The long genealogy of quality in the British drinking-milk sector

Throughout most of the last 150 years milk in Britain has been an example of modernity in food production. It became a mass-produced, industrial product, with high volume, rapid tur nover, but limited choice. To modify Henry Ford’s humorous dictum, you could have any kind of milk you wanted as long as it was white and about 3% fat (Ford, 1923: 72). It is only in the last two or three decades that drinking-milk in Britain has become differentiated into the many different lines we see today: reduced fat, sweetened, flavoured, for tified, and so on. The pur pose of the paper is to look at the evolution of milk quality since the late nineteenth centur y and to suggest that today’s milk is the result of many histor ical developments. These include the breeding of the modern dair y cow, the changing organization of the milk industr y, advances in processing technology, the identification of bacteriolog ical risk, and the increased involvement of state-inspired regulation and the law. Until 1993 the British experience was very different from that in other countries but the regulator y framework of the European Union has encouraged convergence. It remains to be seen whether Brexit will open a new chapter in British milk quality.A lo largo de la mayor parte de los últimos 150 años, la leche ha sido en Gran Bretaña un ejemplo de modernidad en la producción de alimentos. Se convirtió en un producto industrial, fabricado en masa, con volúmenes grandes y ventas rápidas, pero escasa elección. Modificando el dicho humorístico de Henry Ford, podías tener el tipo de leche que quisieras siempre que fuera blanca y con aproximadamente un 3% de grasa (Ford, 1923: 72). Es sólo en las últimas dos o tres décadas cuando la leche líquida ha experimentado en Gran Bretaña la diferenciación hacia las muchas líneas que vemos hoy: baja en grasa, endulzada, con sabores, enriquecida, entre otras. El propósito de este artículo es estudiar la evolución de la calidad de la leche desde finales del siglo xix y sugerir que la leche de hoy es el resultado de numerosos desarrollos históricos. Estos incluyen la crianza de la vaca lechera moderna, la cambiante organización de la industria láctea, los avances en la tecnología de procesamiento, la identificación del riesgo bacteriológico, y la creciente participación tanto de la regulación inspirada por el Estado como de la ley. Hasta 1993, la experiencia británica fue muy diferente de la de otros países, pero el marco regulatorio de la Unión Europea ha favorecido una convergencia. Queda por ver si el Brexit abrirá un nuevo capítulo en la calidad de la leche en Gran Bretaña

The feathered man:The reception of Daniel 4 in a 17th-century English tapestry of Nebuchadnezzar tranformed into a beast

The imagery of Nebuchadnezzar’s divine affliction in Daniel 4 is as complex as it is fantastic. A variety of literary images interweave to present the king’s affliction in explicitly animalising terms. Despite this complexity, most visual depictions of the text focus on a largely similar image – that of Nebuchadnezzar eating grass or living naked in the wild. However, in a 17th-century English tapestry series associated with Thomas Poyntz, an altogether different scene is envisioned. Nebuchadnezzar is portrayed as fully clothed in the city of Babylon and, even more intriguingly, is explicitly depicted with both birds’ claws and feathers. This paper outlines trends in visually depicting Nebuchadnezzar’s affliction in art and then examines the tapestry’s visual portrayal of Daniel 4. In so doing, it is observed how the tapestry is distinctive in representing both the divine pronouncement and seeming enactment of this affliction in one image, as well as discerning the influence of lycanthropic interpretations of Daniel 4. Finally, this paper returns to read the biblical narrative in light of this unusual visual representation and observes how it draws the reader’s attention to two often overlooked textual features: the absence of other characters within this specific scene, and the rapidity with which Nebuchadnezzar’s affliction commences

Praise by animals in the Hebrew Bible

Among ancient Near Eastern societies was a widespread and particularly intriguing belief that animals were able to worship and praise deities. This study shows the Hebrew Bible evidences the idea that animals were capable of praising God too and proceeds to observe and document the presence of numerous examples of this in specific biblical texts. Through understanding the place of animals in the Hebrew Bible, and their perceived activity in the ancient Near East, this study suggests animals are distinct agents of praise in their own right in the biblical texts

