TY - JOUR
AU1 - Welk-Joerger, Nicole
AB - The year 2020 forced us to rethink our national health infrastructures and global microbial commons. Bacterial infections linked to complications from the novel coronavirus sharpened long-standing concerns about antimicrobial resilience (AMR). What might our antibiotic future look like after this virus, and what will we need to address to better account for our concerns? Claas Kirchhelle’s impressive book provides the additional context needed to understand more fully our current (and likely prolonged future) health crises. Kirchhelle asks why nations such as the United States and the United Kingdom have addressed antibiotic risk differently, leading to the fragmented and disputed attentions to global AMR we see today. To help answer this question, he attends to the nonhuman consumption of antibiotics in livestock production systems. Alongside a clear history of the use of antibiotics as disease treatments, growth promotants and prophylactic feeds in food-producing animals, Kirchhelle demonstrates how stark fragmentations in the meaning of and regulatory attitudes towards AMR emerged across an interconnected, yet distinct, triad of communities: the general public, the agricultural community and the regulatory community. The book compares the personal, professional and political rationales of people who are part of these communities in both the US and the UK to illustrate how national context has affected understandings of antibiotic risk and, in turn, regulatory decision-making in public health. The book is in four parts, with each part jumping back and forth between the two countries to present an even narrative comparison. The three communities of focus (public, agricultural, regulatory) form the basis of the three chapters that comprise each part of the book. This format allows Kirchhelle to demonstrate how these spheres operate separately and together when it comes to the topic of administering agricultural animal antibiotics for both growth promotion and disease control. Parts I and II set the stage for Parts III and IV. The chapters that outline public understanding of antibiotics for each country (Chapters 2 and 5) would make welcome additions to any history of medicine survey, as they illustrate with great clarity the history of antibiotic adoption in both humans and livestock for the US and UK, respectively. Kirchhelle’s unique contribution to the agricultural antibiotic discussion really shines through in Chapters Ten and Thirteen, which illustrate his impeccable research on the differing regulatory rationales of the countries. These chapters attest to Kirchhelle’s passion for not only understanding the formation of these policies but contributing to their future reform. He further demonstrates this in his attempt to distil the book into four major lessons that could be taken up in the regulatory sphere. In the conclusion, he explains that the agricultural antibiotic story is one that demonstrates the consequences of 1) short-term thinking, 2) epistemic fragmentation, 3) infrastructural dependencies, and 4) narrow reform. Kirchhelle suggests that successful antibiotic stewardship will depend on long-term commitments, new risk communication, and more careful consideration of both agricultural and health spheres. To illustrate these pointed lessons and solutions, the book delivers evocative descriptions of the intricacies and tensions involved in science communication. Kirchhelle mentions clearly in his introduction that one of the inspirations for the theoretical framing of the book includes the work of sociologist Niklas Luhmann, best known for his contributions to systems theory. Considering this frame, Kirchhelle convincingly argues that varied regulatory approaches to antibiotic risk have depended on a mixture of media consumption, health crises and agricultural histories distinct to each country. Historically rooted concerns about food adulteration led the US to focus on scientific data and a regulatory infrastructure that concentrated on antibiotics as a residue hazard. In contrast, the UK grew concerned with AMR in the context of different public health surveillance systems and tragedies such as the 1967 Middlesbrough gastro-enteritis epidemic. Kirchhelle’s comparison of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring with Ruth Harrison’s Animal Machines further demonstrates how popular literature can affect how agricultural and regulatory communities react to critical narratives. Reading these texts in contrast to the farm manager-focused Cyanamid advertisements helps the reader to consider how different media have contributed to the fragmentation of antibiotic and animal welfare epistemes. With its clear prose and concise chapters, this is an enjoyable read that connects the big-picture events and institutions that led to the US and UK’s different regulatory approaches to antibiotic risk. Kirchhelle has a gift for taking abstract scientific and medical discourse and distilling it into manageable pieces. These sections attest to the scholar’s grasp of this challenging wealth of material and the often paradoxically-framed discourse within it about antibiotics. That said, readers with some foundation in the history of medicine and agriculture will find it easier to navigate some sections of this text, especially those focused on the US where the intricacies of the controversies surrounding DDT and DES are not outlined in great detail. Fortunately, Kirchhelle ties any brief mentions to exemplary references in the field in what I would consider one of the best comprehensive bibliographies on twentieth-century livestock husbandry. The source use alone speaks to Kirchhelle’s extraordinary grasp of this material which spans across various fields from the history of science, technology and medicine. Kirchhelle’s focus on antibiotic risk enables him to weave an impressive scaffold of primary and secondary material that helps clarify the inherent international and multispecies complexities of AMR. However, this big-picture approach does not always leave space for the more nuanced descriptions that would showcase the diversity of experiences and complex attitudes toward antibiotic use in farming operations. Although the book hooks the reader with a vivid anecdote featuring the author talking with a farmer about coughing pigs, Kirchhelle does not revisit this or any other interpersonal interactions with people or animals affected by this history. Kirchhelle warns of the impossibility of addressing the full complexity of this topic; his command of the literature demonstrating the standards and ideals of each country is truly stunning and will impress any reader who has long waited for this source. However, his intellectual engagement with sociologists may leave readers longing for more personal examples like the one teased at the very beginning of the text, if for nothing else but better to define how he envisions the on-the-ground experiences of the individuals sitting within his three communities of analysis. Overall, this is an impressive, well-researched, and crucial contribution to the histories of science, technology, medicine, agriculture and policymaking. In the context of our current moment, it helps illuminate the importance and cultural specificity of risk communication work in the wake of both accelerated and slow building health crises. Published by Oxford University Press 2021. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US. Published by Oxford University Press 2021.
TI - Pyrrhic Progress: The History of Antibiotics in Anglo-American Food Production, by Claas Kirchhelle
JF - The English Historical Review
DO - 10.1093/ehr/ceab168
DA - 2021-07-27
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/pyrrhic-progress-the-history-of-antibiotics-in-anglo-american-food-LvRt32jwRj
SP - 1382
EP - 1384
VL - 136
IS - 582
DP - DeepDyve
ER -