well as in classrooms, fields, and university publications. These techniques were aimed at achieving standardization and productive specialization of ranches, while integrating and generating greater added value in the production chain, led by the packing industry. The book shows how the gradual imposition of industrial economic criteria in livestock activities ultimately increased productivity and product quality. However, it emphasizes that the intermediation of packers and specialists in the agro-industrial chain imposed a new rationality that led to the denaturalization of animals, which began to be conceived of as machines for transforming grains and producing high-quality cuts.

The author's proposal becomes very suggestive when analyzing certain ideological aspects of the model. Under the prevailing eugenic ideas, nationalism, and imperialism of the time, these institutions associated the socio-racial hierarchies of human groups with the races of farm animals. Using phenotypic and aesthetic criteria, they penalized the nineteenth-century model based on free grazing and classified certain breeds as inferior and semiwild due to their Hispanic colonial origin (e.g., the Texas longhorn). The heterogeneity and seasonality of production did not fit the requirements of modern industry and urban consumption. Additionally, the institutions rewarded genetically improved animals through crossbreeding with English breeds, considered superior due to the ancient practice of artificial selection by British breeders, but also because of their adaptability to various territories of the British Empire. This ideological context explains the launch of national campaigns aimed at slaughtering Creole livestock, promoting genetic improvement, and specializing in certain productive breeds. However, the reduction of breeds in exploitation, along with endogamous reproductive practices, increased the vulnerability of modern herds to serious diseases and, consequently, the reduction of their life cycle. In the long term, producers lost autonomy and profitability, requiring larger amounts of capital to sustain the new model, due to increasing expenses of antibiotics developed by the agrochemical industry, as well as investments in infrastructure and machinery.

The book exhibits several strengths. First, it makes a significant historiographical contribution by focusing on the livestock sector and animal genetics, topics that have received little attention from American historiography or elsewhere (such as Latin America), which has focused on agriculture and engineering innovations (tools, equipment, and machinery). Second, [End Page 373] it highlights the extensive documentation of the period, which allows it to support its overall interpretation. Finally, it is worth emphasizing the author's ecological critical perspective, as he points out the authorities' neglect of deforestation and soil depletion problems that were the root causes of the new model and their preference for industrial economic criteria instead.

I note two limitations. One of them is the historical contextualization that is limited to the American experience in the twentieth century. A broader historiographical view could have shown the connections of the American model to livestock modernization in other countries (e.g., Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina). The other limitation is the limited consideration of the history of science in the interpretation of biotechnological and ideological phenomena, particularly regarding genetic engineering before the discovery of DNA. When scientific research had not yet clarified the relationship between environmental and...