Absent animals:The anthropocentric focus of the Book of Ruth

The book of Ruth is the only text of the Hebrew Bible which lacks a single mention of a nonhuman animal. As such, it has not been studied by scholars with an interest in animals within biblical texts. This article critically addresses this omission of nonhuman animals from Ruth by locating this neglect within the context of other troubling ideological binaries (such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class) which are operative in the narrative. Through an attentiveness to the lack of animals during the famine, harvest, and threshing of the grain in the book, this article suggests that the narrative obscures the crucial contribution of nonhuman animals to society as well as the care they deserve. This therefore indicates how the book of Ruth operates with an anthropocentric human/animal hierarchy whereby nonhumans can be disposed of to advance the interests of humans

How best to generate carbon revenue for small-scale projects in sub-Saharan Africa

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has not worked for sub-Saharan Africa and its mainly small projects, delivering only 0.3% of the total CDM carbon offsets. This is thought to be because of the low intensity of the greenhouse gas reducing interventions prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, the lack of institutional capacity relating to the CDM processes, the high transaction costs of the lengthy CDM process – typically amounting to R 500 000 per project per year and taking years to complete the process. An alternative for small carbon emission-reducing projects is to register carbon reductions with the voluntary carbon market and its Verified Emission Reductions (VERs) carbon credits. By examining the carbon markets in some detail through the lens of a particular case study, this dissertation has investigated and identified the main factors affecting the cost-effective generation of small emission reduction projects in sub-Saharan Africa. The chosen case study was a small-scale South African voluntary carbon project, the Umdoni bioethanol gel fuel-switching project. Umdoni was identified as an example of a project that generated carbon revenue outside of the CDM. By assessing the manner in which this project addressed the critical requirements of the carbon market while simultaneously alleviating poverty, the study seeks to provide new insight in the components of effective carbon markets. Both the detailed understanding of the voluntary carbon market components and the exposition of an example in which this market worked effectively is considered important at a time when the efficacy of the CDM is being reviewed, casting uncertainty over the role of market based instruments in addressing the global threat of an anthropogenically warmed climate. The study has identified the main factors affecting the ability of small carbon projects to generate net-positive carbon revenue and has suggested ways a small project could exploit this information to its benefit: The type of carbon market the project operates in – the small voluntary carbon market is best, with higher prices and lower costs - The inherent attractiveness of the project to potential carbon offset buyers – small projects with strong sustainable development aspects command higher carbon prices - The registry and carbon standard through which the project trades its carbon offsets – registries and standards which measure and emphasise sustainable development benefits realise higher prices for suitable projects - The type of buyer – Corporate buyers purchasing carbon offsets for image and public relations purposes are best for small projects with good sustainable development co-benefits - The supply-demand situation in the relevant carbon markets – the voluntary carbon market has been relatively unaffected by the crash in the compliance market in 2012 - The project size and the calculation methods chosen – the volume of emission reductions is sensitive to the project scale, the emission reducing technology and the emission reduction methodologies chosen - The transaction costs – the transaction costs for a CDM project are in excess of R500 000, which is far bigger than the likely carbon revenue. Whereas some small voluntary carbon market registry costs are lower by a factor of six and yet they get comparable carbon prices

From laboratory expertise to litigation: the municipal laboratory of Paris and the Inland Revenue laboratory in London, 1870-1914. A comparative analysis

