Milking economies: Multispecies entanglements in the infant formula industry

In 2016 the Chinese infant formula company Feihe International signed a deal with the Canadian Dairy Commission (CDC) to process Canadian cows’ and goats’ milk for infant formula export to China. Our purpose in this paper is to understand how this deal – and the new Feihe formula factory located in Kingston, Canada – is underpinned by a series of multispecies entanglements across cow, human and goat mothers in China and Canada. To do so, we analyse official correspondence between the CDC, Feihe and City of Kingston; market reports for the dairy, goat and infant formula industries; and news articles about the Feihe infant formula plant. Conceptually, we develop an anti-colonial, multispecies entanglement framework to chart the violent inclusions, exclusions and typologizations that make milk and formula economies possible. We are specifically interested in how the Feihe–CDC deal (re)configures entanglements across species, nation, race, science and motherhood. To understand these relations, we heuristically imbricate two different sets of entanglements that underpin this deal: milk drinking, empire and genetic purity across race, breed and species; and motherhood, science and technology across humans, goats and cows. We use our threefold entanglement framework to better understand the violence of these imbrications and to work towards a multispecies feminist ethic in the infant formula industry

Case Reports1. A Late Presentation of Loeys-Dietz Syndrome: Beware of TGFβ Receptor Mutations in Benign Joint Hypermobility

Background: Thoracic aortic aneurysms (TAA) and dissections are not uncommon causes of sudden death in young adults. Loeys-Dietz syndrome (LDS) is a rare, recently described, autosomal dominant, connective tissue disease characterized by aggressive arterial aneurysms, resulting from mutations in the transforming growth factor beta (TGFβ) receptor genes TGFBR1 and TGFBR2. Mean age at death is 26.1 years, most often due to aortic dissection. We report an unusually late presentation of LDS, diagnosed following elective surgery in a female with a long history of joint hypermobility. Methods: A 51-year-old Caucasian lady complained of chest pain and headache following a dural leak from spinal anaesthesia for an elective ankle arthroscopy. CT scan and echocardiography demonstrated a dilated aortic root and significant aortic regurgitation. MRA demonstrated aortic tortuosity, an infrarenal aortic aneurysm and aneurysms in the left renal and right internal mammary arteries. She underwent aortic root repair and aortic valve replacement. She had a background of long-standing joint pains secondary to hypermobility, easy bruising, unusual fracture susceptibility and mild bronchiectasis. She had one healthy child age 32, after which she suffered a uterine prolapse. Examination revealed mild Marfanoid features. Uvula, skin and ophthalmological examination was normal. Results: Fibrillin-1 testing for Marfan syndrome (MFS) was negative. Detection of a c.1270G > C (p.Gly424Arg) TGFBR2 mutation confirmed the diagnosis of LDS. Losartan was started for vascular protection. Conclusions: LDS is a severe inherited vasculopathy that usually presents in childhood. It is characterized by aortic root dilatation and ascending aneurysms. There is a higher risk of aortic dissection compared with MFS. Clinical features overlap with MFS and Ehlers Danlos syndrome Type IV, but differentiating dysmorphogenic features include ocular hypertelorism, bifid uvula and cleft palate. Echocardiography and MRA or CT scanning from head to pelvis is recommended to establish the extent of vascular involvement. Management involves early surgical intervention, including early valve-sparing aortic root replacement, genetic counselling and close monitoring in pregnancy. Despite being caused by loss of function mutations in either TGFβ receptor, paradoxical activation of TGFβ signalling is seen, suggesting that TGFβ antagonism may confer disease modifying effects similar to those observed in MFS. TGFβ antagonism can be achieved with angiotensin antagonists, such as Losartan, which is able to delay aortic aneurysm development in preclinical models and in patients with MFS. Our case emphasizes the importance of timely recognition of vasculopathy syndromes in patients with hypermobility and the need for early surgical intervention. It also highlights their heterogeneity and the potential for late presentation. Disclosures: The authors have declared no conflicts of interes

Framing the World cUPP: Competing Discourses of Favela Pacification as a Mega-Event Legacy in Brazil

In November of 2010, Brazilian military and police officers rolled through the streets of Complexo de Alemão, Rio de Janeiro’s largest favela, in an effort to ‘take back’ the community from notorious drug traffickers in time for the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Given the pervasive rhetoric that the occupation of favelas by the ‘pacifying’ Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora (UPP) program is for these mega events, what are the effects of this framing, and how is it used and contested by multiple actors? What subjects are called into being as a ‘threat’ through discourses regarding the UPPs, and how does this rhetoric legitimate violent practices of security by the state? Employing Judith Butler’s concepts of framing and the constitutive outside, I argue that there are multiple and competing discourses that frame UPP military police interventions, which have important legacy ramifications for Brazil’s mega events. In general, many international popular media accounts highly decontextualize and exoticize the space of the favela, constituting a site of threatening, yet consumable, Otherness. The state tends to construct simplistic dichotomies of space and subjects as threatening in order to legitimate its own actions. However, many favela inhabitants are reframing these constitutions to undermine the state’s attempts at legitimation and bring into relief the historical and socio-political continuities of Brazilian militarization

PACifying Alemão : articulations of public security, market formalization, and autoconstruction in Rio de Janeiro

The complex of favelas known as Complexo do Alemão in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil has recently been targeted by two large-scale state projects: infrastructural upgrading via the country’s Growth Acceleration Program (PAC, or “urbanization”) and military police occupation via the Police Pacifying Unit program (UPP, or “pacification”). In this dissertation I focus on the various regimes of power, profit, and discourse that constitute these state presences. Based on participant observation, interviews, policy analysis, and popular discourse analysis, I argue that a global urban research agenda requires theorizing in historically and geographically-situated ways. Inspired by the Gramscian tradition, by Brazilian urbanists, by modernity/coloniality scholars of Latin America, and by local activists, I develop a conceptual framework that integrates four different characteristics of urbanization projects. They are informed by historical processes; shaped by flows of capital, people, and policy; negotiated between civil society and state; and influenced by myriad regimes of power. Through this framework I make two related arguments. First, I argue that PAC and pacification strategies overlap in a nexus that I call PACification. PACification joins together marketization, the construction of racialized threats, and violent securitization. It manifests in strategies to attract international investment, extend microfinance, enroll people in mortgages, and foment entrepreneurial behavior, often informed by military police violence. Second, I argue that residents’ and activists’ modes of autoconstruction – in which people build their own communities often over generations – are central to the contemporary manifestation of PACification. Presently, residents are not only building communities out of bricks and mortar, but also through discourses, images, texts, and digital practices in order to safeguard their neighbours and to improve their daily lives.Arts, Faculty ofGeography, Department ofGraduat

Decolonizing cascadia?

This essay reflects on attempts to organize a conference that sought to trouble the colonial nature of conference structures, academic knowledges and hierarchies, and the ‘Cascadia’ bioregion of Northwestern North America