Got Swill Milk? — Mistakes Were Made
By: Marlon Mosley
Tags: New York City, Food And Drink, History, Milk, Public Health

I want to take you back to the United States in the 1850s. It was a time frame where the government didn’t regulate or provide standards for food quality. Vaccines and medical progress was nowhere near the levels we have today. Diseases, like Cholera and Typhoid, were a part of everyday life back then. When Infant mortality started raising in New York City during this time, no one thought it was tied to the milk supply.

New York City distilleries discovered a way to make extra cash besides selling alcohol in the 1850s. Distilleries had a lot of excess grains after the alcohol making process. One enterprising distiller discovered that after you extracted the alcohol from the grain, the left over mash contained nutrients. That same distiller attached cow stables near or on the distillery and fed the cows with the leftover grain swill. The economic advantage of this is they could sell the milk from the cows at a much lower price point than regular dairy farmers. Why just sell alcohol when you can sell milk too?

The Swill milk dairies were inhuman and disgusting. They were noted for their filthy conditions and nauseating stench. The close confinement of thousands of cows in narrow stalls caused a stench and filth to set in. Once the cow entered the stalls, they would remain there for the rest of their lives. The cows would stand in their own manure, covered with flies, sores and suffered from a range of diseases.

The left over grain swill had to be mixed with boiling water to make it edible. One of the numerous problems with this plan was there was no way to get all the alcohol out of the grain swill. The cows were basically being feed an alcohol filled mash. The mash was not nutritious food to feed cows. The swill dairy cows refused to eat the mash until they got hungry and had no choice to eat it. The Swill mash left the cows with rotting teeth, tails falling off, and they were covered with sores.

The Swill dairy cows produced more milk than the regular grass feed cows, but at a much lower quality. According to an editorial about swill milk by the New York Times it described swill milk as a “bluish, white compound of true milk, pus and dirty water, which, on standing, deposits a yellowish, brown sediment that is manufactured in the stables attached to large distilleries by running the refuse distillery slops through the udders of dying cows and over the unwashed hands of milkers…” The cows were passing on their diseases and impurities through the milk.

No one in their right mind would drink milk that looks like that, so the distillers had to “fix” it up. They whitened the milk with plaster of Paris, thickened it with rotten eggs, starch and flour and hued it with molasses and burnt sugar. The distillers then marketed the milk as “pure country milk” or “Orange County Milk”. It’s estimated that between 50% to 80% of milk consumed in northeastern cities in this time period was swill milk.

In May 1858, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper did a land mark expose of the New York City distilleries-diaries. The expose caused wide spread public outrage and pressure was put on local politicians to punish and regulate the distillery/diaries.

One local Alderman, named Michael Tuomey, defended the distilleries even after the fallout about swill milk. Tuomey had so much sway and power that they put him in charge of the board of health investigation into swill milk! Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper caught Tuomey, making late night visits to distillery owners. Needless to say, the hearing was a charade. There was even testimony from the hearing that argued that swill milk was actually as good or better for children than regular milk! The board of health exonerated the distillers.

Public outcry about swill milk remained strong. In 1862, the first food safety laws were passed in the U.S. The laws dealt with milk regulations. Toumey tried hard to block the new laws but was unsuccessful. According to health authorities, 8,000 infants perished from drinking swill milk in 1857.

Mistakes were Made:

Today you can pick up a food item in the grocery store and see all the ingredients inside of it and where it was produced or made at. Whether we know what those ingredients are is another matter, but we have made progress in that arena. There is no way something like swill milk can happen today, right? Well, how do you explain the 2008 Chinese milk Scandal?

The scandal involved milk and infant formula along with other food materials and components being adulterated with melamine. The chemical was used to increase the nitrogen content of diluted milk, giving it the appearance of higher protein content in order to pass quality control testing. 6 babies died from kidney stones and other kidney damage and an estimated 54,000 babies were hospitalized because of the tainted milk. History has a way of repeating itself, because the mistakes weren’t heeded.

Mistake 1. C.R.E.A.M

It’s not like distillery owners were hurting for money in the 1850s, but one could always make more money. I applaud the ingenuity of the distillery owners, but the secondary effects of their actions caused horrendous turmoil. When you put money and profit over public health and wellbeing and add in the inhumane treatment of cows, it’s never going to end well. Another tragedy of this story was the distillery owners were never punished due to their political connections and lobbying. They money over everything else thinking has led to a lot of disaster and harm to society, but that thinking still prevails today.

Mistake 2. Aint no such thing as a half way crooked politician

Tuomey was like the band on the Titanic, he was going down with the ship till the bitter end. Crooked politicians are not an irregularity in our society, in fact they are the norm, but Tuomey took crookedness to a whole next level. Even after the public expose and public outcry, Tuomey set up a theatrical hearing on the matter than exonerated everyone. The smart play would have been to throw the distilleries under the bus and distance himself from them.

Among the many things Tuomey was, the guy was loyal. Even after his fellow politicians sided with the public and passed milk regulation laws, Tuomey still was trying to get the laws repealed. Tuomey is one of many politicians throughout history, who put his power and connections and position over the good of the public. I thought elected officials were supposed to help their constituents, but politicians like Tuomey are only out to help themselves.