A-Pasteurianism in Croatian dairy work: another form to human–microbial relations

ABSTRACT

In Croatia, state legislation on milk production has a significant effect on how farmer–microbial relations unfold in milk production. Notably, the shape these relations take on those dairy farms that follow state legislation is quite different to the shape of farmer–microbial relations on farms that do not. In this article, the author starts by offering ethnographic examples of farmer–microbial relations on both “types” of farms. Then, using Bruno Latour’s definition of the Pasteurian as a “revealer of microbes,” she argues that one can readily identify those farms that follow state legislation as taking a Pasteurian approach. The other farms, however, are more difficult to define. They can be described as neither post-Pasteurian, nor pre-Pasteurian. Therefore, the author proposes that the notion of “a-Pasteurian” is the most apposite way to describe their relations with microbes. She then spends the last part of the article further considering the a-Pasteurian approach.

RÉSUMÉ

Dans la Croatie, la législation de l’état sur la production de lait a un effet important sur la façon dont les relations fermiers-microbes se déroulent dans la production de lait. Cet effet est très visible dans les fermes laitières. Notamment, les relations dans les fermes qui se conforment à la législation sont différentes de celles dans les fermes qui ne s’y conforment pas. L’auteure présente des exemples ethnographiques des relations fermiers-microbes dans les deux « types » de fermes. Avec la définition de Bruno Latour d’un pasteurien comme « révélateur des microbes », l’auteure affirme que les fermes qui se conforment à la législation de l’état peuvent être identifiées comme étant ceux qui adoptent l’approche pasteurienne. Les autres fermes sont plus difficiles à définir. Pour cette raison, l’auteure propose que l’idée de « a-pasteurien » est la plus pertinente pour décrire leurs relations avec les microbes. Ensuite, elle examine l’approche a-pasteurienne. Tandis que dans les approches pasteuriennes, les fermiers sont responsables de la contamination microbienne, dans les approches a-pasteuriennes, la responsabilité est partagée entre les consommateurs et les producteurs. Selon l’auteure, une telle relation, même si elle ne résout pas le problème de « risque microbien », présente une autre façon dont les relations humains-microbes peuvent se dérouler.

KEYWORDS:

• Milk
• human–microbe relations
• Croatia
• Pasteurianism
• food safety

Acknowledgments

In order to protect their anonymity I do not name them here, but I would like very much to thank all the persons who gave their time to participate in this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In this article I have called nonhuman milk producers “animals.” Some readers may feel that to label them like this is to reify the human/animal divide, but I make the choice because this article is not focusing on the construction of this divide. However, it is important to keep in mind that the notion of “animal” is a social construct. In another article I have discussed the issue of labelling animals. Czerny, “‘Animals’ and ‘Humans’.”

2. For those readers not familiar with the participant observation method, it is an approach that is very often used in social anthropology and is one where the researcher lives and works with the persons one is researching.

3. Kirksey and Helmreich, “Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography,” 554.

4. Kirksey and Helmreich mention: Dunn, “Escherichia coli, Corporate Discipline”; Helmreich, Alien Ocean; Hird, Origins of Sociable Life; Paxson, “Post-Pasteurian Cultures”; also Paxson, Life of Cheese. Donna Haraway also considers bacteria in her account: Haraway, When Species Meet.

5. For instance, in a TED talk the microbiologist Bonnie Bassler offers the point that, irrespective of what metrics one wants to use, the human body is made up of significantly more bacterial cells than human cells. This raises the much asked question of “what” defines us as human. https://www.ted.com/talks/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate#t-96042. Haraway also discusses something very similar, and here I cite her at length. She writes: “I love the fact that human genomes can be found in only about 10 percent of all the cells that occupy the mundane space I call my body; the other 90 percent of the cells are filled with the genomes of bacteria, fungi, protists, and such, some of which play in a symphony necessary to my being alive at all, and some of which are hitching a ride and doing the rest of me, of us, no harm. I am vastly outnumbered by my tiny companions; better put, I become an adult human being in company with these tiny messmates. To be one is always to become with many.” This idea – that humans are constantly in a relation of “becoming” with nonhumans – is extremely influential in anthropological studies of human/animal relations. Haraway’s ideas highlight the fact that this divide between humans and animals is a social construct and not fixed and pre-determined. Microbes help to draw this out. Haraway, When Species Meet, 4.

6. Hird writes extensively about the microscopic size of microbes. Hird, Origins of Sociable Life.

7. There are three main ordinances related to milk. They are the Ordinance on Determining the Constitution of Raw Milk (Pravilnik o utvrđivanju sastava sirovog mlijeka, NN 27/2017), the Ordinance on the Arrangement of Contractual Arrangements in the Milk and Milk Products Sector (Pravilnik o uređenju ugovornih odnosa u sektoru mlijeka i mliječnih proizvoda, NN 24/2017), and the Ordinance on Raw Milk Intended for Public Consumption (Pravilnik o pregledu sirovog mlijeka namijenjenog javnoj potrošnji, NN 84/2016).