During the second half of the 19th century increasing attention was devoted to food adulteration in several European countries and in the USA. National and local rules were adopted and their enforcement raised several problems. To start with, who was most qualified to lead with expertise on food and drink: scientists or food professionals? And which kind of expertise was superior: organoleptic or standardised “scientific” analysis? In turn these questions are related to the institutional framework in which the laboratories acted. Administrative, police expertise was quite different from judicial expertise, and there were fundamental tensions between local (municipal) and central authorities. In order to explore these questions we will compare the situation of laboratories in Paris and London. Common issues will be identified, mostly based on the increasing use of scientific arguments and tools in public debate.In France, the creation of municipal laboratories in the first years of the Third Republic was a major step in allotting responsibility for the sanitary management of food markets. Through a study of unexplored archives, the birth and activity of these laboratories is revealed, in particular of the Paris laboratory, which was the first (1878) and, without any doubt, the most important and controversial. We ask whether this institution was primarily intended to serve traders (for example, wine retail merchants who were suspicious of the composition of the product they bought from wholesalers), consumers (complaining about retailers), or local authorities (the prefecture, the municipality in their campaign against adulterated products)? We also question whether it was supposed to protect public health (and thus the consumer) or to regulate competition (and, thus, the relationship between traders)? In England and Wales the official government laboratory was in London, operated by the Inland Revenue in Somerset House, and designated by the 1875 Sale of Food and Drugs Act. It acted as a chemical Court of Appeal and sat in judgment on the efforts of local authority analysts. Like in France, there was fierce contestation about methods and standards but there was a difference here in that the expertise of the government scientists was regularly called into question by the Society of Public Analysts and by the press. The editor of Food and Sanitation, for instance, praised the approach adopted in Paris but was bitterly critical of Somerset House. In 1894 he spoke of the “wretched, ignorant, and utterly untrustworthy system of food analysis at Somerset House”. It was a “poor, bungling department struggling to perform work for which it has not got the skill or knowledge”. In his opinion, “scientifically the Somerset House chemists are dead, and there exists no shadow of an excuse for their remaining unburied.”In order to provide a basis for comparison, we will address three points. First, we explore the designation of experts, the nature of their methods, and the imprimatur of their pronouncements. On the one hand, traders considered themselves as the best qualified people to judge product quality; for example, wine merchants in France stressed that only they had the required know-how to conclude that a wine has been falsified or not. In contrast, the municipal administration and a part of public opinion were rather favourable to a recourse to scientists, whose methods were presented as “objective”. As such, the organoleptic analysis of traders stood against scientific chemical expertise. Second, to these conflicts between traders and scientists, we must add the question of disputes between the State and the municipalities. Because different municipal laboratories used different methods of analysis, the question arose of how to prevent meat that had, for instance, been rejected in Lyon or Liverpool being accepted in Paris or Portsmouth. The French response was to establish an official list of the methods of analysis valid for all municipal laboratories. This was first tried in the 1880s by establishing a national committee of control. However, the results were extremely poor. In 1907, after twenty years of debate, a National Service of Fraud Repression was started. By the authority of the Ministry of Agriculture, a municipal laboratory could act as an adjunct but only by special permission of the Minister. Such strong centralization reversed previous policies: municipalities lost any control over the quality of food products. This was accompanied by a standardization of the methods of analysis. Several decrees fixed in detail the methods and the instruments of analysis. In Britain the system remained devolved and it was a combination of vigorous scientific communication about methodologies and a series of court cases that provided the basis for greater standardization. Third, we will argue that laboratory organization was important. The most extreme example is the investment in commercial laboratories undertaken by the large dairy companies that emerged in the late nineteenth century and completely overshadowed the efforts of the central and local state on milk analysis. It was these ‘industrial' laboratories who led the debate on compositional standards, particularly in Britain, and their scientific expertise held such weight that it influenced government policy and helped define what were to be considered ‘natural' percentages of fat in milk. Overall, our paper indicates that comparative histories of laboratory expertise are valuable in understanding the evolution of food standards, with important additional perspectives on the development or organic chemistry and of the application of the law to issues concerning the ‘natural'

Leveraging carbon revenue for poverty alleviation

I'm not sure how to cite this. This study is part of Peter Atkins’ Master’s dissertation at the UCT Energy Research Centre.One of the intentions of the Kyoto Protocol and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was to use markets to allow the developed countries to supplement their own greenhouse gas reduction efforts with carbon reductions made in developing countries by purchasing carbon offsets. By these means, it was hoped, global greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced and developing countries would benefit through incoming carbon revenue and technology transfer. This has worked for China and India, which together account for 88% of all CDM carbon credits issued so far, but it hasn’t worked for Africa which has only a miserly 1% of the issued credits. The main reasons for this disparity are thought to be the high transaction costs of the CDM and the long and complicated registration, validation, monitoring and verification processes. The costs are around R400 000 to R2 000 000 per project (CCWG, 2009) . In addition it can take up to three years to get carbon revenue, if the project is one of the lucky 13% of projects to make it through to the end (see Appendix A – CDM Pipeline analysis). Partly in response to these CDM shortcomings, the voluntary carbon market has emerged. The voluntary carbon market has many players using many different standards and rules and regulations. Unfortunately, the CDM-like standards used by the bigger voluntary carbon market registries also incur high transaction costs and long lead times and therefore don’t work for typical, small African poverty alleviation projects with low greenhouse gas emission reduction potential. This has encouraged the development of small, agile carbon registries using simplified standards, which better fit the African projects. One such small registry and one of its poverty alleviation projects are analysed in this paper