8. According to Article 4 of the Ordinance on Raw Milk Intended for Public Consumption (Pravilnik o pregledu sirovog mlijeka namijenjenog javnoj potrošnji, NN 84/2016), the Central Laboratory for the Control of Milk in Križevci (Središnji laboratorij za kontrolu mlijeka u Križevcima) must inform the relevant veterinary organizations if it is discovered that a milk sample has a somatic cell count of over 400,000 per millilitre.

9. Mincyte, “Homogenizing Milk,” 27.

10. Ibid.

11. Latour, Pasteurization of France, 35.

12. Ibid., 36.

13. Paxson, Life of Cheese. Also, Paxson, “Post-Pasteurian Cultures.”

14. Paxson, Life of Cheese, 162.

15. Ibid.

16. Dunn, “Escherichia coli, Corporate Discipline,” 50.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Aistara, “Good, Clean, Fair”; Aistara, “Latvia’s Tomato Rebellion”; Dunn, “Trojan Pig”; and Mincyte “Homogenizing Europe.”

20. Dunn, “Trojan Pig,” 1498.

21. Aistara, “Good, Clean, Fair,” 288.

22. The documentary film “Sir i Vrhnje” (Cheese and cream) made in 2013, the year of Croatia’s accession to the European Union, gives a very good account of the concerns of small-scale cheese makers in Croatia.

23. Aistara, “Good, Clean, Fair,” 293.

24. Dunn has written about the place of “risk” in European sanitary and phytosanitary standards. Dunn, “Trojan Pig,” 1501–3.

25. The final report of a European Union audit carried out in October 2016 on the system of safety controls for milk and milk products offers an interesting holistic perspective on the milk control system in Croatia. European Commission, “Final Report.”

26. See the following for a straightforward account of pasteurization in milk production: http://dairyprocessinghandbook.com/chapter/heat-exchangers

27. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern.

28. These a-Pasteurian farms are in the same geographical location as Pasteurian farms, so this raises the issue of how these farmers remain out of view of state inspectors and other monitoring bodies when they are, in fact, in plain sight. Due to the small number of animals they had, a-Pasteurian farmers explained to me that they managed this by saying that the milk was for their personal consumption. Some farmers said that, if possible, they preferred to keep their animals in more distant and inaccessible pastures, away from the main buildings of the farm. One farmer told me that it made him feel like the “worst kind of criminal” to have to hide his animals away in barns that were difficult for inspectors to get to.

29. The journal Dairy is now much more scientific in its approach and serves a very specialist and scientifically literate audience. When it was first published, Dairy appealed to a much wider audience, to anyone with an interest in milk production, and offered advice on a variety of topics in addition to dairy production. For instance, it offered general advice to dairy farmers about how to keep their cows healthy, and also provided information to farmers about human health (for example, how to treat themselves for the flu, or why vaccines were important).

30. Škrljac, “Manda i Bara,” 161.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid.

33. Stević, “Protiv primitivizma,” 12.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern.

39. Nimmo, Milk, Modernity, 73–4.

40. Ibid.

41. Paxson, Life of Cheese, 166.

42. Donna Haraway has written extensively about the relation between nature and culture, arguing that the two are so closely enmeshed that they cannot be separated, hence the term “natureculture.” Haraway, Companion Species Manifesto, 6.

43. Zdolec et al., “Nalaz patogenih bakterija.”

44. Ibid.

45. This is what Dunn has said is a paradox of EU food safety legislation: it can actually make food less safe. Dunn, “Trojan Pig,” 1501–3. Small-hold farmers are “priced out” of legal production, but are still working in ways that circumvent control by any third parties (such as state-controlled or state-owned laboratories).

46. In January 2018 a story appeared on a number of Croatian Internet news portals of how a television program interested in consumer affairs sent the products of a well-known meat-processing company to a laboratory for independent testing. The results showed that these products contained enterobacteriaceae. The initial report was aired by Croatian Radio Television on 20 January 2018 as part of the program Potrošački kod.

47. Jung, “Ambivalent Consumers.”

48. Ibid., 101–2.

49. Ibid., 105.

50. Ibid., 106.

51. Adams, Sexual Politics of Meat, 13.

52. Mincyte writes about this in her discussion of the work of Jonas, a dairy farmer in Lithuania. She says that since Jonas was aware of popular concerns about animal welfare, he was careful about how he marketed the milk, presenting it as a “pure and authentic product.” Mincyte, “Homogenizing Europe,” 34.

53. Jung, “Ambivalent Consumers.”

54. Paxson, Life of Cheese, 167.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah Czerny

Sarah Czerny holds an MA, MSc, and PhD in Social Anthropology from the School of Political and Social Science, University of Edinburgh. Since 2007 she has been working at the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Rijeka, first as a postdoctoral researcher and, from 2012, as an Assistant Professor. She teaches the course “Studies in Human/Animal Relations” in the MA Programme in Cultural Studies, and has carried out fieldwork on inter-species (cow, donkey, human, sheep, and goat) milk production in Croatia.